#Rooted Jesus is Enough

Good morning, my name is Jenna. How are you?

All good, You're good. I can't believe we're in the

last week of April, can you? I mean, I had a full on

conversation with someone the other day about next month

meaning April, and then I realised actually that is where

we are now. We are in April.

You can see a little bit about where my brain is at maybe, but

that means that summer is fast approaching.

Who has booked their summer holiday?

Anyone. Few people.

Yes, few people have booked it. Well, we're starting to think

about summer in our house and it got me reflecting on our holiday

last year. Last year we actually did a

house swap with a French family, so they came to our house in

Hatfield and we went to their house in the South of France and

in Yeah, not sure who got the better deal there, but anyway,

no, we love Hatfield. Hatfield's great, but the area

that we were in, in the South of France, the area that we were

staying in had the most beautiful beaches all around.

And so every few days we would like pile the kids into the car

and we would go off and explore one of the beaches.

And I remember 1 beach that we went to, it was absolutely

packed and the kids went off into the water with AJ because

you know, he's the fun one. And I was there quite happy,

sitting on the beach doing absolutely nothing.

But I said to the kids, do you know what?

If you need to come out, you know where I am, just head

straight down the beach, look for the red umbrella and you

will find me. After a little while, my son,

our son gets out of the water and I can see him doing exactly

that, which I said to do. I can see him heading straight

back and he's looking for this red umbrella, although this

point he is halfway down the beach and I can see that he's

just starting to get worried. He can't find where I am.

I see the panic kind of setting in as he realises he can't find

me and I'm waving and he just can't figure out where I've

gone. You see, what had happened was

all the time that they were playing in the water, in the

sea, they'd been carried away by the current.

They're drifted far along the beach, no warning, no obvious

danger, just a slow drift from a current that they couldn't see

and they couldn't feel. And the point of me sharing that

story is that I think often that happens in our faith.

We don't walk away from Jesus in one big decision, but we drift

through 1000 small ones. And as you know, we have been in

the book of Colossians. Paul is writing this letter to

remind the Colossian church and to remind us today that if we

are not rooted in Jesus, then we too will drift.

And when we drift, we start to believe that maybe Jesus isn't

enough. You know, this was particularly

true for the Colossian church, who at the time, they were being

exposed to all different kinds of ideas and theologies which

they were starting to add on to the gospel.

And so by writing this letter, Paul is calling this out of

them. And he's saying, guys, remember

what you've heard. Remember how your lives have

been changed. Remember that Jesus is it.

He is enough. As if you have your Bibles with

you, we are going to turn to our passage today in Colossians,

which is Colossians 2, verses 6 to 15.

Colossians 2:6–15

If you don't have a Bible, by the way, please let one of the

team know. We would love to give you 1 and

if you don't know where it is, Colossians is near the back of

the book in the New Testament. Prod someone and ask them to

help you if you need to. But if failing, all of that is

going to come up on the screen. So Colossians 26 to 15, it says

this. So then, just as you received

Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him,

rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you

were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

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.

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 cancelled 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

authority, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing

over them by the cross. Amen.

Amen. Well, we're going to go through

this in a little bit more detail.

We're going to take a few verses at a time and unpick what it is

that Paul is saying here. So firstly, verses six to seven,

Paul is saying that Jesus is enough for growth.

Verse 6 says so. Then just as you received Christ

Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and

built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught,

and overflowing with thankfulness.

Now I'm not going to assume that everyone in this room has yet

received Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

Some of you are here and you're on a journey and that is so good

that you're here. But if you have received Jesus

as your Lord, whether that was yesterday or 50 years ago, we

are to continue to live our lives in Him, to invite Him into

every single detail of it, Rooted and built up in Him.

You know that word Rooted? We've come across it a lot,

haven't we? In fact, it's the title of this

series, Rooted. There are two main functions for

the root of a plant #1 the root's job is to anchor the

plant in the soil. At some point the wind is going

to blow and the storm is going to rage.

And if we are not rooted in Jesus, the only one who is

constant, the only one who is able to hold us, then we are not

going to be able to withstand the pressures of this world.

And #2 the root's job is to absorb water and nutrients from

the soil. When we are rooted in Jesus, we

receive all that we need to grow and to flourish and to thrive.

Jeremiah 17, seven to 8 says, But blessed is the one who

trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its

roots by the stream. It doesn't fear when heat comes,

its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of

drought, and it never fails to bear fruit.

Isn't that beautiful? When we trust in the Lord, when

we place our confidence in Him, it says that we won't be afraid

when the heat comes, we will always bear fruit.

Our leaves will always be green. Because fruit isn't produced by

effort. It's produced by connection to

Jesus being rooted in Him. And it's interesting to me that

what keeps us standing isn't what people see.

It's what we're rooted in. It's where we're drawing life

from when no one else is watching.

You know, roots are underground, aren't they?

In the dark, in the hidden places.

And I want to ask you again this morning, how are your roots

doing? Where are they anchored?

Who or what are you clinging to? Maybe you're clinging to your

family or your friends or your spouse, maybe maybe your

boyfriend or your girlfriend. Maybe you're clinging to your

bank account or your position that you hold in your career, in

your workplace. Or maybe you're like, it's OK,

we've got a good strategy in place.

We have a plan. If things go wrong when the

storm comes, we've got a plan. Or maybe you're the opposite and

actually you're just kind of feeling your way through with

your eyes shut, hoping for the best.

Maybe you're here and you know that you've got a root of

unforgiveness or a fear or of disappointment, and occasionally

you see the fruit of that in the way that you behave or the words

that come out of your mouth. I want to encourage you this

morning to ask the Lord to help you identify those things

because it might just be that those roots need uprooting in

order to re root them in Him and He will help you to do that.

Jesus is enough for growth #2 Jesus is enough for wisdom.

From verse 8 it says, 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 rather than on Christ.

You know, when we go on holiday as a family, when we go on a

road trip or whatever, we like to play games in the car.

Anyone else do that pass the time?

We have like the number plate game where you start at A and

you have to find a number plate beginning with A and then you

work through the alphabet. Or we have it where you look at

the last three letters of a car registration and whoever makes

the longest word out of the three letters wins.

But recently we've been playing not so much of A game, but

choosing a song. And so there's six of us.

And so we go round and we choose a song by typing it into Apple

Music. And we just kind of all get a

choice in what we want to play. And so AJ will choose some kind

of old school garage and the kids will choose some kind of

song, which we're like, we look at each other.

We're like, how do they know the full title?

The person who sings this song that goodness knows.

And then we get to the the little one who's 3 and he'll

choose something like Wheels on the Bus or Ba Ba Black Sheep.

And we're like, we have to endure it for the next however

long. But recently we've cottoned on

to the fact that we can use Siri to change the songs instead of

having to type it into the phone.

The only problem is that it's connected to AJ's phone and so

Siri only seems to recognise his voice.

And the other day we were going up to York and I was like, do

you know what? I'm going to try and trick it.

So I'm like, start to imitate his voice the best I can.

So I'm like, ho Siri play Taylor Swift or, you know, whatever.

And the kids are like, no mum, you need to use language that he

would use. So ho Siri, mate, play whatever

song. But it didn't work.

You see, we were trying to imitate A J's voice, to use the

words that he would have used in the tone that he would have used

it to get it to play what we wanted it to play.

We're exposed to many things in life, ideas, teachings, beliefs,

dare I say it, words and prophecies that might appear

like Christian on the tin. That's sound very much like God.

Maybe it has the tone of him or perhaps the words that he would

probably use. But the reality is it's not him.

It's not in line with his character.

It's not the truth of who he is. And Paul says here that we need

to see to it, to be alert so that the world doesn't trap us

with its emptiness and deception.

We need wisdom from Jesus to help us discern what is really

Him. You know, the world would love

to tell us that we should follow our own truth.

I mean, that sounds really wise, doesn't it?

But not everything that sounds wise is true, and not everything

that feels right leads to life. If it doesn't centre on Jesus,

if it's not the absolute truth of who He is and what His Word

says, it will eventually lead us away from Him.

And in fact, that word captive in this scripture means that it

doesn't just lead us away from him, it will enslave us.

It will keep us in bondage. And sometimes these deceptive

philosophies are really easy to spot, but other times they're

harder because they're just a subtle twist of the truth.

Like as a Christian, when when we try and justify a decision

and we say, oh, it's OK because God, because God wants me to be

happy. You see, the problem with this

is that we're reshaping God around our human desires rather

than letting him define what is actually good.

Which by the way, might mean that we have to walk

uncomfortable paths which don't actually make us happy because

the right path isn't always the easy path.

It might be that we have to forgive somebody that's really

difficult to forgive, or lay something down in an act of

obedience. Or what about another common

belief that we need to have? We need to fix ourselves.

We need to have it all together before we come to God.

I can't go to church today. I can't possibly pray for that

person because I'm just not in a right place with God.

That might sound like the right thing to say, but what it's

actually doing is replacing grace with effort.

The truth actually in what Jesus says is that we can come to him,

come to him just as we are. We don't have to have everything

figured out. Or there's this other end of the

spectrum where maybe you come to church every week, say the right

thing, stand up, sit down when the right time, raise your hand

at the right chorus, you know, whatever that is.

But if you're honest, there actually isn't any real

relationship going on with God. Maybe this is the type of human

tradition that Paul is talking about here, going through the

motions without allowing Jesus to transform us from the inside.

Or perhaps it looks like spirituality, which includes the

whole like mixing of different beliefs.

Church on a Sunday, horoscopes on a Monday, or like praying one

minute, manifesting it the next. Like guys, all these things

might sound right, they might feel right or be widely accepted

by the society we live in, but they all shift us away from

making Jesus our centre. We need his wisdom every day to

be able to recognise this. And so Jesus is enough for

growth and he is enough for wisdom and thirdly, most

importantly, he is enough for salvation.

Number verse 9 says 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. Paul is making a really strong

statement here. He's saying that Jesus doesn't

just reflect God, He doesn't just point to God.

He fully embodies the deity, which means God.

He is God. The entire, complete, whole

essence of God is in Jesus Christ.

And he's saying that as we belong to Jesus, that means that

we don't lack anything either. We are complete.

We've been brought to fullness in Him.

Not partially filled, not nearly filled, but we are fully filled.

And when we're fully filled, we don't have to top up with

anything. You don't have to top up

anything that's already full. We don't need to add anything to

complete us or to improve us when we are in Him.

I love how the message translation ties this little bit

together. It says that everything of God

gets expressed in Him being Jesus so you can see and hear

Him clearly. You don't need a telescope, A

microscope or a horoscope to realise the fullness of Christ

and the emptiness of the universe without Him.

When you come to Him, that fullness comes together for you

too. Paul goes on in verse 11 to say

that 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.

We read about circumcision quite a lot in the Old Testament, and

we first come across it in Genesis 17, when God makes a

covenant with Abraham, a promise to Abraham.

And he says that all the men should be circumcised as a sign,

as an outward sign that they belong to God.

And so it was one of the ways that the Israelites were set

apart. But Paul is saying here that us

belonging to God, it's no longer about a physical, external

ritual that is performed by human hands, but instead it's

about an internal cutting away of sin, an inward transformation

that only Jesus can do. You see, the world will call us

to live a certain way. Our sinful nature will call us

to live a certain way. But we have been set apart.

We have been set apart as a holy people of God.

Jesus has cut away that sinful nature.

It's nothing to do with us being good.

It's nothing to do with us keeping a long list of laws.

It is all about what Jesus has done on the cross.

Acts 4 verse 12 says salvation is found in no one else.

Acts 4:12

For there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which

we must be saved. Jesus has saved us.

He saved us from the power of sin and the judgement that we

deserve. You know, the old has gone and

the new has come. We have literally been saved

from death into life. That's what it says in verse 12

in this scripture here that we've been reading.

It says we've been buried and we've been raised through

baptism into new life, just as Jesus was.

We celebrated this a few weeks ago, didn't we?

As a church family, we had 23 people get baptised in this very

room. Who said that?

Do you know what? I've tried doing it my own way.

They've tried filling themselves up with things that the world

has to offer, but they'd come to realise that nothing cuts it.

There is nothing that can save us.

There is nothing that can set us free from the power of sin,

which ultimately leads to death, other than the blood of Jesus.

We don't need to add to the gospel because there's nothing

that can be added or nothing that can improve what is already

complete and what is already finished.

Jesus and Jesus alone is enough for salvation, and finally He is

enough for victory. 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 cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which

stood against us and condemned us, He's 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.

The cross wasn't symbolic, it was a legal transaction.

God didn't just turn a blind eye and ignore all the debt that we

owed, but instead he chose to pay it.

He chose to pay it for us by nailing it to the cross, which

means that the long record that is against us, it doesn't exist

anymore. You know, all those things that

we do and we say and we think that we just don't want anybody

to ever know. It's not just been brushed under

the carpet. It's actually been dealt with,

paid for in full, finished. And this means that all the

spiritual forces that we were once under, the spirit of

accusation, the spirit of oppression, the spirit of

condemnation, they've all been defeated too.

Verse 15, it says they've been disarmed.

There is no power. Everything that the powers and

authorities intended as the ultimate showcase of their

strength became the very moment of their public shame.

What looked like defeat on the cross was actually total

victory. And to finish, I want to share a

story with you. This is about a man who many

years ago he was stood at a slave auction and as he was

standing there watching, he was just seeing these people like 1

after the other coming forward and people were buying them.

They were being bought and they were being sold like property.

And then one young woman was brought forward and the bidding

started. Voices called out and the

bidding was getting higher and higher for this woman.

Men making comments about what they were going to do with her

once they bought her. And then one final voice spoke

out across the room and gave the highest bid, one that nobody

could match. And he won this girl.

And it turned out to be the man that was standing there watching

from the side. And as this man stepped in and

he stepped forward, he took the girl and they turned and started

to walk away from the crowd. And this girl looked at him with

tears streaming down her face, full of anger and suspicion.

And she said to the man, what are you going to do with me?

And he replied, I'm going to set you free.

Completely stunned, she looked at the man in his eyes.

She stopped in her tracks. And she said, free.

What does that even mean? And he said, it means that

you're no longer a slave. It means you can go wherever you

want. You can do whatever you want.

And she paused and she quietly said, then I'll go with you,

then I'll go with you. This man didn't just buy her.

He didn't just pay the highest price for her.

He set her free. And that's what Jesus has done

for each and every one of us. So the question this morning is

not are you free? The question is, are you living

like you're free? The work of the cross is

incredible. He has given us a way out.

Why would we want to look for freedom anywhere else other than

in Jesus? Why would we want to enslave

ourselves to other masters who on the face of things offer

freedom, looks like they offer freedom, but in reality just

lead us into bondage? Galatians 51 says it's for

freedom that Christ has set us free.

Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by

a yoke of slavery. Where is it that you need God's

freedom this morning? Where do you need His freedom?

As we move towards Him, as we grow in our relationship with

Him, we're going to make mistakes, we are going to get

things wrong, but there is so much grace.

Remember the story that I shared right at the beginning about my

son having drifted down the beach, just like I was standing

on the beach watching him, calling his name?

You have a Heavenly Father who has his eyes on you.

He's watching. His gaze has never left you and

He is calling your name and He is beckoning you back.

He's beckoning you back to Him this morning and inviting you to

return to Him and to root yourself once again in Him.

Amen.