Rooted In Christ

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Take your Bibles and turn them to Colossians chapter 2.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

We are continuing this morning our rooted study.

Thank you, those that are guests.

We are honored to have you.

Thank you, those who came to watch a baptism.

It is my privilege to be a part of that memory in all of those lives, and I'm thankful and grateful.

It's been a good week.

We see uh Mr.

Larry is back here.

If y'all saw Mr.

Larry, he told me that uh I called him on Monday, which was I think he was out by Friday, and he was loading a lawnmower.

So, well, okay.

Can't keep a good man down.

Um I went yesterday on the way back and saw Brandon Vignelle, who had uh his second open heart surgery.

He's 39, if you don't know Brandon, and uh he's like a jackrabbit around here, uh, healthy or not healthy.

Um but anyhow, he was up.

It was not to my surprise.

He was standing, he had done laps, and he was telling me yesterday, now he had some medicine, but he said, if they let me out tomorrow, I'll be in church.

So he just had open heart surgery, man.

Um but Wyatt and I got to spend some time with him, and he's doing uh everything went well.

So thank you for prayers there.

Continue to pray.

He asked me to have you pray for his back, had open heart surgery, but laying on his back has uh got him stove up.

So, anyhow, pray for that.

And uh, we are delighted today to have Bishop in Delema with us.

So, Bishop, thank you.

Rejoice, that's Ben's father, and uh he's with us today from Tanzania.

Uh I had to suffer this week.

I hope that you didn't have to suffer.

I had to suffer at the Gulf Shores for the Lord and my daughter, who had a state track meet, really excited, and I want to brag her.

I know if you had the opportunity on your kid, but to go to state for a championship in anything is something that some people will never in their life get to do.

And I don't think she might not get the gravity.

It's a really big deal.

And so Chelsea went to state for track.

Now, hear me.

Chelsea, who has a track but has never run on it yet.

Okay, it's not finished.

Their team went and they came in second place in the state for the girls.

So I'm very proud.

Heather's telling me something, and I don't know what it is.

For 7A, which is the highest you can get, right?

Is that right?

So, anyways, pretty cool.

Um, but I uh I did get to see the ocean and get uh some time alone with the Lord.

So I'm ready this morning.

I hope you're ready.

Colossians chapter 2, and um we're gonna be looking this morning at rooted in Christ.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

Uh as we do, we're gonna be uncovering the Colossian heresy, the reason for the letter, the reason that Paul wrote this, and I want you to start this morning.

The first point is this don't be deceived by persuasive plots.

Let me read verses one through four, and then I got a couple of photos I want to show you.

It says, For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Thodosia, and for many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love and attaining to all riches of the full, hear this, assurance of understanding to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ.

That's important for what we've been talking about.

He wants them to know the Father and Christ can join, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Now, this I say, lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words.

Anybody here ever been deceived?

Persuasive words deceive you.

Ever bought something from a smooth salesman?

Been deceived, sorta?

Well, I've been deceived, and a couple of times that it happened to me, it seems like I can be deceived about two o'clock in the morning.

I want to show you an infomercial that came up in front of me, a picture of something that came to me at two o'clock in the morning.

It was called the Sauna Belt.

Anybody heard of the sauna belt?

So there I was, two o'clock in the morning, and the answer to my abdominal dreams showed up on the scene.

And it was like, no work.

You're gonna wear this, it's gonna be very convenient.

And then they show this model, I mean, just glistening, six pack.

I'm like, that's what I need.

He's like, very little work, very high cost.

This is simple, right?

Six easy payments of$9.99 and it's yours, six-pack abs.

So I ordered the thing, right?

And let me tell you, it came with a cord.

Nobody never seen a cord on the infomercial.

Like, there's a man gardening with his six-pack abs.

This is like what you do, right?

And he's wearing his sauna belt.

And I'm like, where did he plug it in?

Like, you I could lay in my bed, and just enough next to the cord is the only comfortable place, and it's like a two-foot cord.

And I'm here to tell you today, it never worked.

Okay, it still has not worked.

The sauna belt deceived me at two in the morning.

It was the answer to all my abdominal problems, Dave.

Didn't happen.

Well, then I went to the store.

Maybe you've seen these before.

The sauna suit.

Have you seen the sauna suit?

Yes, I bought the sauna belt, and then later in life, I bought the sauna suit, not having learned enough.

And I will tell you, this trash bag will make you sweat.

It's very hard to clean.

It's there's no way to wash it.

And I wore this over and over and again, putting myself in my own stank and getting on a treadmill.

And I sweat, but I'm telling you, it didn't transform my body like it sold to me.

I was deceived, church.

Paul says, I don't want you to be deceived by persuasive plots.

Do not, if you have to hear anything today, don't watch infomercials at two in the morning.

That's my nugget.

Let me pray.

Father, we thank you for the opportunity to meet in your house.

And God, I pray as we go from light to deep in this study, God, that you would uncover what I think is running up and down our rows in this church.

And it's all over in our society.

And God, it's looked at as maybe something in the past, but God, I believe that Satan and his band of angels are using these plots.

And God, and especially in our American culture, Lord, we have been deceived.

And I pray today that the church of God would rise above this.

Lord, that our eyes would be open and that you would do a work in our midst this morning.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Letter A this morning is this be guarded because of the deception of persuasive words, be guarded.

Paul says, this is a big conflict.

This is no small thing.

I have a big conflict about something.

And he says, This is what I want.

I want for you to have full assurance.

That's what we just read, of the mystery.

What is the mystery?

The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Messiah that you have been seeking and wanting has come, has died on a cross.

The mystery is over.

It's happened.

And I want you to believe in it, both Father, he says, and of Christ.

But the Colossians are beginning to be persuaded, and there's talk, and there's different groups that are speaking with a place for Jesus, but not the place, not the supremacy, not the highest seat.

He is not God to them.

And it's a big, huge conflict, Paul says.

And he says, be on guard.

Why?

Because they seek to beguile you.

That word beguile is, I'm gonna mess it up, it's a hard word.

Paralegedes me.

Paralegids me, and it means to teach you, to delude something, to dumb down something.

This word we use today, this is the way that society talks.

You'll hear it on the news.

We use this all the time now.

They misspoke.

Oh, you mean they lied?

No.

No, they don't want to say I lied.

They want to say I mistakenly spoke.

Oh, you lied.

No, I misspoke.

And what it means there is by enticing words.

That's what it says.

Be careful, the persuasive words.

That word enticing is pathanologia, which is close to our pathological, looking to cause an error.

There's people looking to cause an error.

And in the church at Colossae, that's what they were looking to do, these groups.

And what Satan seeks to still do is misdirect, divert.

And so Paul says, beware, beware, and that word is to discern or perceive through our senses, give careful examination.

And so for us to get deeper, it means, as a church, we've got to beware.

We've got to be aware of near truths.

We've got to be aware of half-truths.

We've got to beware of justifications of truths.

And he said in further scripture that 1 Peter said, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, is walking around seeking whom he may devour.

Paul said it this way: walk circumspectly.

That means look around.

That means keep your eyes open for the enemy's attacks.

Be aware, be sober, be right-minded.

Don't just listen to everything you hear, church.

We like to listen to things, and if we get motivated in a certain way, we'll just listen.

Okay, that sounds good.

Listen, if it doesn't line up with God's word, then it's not right.

Now I'm gonna tell you in the position I'm in, a lot of times people, a man may come to me and say, I have a word for you, Pastor.

That's fine.

That's fine if somebody has a word, but if their word doesn't line up with God's word, then I'm on my guard.

Not everyone has my best interests, and not everyone has God's best interests.

A lot of people have their own best interests when they want your ear.

Are you with me?

And so did these people because they wanted to continue to live how they wanted to live.

And a full-on obedience to Jesus Christ as God meant taking away of what I want.

Even my religious restrictions and rules we're gonna see.

So there's this warfare going on.

Spurgeon said this.

Listen, consider how precious a soul must be, that both God and Satan are after them.

There's spiritual warfare for souls.

And so Paul said, Be on guard.

Be on guard of their crafted words, be on guard of their forked tongue, be on guard.

Psalmists said it this way.

I love this verse, Psalms 55, 21.

His words were smooth as butter, but his heart was like a war.

And there's people that can say it and make you believe it, but in their heart it's not right.

Persuasive words, he says, be on guard.

I was uh looking through some information this week and came across uh a site that claimed the top five most persuasive speakers in history, and I thought this was interesting.

Abraham Lincoln was number five, Winston Churchill number four, number three was Martin Luther King Jr.

Number two was John F.

Kennedy, and listen to this.

Number one, most persuasive speaker in history, Adolf Hitler.

Hitler knew how to manipulate a crowd.

He had this divisive plot to get together a crowd mentality, and this was the idea.

If I get a crowd together, it is hard for a group of people in unison to separate their convictions from the crowd and within the crowd, because the crowd is persuasive.

You hear with teenagers all the time, peer pressure, right?

Does it ever go away?

It doesn't.

So the crowd is persuasive.

Now listen, in the Bible, the same crowd cried, Hosanna, when Jesus wrote in.

The same crowd yelled, Crucify.

That mob mentality, the crowd.

The crowd in 23 is still the crowd, church.

It's no less the crowd in our life.

And it makes it vital for letter B to happen.

Letter B is this, be grounded.

Look down at verse 6 and 7.

We must be grounded.

It says, as you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

He says, be grounded, that we're rooted, grounded is rezo, which is to cause to be stable.

Rezo, to be stable, to be grounded in what we believe, to be faithful to what we believe.

I want you to look over a second to Ephesians.

Ephesians chapter 3.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

Just two quick verses.

Paul dealt with this in different places, and so he has something to say to the church in Ephesus as well.

Look at verse 17 and 18.

It says that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may able to comprehend with all saints what is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ.

And he says, To know Christ fully, you've got to be grounded.

You've got to be established in what you believe.

That is communion with Christ.

He's saying, you have to walk in this.

It's not like you made a decision at seven to be a Christian, and then you can kind of go off and do anything you desire to do for 15 years, and you're gonna be rooted deep.

No.

Remember the other week he said you can be like wind blown back and forth.

And so he says, be rooted, be rooted, and that it doesn't just stop there getting deep.

That's abiding, but then it says built up, as you've been taught.

That means to grow, to study, communion with Christ, let me tell you, doesn't happen twice a week, Sunday and Wednesday.

Rooting happens when you're outside of this building.

Rooting happens every day.

And so we have to be faithful to build up.

I think about that in my marriage.

My marriage is grounded.

I'm not gonna fall away.

I don't believe Heather's gonna fall away.

Why?

Because we're faithful to a couple of things.

One, we're faithful to communicate, and second, we're faithful to date.

If you will communicate and you will date, your marriage, I'm not saying it's foolproof, but there's two of the great things out of a list.

Date and communicate.

Listen, if you hadn't had a date in a while, then you need to have a date.

Okay?

You need to talk, you need to communicate.

Communion with God.

And some of you say, well, I got the kids.

Well, you know what?

It takes effort.

Give the kids, give the kids to somebody.

Trust somebody.

I don't care.

I know.

Listen, pay them.

Pay somebody you trust.

But listen, you've got to date and communicate.

With God to be built up, I gotta communicate.

It's not just going and hearing something once or twice a week.

I've got to have communication.

I've got to have time spent in the word.

Biblically, we need built up.

That's how we get deep.

You can get surface level if you come here for 52 Sundays this year.

And it may help you some, but I'm telling you, what really helps a person is day to day building up biblically.

I love my time in God's Word.

Wes and I play a game.

I love the Word of God.

I love memorizing scripture.

We play a game.

He'll start a scripture.

He thinks it's fascinating.

He can start a scripture somewhere that he's learned.

And I want to be able to end it or finish it.

Or he'll he'll start, he'll just turn to a book in the Bible, and you know, some of the times I'm kind of like making it up, hoping I'm close, right?

But a lot of times I'll get it and he'll be like, this is amazing, right?

And I love knowing that.

And I hope one day, most books of the Bible, almost all the books of the Bible, if we talked, I could tell you an idea of what the book of the Bible is like.

I would love to, you could tell me John chapter 7, and I would know what that chapter is about in the Bible because I've been built up, I've been rooted in it.

John 7 · chapter mention

I've been memorizing it.

The Christian is to be built in the Bible and doctrine, church, rooted.

We get rooted in the things we love.

Well, how do I do this?

What do you mean, Pastor?

I'm gonna tell you something.

I'm rooted in coffee.

I make time every day for coffee, no matter what the situation is.

I make time.

Are y'all with me?

No matter what the place, everywhere I go, I can find coffee everywhere.

I mean nasty coffee and great coffee, but I find it everywhere I go.

I'm rooted in coffee.

I find coffee shops.

You know why?

Because I love it.

If you love something, you figure out a way, don't you?

And there's sometimes I start like, um if I if I don't get me a cup of coffee soon, something ain't gonna be right.

Right?

And so I know I'm rooted in that being.

To be rooted is to be attached to something.

Are you attached to the church?

Is it deep for you?

Is it more than just a surface-level thing?

Because a surface-level thing can fall over, but something deeply rooted is grounded.

Well, he doesn't just say rooted and built up.

Look at how it ends.

This is interesting.

Rooted and built up in him, establish the faith, as you've been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

I got thinking about this.

Why did this get thrown in here?

Root, okay.

And then it started to make sense to me.

If we do all this and we get deep in it and we don't take time to look at what God's done, if we don't take time to rewind and go back and thank God for things, it can become background noise.

Another good day, another healthy day, another day where I have my job.

It can just become noise.

Am I right?

He says, rooted and grounded in it with thanks.

Be thankful to him.

Thank him for our salvation.

Thankful.

Um, God told me in one of our Connect group meetings to have a testimony time.

And you know, all the time you're thinking about what people are gonna think.

I'm thinking people, they're gonna think pastors trying to be hyper-spiritual and trying to drum something up in the spirit.

And listen, I wasn't.

God just told me, we're not gonna do a book tonight.

Let's just have a testimony time.

And I didn't even know what my testimony was, but God just told me to do something, and before I know it, we were going around the room, and the thanks to God for the things he had done began to get so deep.

And the people around that circle, it wasn't seven, eight, nine minutes in, and there wasn't a dry eye.

Somebody was sharing the way that God had moved in their life and worked in their life, and the presence of God fell.

Why?

Because we were thankful for what he had done.

There has to be time for his presence, for passion and praise to be grounded in him.

You know the story in Matthew, it says about the wise man and the foolish man, right?

About building up.

It says the wise man built his house upon a rock, and when the rains came and the winds blew, that foundation, that strength didn't fall over, but the foolish man built his house on earthly substance.

We build for eternal, some build for temporal, on earthly substance, and it was built upon sand.

I don't know if you've ever tried to build a sand castle and how high and how deep.

He said, When the rains came and the floods came and the winds blew, it knocked on that house and it fell to pieces.

Because it wasn't dug in deep in the right things, and so we must be grounded.

Look at verse 8.

He says, Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the traditions of man, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

That takes us to our second point this morning.

Don't be distracted by phony philosophies.

Anybody here ever been distracted?

Nobody.

Alright, here we go.

Well, some people in the Bible have been distracted.

Samson's been distracted by Delilah, David was distracted by the beauty of Bathsheba, Martha was distracted with a little bit of high.

Housework.

Adam and Eve were distracted.

Solomon was distracted by idols.

Lot's wife looked back.

She was distracted by worldliness.

I was thinking through this about there's so many examples of me being distracted.

But when it comes to philosophy, I thought about the first year I was in youth ministry, the first day on the job.

Man, I was ready, y'all.

2006.

Had my black suit on, my white pressed shirt, had my tie on, my shoes were shiny, had the hair over just right, the spiritual way.

And I walked into the church, and I remember walking up and I looked over at the stage and I thought, something must be wrong with my eye.

Yes, that is.

I cannot believe what I'm seeing, but I think that is.

Yes, that's it.

There's a man in the choir.

Wait a second.

And he's wearing blue jeans.

Dear sweet heavens.

Is this the way it's gonna be here at this church?

I thought to myself, well, I sure have a job to do here.

Get these people walking with the Lord.

This is how it's gonna be.

Someone told me later.

Now I got much over that, but somebody told me later, in a town like Connorsville, Pastor, not many people can afford church clothes and work clothes.

Some of the best they have is what they got.

And some of the best people I have ever known couldn't afford church clothes.

Do you think God in heaven cares for one second about that?

Do you think he's concerned?

You see, man constantly, hear me, teenager, man constantly looks on the outward appearance, 1 Samuel 16, 7.

But God looks on the inner man.

And so we're constantly worried about that cymbal and them shoes and that swoosh, and we're constantly caught up.

And do you think God cares for one second?

It's much deeper than that.

It's so much deeper.

And it's so wrong.

Hear me.

I don't care about the bell buckle, the purse, whatever it is, whatever name that makes you pay 70% higher.

It doesn't make you anything better.

Hear me.

So quit.

You've got to quit.

Adults, we've got to quit with that stuff.

Man, get you some Walmart heirs and let's just go together.

God looks at these things.

Are you nice?

Are you respectful?

The Bible says a man that wants friends shows himself to be friendly.

Not a man that wants friends has every kind of name branch hurt.

God doesn't care about that.

And I myself looked up and saw a man, and I've been distracted by a phony philosophy.

I want you to turn to verse 16 through 18.

Paul gives a little more to that.

We're going to come back to the verses in between, but look at 16 through 18.

It says, So let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival that you keep or a new moon or Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come.

But the substance, what matters, what roots you, the substance is of Christ.

Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility.

And we're going to get back to this worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen.

Letter A is this bound by position.

They're bound by position.

He says, Don't be deceived by these phony philosophies about position.

People have been caught up about position for ages.

And it's happening still today.

You know what's being taught all over?

It's this little g gods mentality.

I'm going to explain that in a minute.

Little G gods.

But what it is, it's an old thing wrapped back up.

It's called Gnosticism.

Gnosticism is a heretical belief in the divine human spark.

Now, don't just read past that.

The divine, the God in human spark.

And so we're going to look at a little bit about that.

There's another one called asceticism.

Asceticism is the self-discipline, avoidance of indulgence.

This is some of what's being talked about here.

So these people were neglecting things, trying to look humble.

Alright, and we're going to talk about some of those, but let's stick to Gnosticism right now.

The belief in the divine human spark.

This is it.

Jesus, for the Gnostics, is not God.

But he had gnosis.

He had the divine human spark.

And he was elevated because he had this spiritual ability.

And he became a little G God, one of the gods, not the God.

This is nothing new.

It gets wrapped, unwrapped, and rewrapped in generation after generation.

Okay?

Gets attitude taken away.

Christian science today is Gnosticism.

The unity church today is Gnosticism.

This early cult has roots in all kinds of heretical groups.

And I'm telling you, there's people today preaching that we are just like God.

And here's the thing: they're getting close to truth.

They'll read Genesis 1:27.

Genesis 1:27

We are made in the image of God.

And yes, that is true.

We look like somehow what God would look like as man.

We are made in the image structure of God, but we don't have divinity.

Okay?

We are not God.

And they distort that.

Let me explain to you how.

There's one group, the name it claims.

These philosophizers will say something like this: if you just speak it into existence, your destiny will come to you.

Okay?

If you just speak it, or they'll say in reverse, oh, don't you speak that bad stuff.

Don't you speak that you're speaking bad into existence.

Okay?

That's wrong.

Only God speaks and creates.

Are you with me?

God created.

We do not create.

We're not God.

So what that seeks to do is it redefines faith from a trust in a holy and sovereign God to a way of controlling God with our words to getting our wants.

It's wrong.

I mean, if that's how it's worked, if that's how it works, Brother Gary, I'm claiming it right now.

Bags, God.

Bags of money.

Big bags, Lord.

Large denomination bills be just fine with me.

This is the ideology that's being put out there.

This name it, claim it.

It elevates man and his amazing faith and degrades who God is.

And it's a scheme.

It's a scheme of the enemy.

And it's right around us.

And there's pressures, church.

I get it.

There's pressures for us to achieve, to be successful.

And there's pressures in the wealthiest economy in all of Alabama.

There's pressures to acquire much.

And it revolves around you and me being more than human.

We have to be superhuman with our schedules, right?

We have to do and do and grind so that we can keep up.

Aren't you tired of trying to keep up?

Satan is not creative.

He can't create.

God does that.

So you know what he does?

He's distractive and he's pervertive and he's distorted.

And so Satan seeks to distract you with a world just within your grasp.

If you just know your human spark.

Now Satan tempted Jesus to worship him.

The audacity of someone to think the creator of all things is going to bow down before him and he said, I'll give you everything you seek.

Right?

Do you think he's not going to then tempt us with the same things?

If he tempted Jesus?

Or not just worship him, but what about yourself?

Right?

How many books are sold in the millions, the self-esteemed gurus?

Just worship yourself.

And I'm not talking about don't be your best self.

Be your best self.

Be the best that you can be.

I'm not talking about that, but there's a difference in being your best you and being in love with you, the little G God.

Are you with me?

Satan constantly distracts us to look at position.

Let me share with you a verse.

Mark chapter 12.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

This is one of several.

Jesus seemingly got angry and disgusted with one sort of group of people, three groups that are in the same, but this is about the scribes.

Mark 12, 38, listen to what the scribes were doing.

Then he said to them in his teaching, Beware of the scribes who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers.

These will receive greater condemnation.

He said, Look, there's a lot of religious people, real religious people, strictly religious people who are phonies.

He talked about the Pharisees.

He got so mad at them.

He said, On the outside, you're like, you're like whitewashed, you're clean on the outside, but on the inside, you're like a tomb full of dead men's bones.

You want everybody to see you high and mighty and religious.

But they were doing their own philosophy, following their own rules, and Jesus was not God in their rules.

Why do you think prosperity preaching is so popular?

Because we're trying to keep up, and it sounds so good.

If I just follow this set of rules, then God's blessings are just gonna fall.

But it's Gnosticism, it's phony.

Letter B.

They were bound by position, letter B, bound by religious practices.

Look at verse 20 through 23.

It says, Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations?

Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, which all concern things which perish with the using according to the commandments and doctrines of men.

These things indeed, listen, he's telling us the trickery, right?

They indeed have an appearance of wisdom and self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

This is talking about the second thing I mentioned, asceticism, self-discipline, and avoidance of indulgence.

Okay?

But they have no value.

You see it across Eastern countries now, Europe, uh, in monasticism, the monk life, okay, which they renounce worldly pursuits to devote isolated life of spiritual work, right?

And that sounds good and fine and admirable, but how can you, Matthew 28, 19, go into all the world and preach the gospel and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit if you are in isolated work around nobody?

It sounds like an admirable pursuit, but he says it's of zero value.

In other words, they're doing nothing, they're not impacting their world in any way.

How can you do not teach, do not touch, do not handle and reach anyone?

He says they appear wise.

He says, but it's falsely humble and it's useless and it's worthless.

Jesus' words.

All right, through Paul.

I want you to look at verse 22, and I want to compare a verse in Matthew again.

He says, which all concern things which perish with the using according to the commandments and doctrines of men.

These things fade away.

And Matthew 15, 19 says, You worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

He said, You got all these rules that Jesus came, the whole book of Galatians is tied to it.

Jesus came to free us from all of the law.

Okay, he came, and what he did was gave us that grace, and now these old traditions, he has set us free, and they're going back and saying, But I want us to do this, and I want us to do this, and to be in this club, to be in this cult, to be in this group, you have to believe this and this.

And he says, It's all false.

It's the commandments of men.

And here's the thing, you're like, well, that can't be that bad for somebody.

When we open the doorway for the worship of man's principles, when we crack the doorway and we take away from God's principles and what God wants, we've opened the door and then we set free what?

Well, it goes into a deeper thought.

Look at verse 18 and 19.

I said we would get back to this.

Halfway through the verse it says, in false humility and worship of angels.

Hmm.

What does that mean?

Worship of angels.

And so this church, this sect of people in the Colossian church were claiming, not only were they not saying Jesus is totally God, they're saying, We need to come together and we are going to bow, we're going to have reverence, we are going to worship angels.

Interesting.

Let me tell you a verse in Revelation 22, 8 and 9.

I was looking up the worship of angels.

This is what it says.

Revelations.

It says, Now I, John, saw and heard these things, and then when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me.

Then he, the angel, said to me, See that you do not do that.

For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren, the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book.

And he says, Worship God.

The angel said, See that you do not do that.

Don't worship me.

Instead, you need to worship God.

So if I identify that appropriately, it says, Some angels don't want to be worshipped.

If they were worshiping angels, then some other angels must want to be worshipped.

Ephesians 6 12.

It says, For we wrestle not against flesh and blood.

Hear me, don't miss this.

But against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

So if the angels of God don't want to be worshipped, and these people at Colossians were teaching that we should worship angels, what are they worshiping?

Matthew 25, 41 says, the fire of hell is prepared for the devil and his angels.

So if we're not worshiping the angels of God, what angels are we worshiping?

Church.

There's a real problem today when there's a space open for demonism and fallen angels.

See, Colossi theology began to make space for the worship of other things as if they were God and angels, and it says there's some angels of God they didn't want to be worshipped.

You say, that's that's dark, Pastor Rick.

Is that really a big deal for me?

How am I gonna take something home from this?

Church, it's right under our noses.

Do you have the Disney Channel?

There's a TV show called Little Demon on the Disney Channel.

Okay?

And the plot of Little Demon is that Satan impregnated a 13-year-old girl, and she gave birth to her daughter, Lucy, the Antichrist.

It's all over our culture, it's right under our faces, and it becomes like the pot boiling the frog, or it's his background, and we just get used to it, and it's right here.

Demonism is right here.

What about the gender plague?

How does that make a difference?

Well, what gender do you think a demon is?

Their spirit world.

They don't have a gender.

You hear this term non-binary, not male, not female, you know what that is?

That's a demon.

Non-binary, that's what that is.

And it's being pounded in our faces.

And we just take it and we act like, well, that's part of that part, but I don't, you know, I'm just gonna kind of keep my hands off.

Listen, it's right under our faces.

Newsweek reported that the number of Wiccans, I'll explain what that is in a second.

Number of Wiccans in 1990 was 8,000 in the United States.

Okay?

A Wiccan is a form of witchcraft that believes in the divine human spark.

Good witches that can do a lot of things through magic in the occult.

And the number went from 1998,000 to 1.5 million.

It's in your neighborhood.

It's in Birmingham.

It's right under our noses, church.

And you know what?

The Gnostics there, Colossi, just said, we're just gonna open the crevice a little bit.

Last week in Boston, there was an event called Satan Con.

Satan con sold out.

The largest number of Satanists to ever gather together in one setting.

And you know what took place in their ceremonies?

They grabbed Bibles and they decimated them.

They had an unbaptism ceremony.

If you've ever been baptized, you can get unbaptized.

They took police flags and they burned them and tore them.

You know what they believe?

They believe in the divine human spark.

They believe in the worship, and they say it right on their site, in the worship of angels.

There's a ministry school in California.

Ministry.

And you know what their school headlines?

Having a supernatural school of ministry.

On their website, it says this.

I didn't have to look far.

Learn how to work in the divine.

Hear me.

How to work in the divine.

We are not divine.

And I'm telling you, they craft it, they persuade it, they they stick it in there in just such a certain way.

Well, that means you're gonna learn how to work in God.

Listen, they are trying to teach you that if you play things with music a certain way, you can entrance God to work.

Again, the name it claimants.

It's not us who's divine, it's Him.

And we beg Him to show up and we beg Him to bring worship, but it's not us.

They say we want to develop the world changer in you.

You and I are not the world changer.

They're somehow developing God then?

The world changer in me?

Are they gonna go?

Because if they can develop God, it's modern-day Gnosticism.

They've opened the crack, they've opened the doorway.

Let me tell you something, church.

Hear me.

Angels are not God.

Mother Mary is not God.

Preachers are not God.

The Pope is not God.

Billy Graham was not God.

CNN and Fox are not God.

Jesus is God.

Paul said it to the Colossians.

It's Jesus.

In John 1:1, he says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:1

Jesus is that Word.

He is God.

Then he says, And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Listen to this, and we beheld his glory.

Glory of one that was like the Father.

John 14, 6, he said, This, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man cometh to the Father except through me.

Everything else is a lie, and lies belong to the Father of lies.

No matter how pretty the bow, no matter how it gets repackaged, no matter how many people are clapping and amening, and how many people fill up the stadiums full of the lie.

If you swallow it, it will choke you.

So what do we do, Pastor?

I'm glad you asked.

Point number three.

Don't be deceived.

Point one, don't be deceived.

Point two.

Do be rooted.

Be rooted to the Prince of Peace.

Look back at verse 9 and 10.

Why is this so important?

This doctrine is so important for this early church that they get deep in because the faith that we have today was put on the back of these people back then.

And he says, verse 9 and 10 For in him, in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhood bodily.

We went over the tree.

The other week.

In Jesus is all of God, and you are complete.

You are mature in Him who is the head of all.

All these angels, all this darkness, all this principality says, and all this power.

He's the head of all of it.

He is the head.

And so we must be planted, letter A, in Him.

Planted in perfection.

John 15, probably my favorite scripture for this.

But how do we get planted in Him?

What does this mean to be rooted and planted in Him?

John 15, 1 through 5 says, I am the vine, the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that bears fruit, listen to this, he prunes.

We talked about that last week, the sacrificing, the suffering, he prunes that it may bear more fruit.

You are already clean because of the word which I've spoken to you.

And he says, Abide in me.

Stay with me, grounded, rooted, and I in you, as the branch cannot, us, the branch cannot bear fruit of ourself unless it abides in the vine.

Neither can you, unless you abide in me.

I am the vine.

You are the branches.

He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit.

And listen, this is scary.

For without me, you can do nothing.

We have to be planted in him.

And what that means is you can go through this life, all these other pursuits, and come to the end of your road, and it have been nothing.

All the pursuits.

You can be close to the truth and miss the truth.

I know people that's been in church their whole life and they miss the gospel plain truth.

You have to be planted in him.

So what are the three things about that plan?

Number one, the first thing he says is relationship.

Verse 1, 4, and 5, he says abide.

And that word abide is the Greek word meno, and that means to cling.

I am the true vine, my father the vine dresser.

I thought about that.

I'm a right.

My sons and my daughter are a right.

And they can't deny what's in their blood.

They are of me.

No matter they love it or don't love it, they're of me.

The other day I yelled, and my kids said, You sound like puppa.

Oh no.

You sound like my dad.

I can't even help it.

But when I yell, sometimes I hear it, I'm like, oh no.

I know that voice.

I remember it.

Get your shoes up, boy.

I can't do anything about it.

I'm of the right vine.

They can't deny it.

But that word abide within the vine means to remain continually.

And so that is a choice.

I think about that in terms of my marriage.

You've been around your spouse so much that you started thinking similar thoughts that kind of scare you.

I'll pick up the phone to call Heather and the phone's ringing.

I say, hello, I was just getting ready to call you.

We think about each other at the same exact time.

We'll go to hit a punchline on a joke and say the same thing at the same time, like, what is it?

We just spend so much time.

We've chosen to abide with one another.

So when you abide with God, maybe just maybe you'll start to think similarly to how God thinks.

He says, if you abide in me, that relationship.

Now listen to me, you can come here and if you don't have a relationship with Christ, you can hear all this and you can leave feeling sort of cheer-leaded up, a little bit celebrated.

But if that relationship is not real, there will be no fruit in your life.

For you, you'll feel emptiness.

And I want to tell you today in a few moments.

I'm going to give a gospel invitation.

If you're here and you don't know him, you need a relationship with him.

So he says, abide together.

No relationship with Christ means you have no root.

Verse 2, it talks about pruning.

And so to be planted, we have to understand that there's a process.

And every tree that bears fruit, it says he prunes.

So you might have come in today and said, Man, God has been kicking my butt.

And I'm a little tired of my circumstances.

And it's been rough.

And I want to tell you, I want to encourage you, refining is so that you will be made even more fruitful.

Pruning, the process of pruning, removes dead, damage, and dry materials from a tree.

Hebrews 12 says it this way: whom he loves, he chastens.

Chastening, the Greek word is padia, and it's subtle but different from chastise.

Chastise is to inflict pain.

Padia is to suffer for training, for instruction and betterment.

You'll be pruned in this life.

So that there will be the third thing, reproduction.

He says, if you abide in me, and listen, that is a big if.

If daily, if you abide in me, if you abide in me in your prayer, if you abide in me in your decision, if you abide in me in your marriage.

Big if.

If we abide in him, and he in us, it says, No doubt that we will produce fruit of the vine.

Wyatt went with me this morning to get me a great big fat apple.

And I thought about this apple.

How does it get to this point?

How did it get to the point of growth to where it looks bright, shiny, red in an apple?

Here's how it got there.

You have to dig deep.

You have to get rooted to something.

The roots of a tree grow into their source of life, into the soil, and then water comes into that soil and minerals, sending them all the way up the tree, up to the stem, up to the leaves, and then you get a product.

But let me tell you, if it does not start there with the rooting, if it doesn't start there with getting deep, Christian, if we will not get deep, if we will not get beneath the surface, if we will not water this, then there's not going to be fruit.

God wanted you to know about fruit.

If the tree is not rooted, there's no fruit.

The source is always giving.

Jesus is always giving.

But the rooting has to be at work.

So what are you rooted to?

This is what Paul said.

He said, Colossians, you must be rooted to Jesus Christ as God Supreme.

So my question, Church, is Jesus God for you?

Is there room in your life for little G gods?

Let me tell you how to find out.

Here's the practical way to find out.

Check your schedule.

Check your bank account.

Check your Google history.

When you're planted in perfection, God gives you this last thing.

Letter B power over imperfection.

I want you to see verses 13 through 15.

So that warfare is going on, and there's deceitful men trying to draw you into it.

And what he says, if you're rooted in me, this is what happens.

Verse 13, he has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have.

I'm reading the wrong chapter.

It was good too, but it was wrong.

I'm like, this is right, but it ain't right.

We try again.

And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements, the philosophies, the traditions that were against us, which was contrary to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Listen to this, verse 15.

It wasn't that far off from what we just read.

Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Last quickly, three things.

Verse 13, he says, You've been forgiven.

You've been forgiven.

Jesus canceled the Old Testament law and all your present trespasses.

You don't have to attain.

You don't have to be superhuman.

You don't have to have a divine work.

If you were God, then it'd be about you and what you do.

But you can't heap up enough good.

And don't need to because you're imperfect.

But when you abide in perfection, it's covered.

He says you're forgiven.

All of it.

Hear me, some people need to know that.

Your past, present, and future state of sinfulness has been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.

When you walk in relationship with you.

So when Satan tries to get in your ear about you're not good enough, about look at what you've done, you say, I'm covered.

We're going to come back to 14, but verse 15, he said, He spoiled, I love this, he spoiled the enemy's plots.

He spoiled the phonies, the philosophical traditions.

He spoiled Satan's idea and these angels who wanted to be worshipped.

It says he disarmed them and he put them on public display.

What's that mean?

God always gets the final word.

And the picture here is of the picture of the Roman army who would take people into captivity when they conquered an army.

They would capture a foe and they would take them and they would strip them and they would put them on public parade.

And so the enemy seeks after us.

And what he says, God got the final word.

When Jesus died on the cross, he stripped them of all that and put them on public display.

Well, lastly, verse 14.

You see, for the Israelite that would hear these things, the written code stood as a constant reminder that there was always a debt.

There was always more ordinances to be made.

And it says he blotted and nailed out not only circumcision, but all of the ordinance, all of the offerings, all of the sacrifices, the never-ending trial it was to be human and keep up with our sin.

Jesus canceled.

It says he blotted out.

He did what no human sportism could have done, and he did what no denial and asceticism could have done, and what no angel in heaven or hell could have done.

And he died taking our debt.

And in so doing, church, you don't have to be good enough.

You don't have to 50% of the scale, 51% today, be better than you're good.

You don't have to listen to the heresy because you don't need to be superhuman.

God made you human and he already has perfection.

You just have to believe fully and get rooted in that fully.

Hear me, don't close me off on this thought.

Mark 16, 15 says, What does it profit a man if he can gain the whole world but lose his soul?

The reality, church, is there's people in these chairs right now that have tried to be superhuman, to gain the next thing or the next experience, the next wrong on the ladder, and it's a distraction.

Hear me, many distractions are moral, they're noble, they feel good, but they're not eternal things.

So the verdict today is this Are you surrendered to God?

Big G.

Is there any space in your life for little G gods?

With heads bowed and eyes closed, I'm gonna pray, and in a moment we're gonna open this altar for an invitation.

And I want to ask you, just be real.

Are you surrendered?

That's the question.

Are you surrendered?

Is he fully God?

There's not space for some other, listen to me, he'll creep in, something will creep in, and the best thing you can do is be honest before him and say, God, I'm laying that thing down today.

You are God.

I am in complete surrender.

And it's okay to surrender again and afresh it anew.

Satan would have you think about a million things right now to distract you from what God wants to get done.

I'm gonna ask you to stand to your feet and I'm gonna pray.

When I'm finished, this altar is open.

Father, we love you.

We thank you for the word of God and its truth.

God, I pray that your Holy Spirit right now would speak to hearts.

God, that um you would help us to be a church surrendered.

Lord, fully and totally all in for you.

And God, if that hadn't been the case for some reason or the other, God, we're not in judgment.

Lord, let us today offer that sacrifice back to you.

Lord, you don't ask us.

You don't want us to be superhuman, you don't want us to be perfect.

Lord, you just want surrender.

And so, God, today I pray that you would take our hearts so that we can get rooted deeper and deeper.

Use this time of invitation in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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