Colossians - Grow: Abide - May 4, 2025 (Myles Holmes)

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

So good to be together this morning.

If you have a copy of God's word, and I hope that you do, you can open it up to Colossians chapter 2.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

We're gonna be in verses 6 and 7 this morning.

And if you don't have a copy of God's word, our ushers are making their way down the aisle, you can just flag one of them down.

They'd love to give you a copy, which is yours to keep.

This is our gift to you.

We love God's word here.

In the early 1900s, engineers faced an enormous challenge.

I don't know if you could imagine engineering in this day, but the challenge before them was to build the Brooklyn Bridge.

We're gonna have a picture of it.

Come up here.

Maybe you guys have seen this before or been there.

They had to build the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River.

And as pressive as what you see there is, the challenge they faced was that if this structure was gonna be strong enough to bridge the gap over the river, then it needed to be deep.

And so they sank these massive watertight chambers down into the East River, digging until they could root their structure on something that was unshakable.

They knew that the bridge's strength depended on the depth that they could reach with these giant concrete pillars, and that the bridge would not stand the test of time if it wasn't sunk into something that was deep and unshakable.

And so one engineer put it this way: saying the true depth of the river wasn't measured at the surface, but where we found what was unshakable below.

Now, I'm not an engineer.

Some might call me an engineer of the soul as a pastor, maybe.

I don't know, that's probably a stretch.

I don't know much about engineering.

My experience, popsicle sticks, elementary school, that's about it.

Building bridges, that's all I have.

But I think that sounds to me like good engineering.

We get the concept that if we want something to stand the test of time, we need a foundation that is unshakable.

We need to drive deep so that the base of the thing that we are building abides on solid ground.

And loved ones, what I want to suggest, I'm sure that you are not surprised by this illustration that I will make, is that this illustrates for us what the Christian life is.

That true Christian maturity comes from drilling so deep into the strength that is Christ that you find what is unshakable below.

In other words, mature Christianity in the Christian life does not come from what you see on the surface.

You can be as beautiful as the Brooklyn Bridge, but if on the inside you don't have a deep foundation that has rooted itself, a heart that has rooted itself on the gospel of Jesus Christ, you really have nothing.

That's why, as we think about maturity over these next coming weeks and the marks of a maturing disciple and what it takes to grow, we begin with the first mark, and that is this that a maturing disciple must be abiding in Christ.

By abiding, I mean this, driving your life deeper and deeper into Jesus Christ.

This is where spiritual strength comes from.

When Jesus told us in Matthew 28 to make disciples, the very thing that our church is obsessed about, this is the kind of disciple he had in mind.

Disciples whose lives drilled deep into the gospel hope of Jesus Christ so that what was on the surface was unshakable to all of eternity.

You'll remember in Jesus' ministry that he was incredibly passionate with the people, compassionate with the people who on the surface were broken, who were sick, who were helpless.

But when it came to the Pharisees who presented this beautiful Brooklyn bridge-like life on the outside, but had no internal depth, he was angry.

He called them exactly what they deserved to be called: whitewashed tombs, beautiful structures on the in outside, but on the inside, spiritual emptiness.

They were not abiding, they had no depth.

They were performing.

And listen, the danger for you and I, loved one, as we begin a series like this, you know what the danger for you and I is?

Is we can very easily have this sort of surface-level maturity.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm abiding.

Listen, I'm abiding.

I read the Bible every day this week.

Oh, I'm connecting, I'm here, I'm serving, I'm in a small group, oh, I'm reaching, you know, I'm doing all these things.

But we begin here at abiding in Christ because I want you to understand that the scriptures say that if all you have is sort of this surface level outside maturity, you really have nothing.

What is so important is that you have a heart that is rooted deeply into the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus doesn't want your performance.

He wants your heart.

And so we come to understand this that true maturity is not about what your life looks like so much as it is what your life rests on, and that it rests and abides deeply on the only foundation that will truly hold.

There is one way to grow.

You must abide.

Well, here's what it means to abide, then.

This is what I want you to take away that abiding in Christ means driving deeper every day, driving deeper into what you have already received in Him.

If your faith is in Jesus Christ, you have only begun to scratch the surface of all that Jesus has accomplished for you.

And true maturity then drills deep into found into the foundation that is Jesus Christ.

Now, I love that I get to preach this message with the foundation that Mark set for us last week in 2 Peter.

In 2 Peter, you'll remember this paradox that Peter sets up for us.

You have been given everything that pertains to life and godliness.

2 Peter chapter 1, verse 3.

2 Peter 1:3

Everything.

So then we get to verse 5, and what does Peter say?

Make every effort.

Make every effort.

You have been given everything, so make every effort.

And that's it.

Like right now, your heart should be excited.

Like, really?

I've been like, could you imagine being given millions?

Maybe not millions is enough.

Billions of dollars to invest.

Go invest.

That is what Jesus has told you spiritually.

You've been given everything, so make every effort.

That that, I don't know about you, but my heart is like revved up.

If we have everything, why don't we make every effort to grow into what Christ has accomplished for us on the cross?

Make every effort, Peter says.

This is such a paradox, isn't it?

And yet, and yet we understand, don't the scripture say the bird that God feeds the birds of the field?

And yet you know this, that the bird has to come out of the nest, doesn't he?

The bird has to go and gather what God has given, and so it is with you, loved one.

In Christ, you have been given everything.

You believe that?

You know, the storehouses of riches that Christ redeemed you into, loved one.

How full is that storehouse?

You know, Jesus saves you, he brings you into the vault of riches that he has given to you.

What do you imagine is there?

I mean, listen, you you know the Sunday school answer, right?

You know that ever it's everything.

You know that the vault, the storehouse that Christ has brought you into is filled with all of the spiritual riches you could ever ask for.

The highest currency of heaven has been given to you.

Amen, church.

We believe that.

If so, then you and I must make every effort to grow.

And can I be honest with you?

As I look at the landscape of Christianity, as I look even at my own life, I cannot help but think that we are squandering what the Lord has given us.

That some of us are just being foolish with this inheritance that having been given every spiritual blessing in Jesus Christ.

We are squandering it in a life that is not pursuing growth and deep abiding in Jesus Christ.

Maybe some of us just don't know.

Maybe it's not rebellious, maybe it's not foolishness, we're just unsure.

We've heard about this riches, but but but it seems just mystical to us.

Well, well, that is what Paul is getting after this morning.

He wants to bring this abide in Christ language into as practical an illustration as possible so that we come to understand we must drive our the roots of our life deep into Jesus Christ.

And so Paul in Colossians 2 is gonna tell us exactly what that looks like.

As we read it together, would you stand with me and honor God's word?

This is the word of God that is a double-edged sword, and as we submit ourselves to it, he changes our life by it.

And so we read.

Colossians 2, verse 6.

Colossians 2:6

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can grab your seat.

Now, this morning I want to be immensely practical.

I I this is a theological concept, but it is so much more than that.

What Paul has given us in these two verses is a way of living.

And what I want to accomplish this morning is sort of like lifting the engine of your spiritual growth, of your heart, and helping you understand exactly how growth works.

How does growth happen in the Christian life?

In these two verses, Paul gives us a powerful picture of what abiding looks like.

And in fact, he he loads in two short verses really three illustrations that growth in Christ looks like walking, that it is being rooted in, you know, gardeners, springtime love this illustration, and it is being founded upon.

It is a walk, it is the strong roots of a plant, it is a foundation.

These images, they are different illustrations, but they really illustrate the same point, don't they?

That real strength in the Christian life comes from what's beneath the surface.

And so you you know this about a tree.

You see the tree, but you know that beneath the ground there are strong roots that spread deep and wide.

You know this about buildings, that you see the building, but beneath the ground, hidden by the ground, is a strong foundation upon which everything in that building rests.

And what Paul really does here is helps helps give us a visualization of what maturity in the Christian life looks like.

And so we're gonna walk through this simple visual as we walk through this message.

It's gonna come up on the screen.

I hope this is incredibly helpful.

We're lifting the hood of the Christian life so that you know that abiding in Christ is not mystical, it is very practical.

And we know that because Paul here is teaching us how to walk.

Listen, when's the last time you had a lesson on how to walk?

Did anyone need to tell you how to walk?

It's it's in some ways, it's so simple.

You just put the foot, one foot in front of the other, right?

And then you take the other foot and you put it in front of the other.

And then you take the other foot and you put it in the uh in front of the other.

And I don't have a lot of content for my sermon, so this is the rest of the sermon, is me just telling you right now.

And yet, in so many ways, that's what Paul is after.

He wants you to understand listen, it's not complicated, it is simple in so many ways.

It is like walking, but you must walk.

Now, here are the steps, then.

Four putting one step foot in front of the other, four things we do.

Paul says this that you must first receive Christ, and then you root yourself in Christ, and then you renew your mind with gospel truth, and the fruit is then that you rejoice in all that God does through your life.

That is the path of abiding.

And if you want me to, if you want to ask me what the fifth step is, it's you go back to step one.

Okay, we are applying shampoo instructions to the gospel.

Rinse, lather, repeat, right?

This is what the gospel is all about.

And what Paul says here is so helpful.

Just as you received Christ, so walk in him.

Your growth is not really that different than the first step you took in faith.

And so we then begin at the beginning.

Step one, we must receive Jesus daily.

This is the first point I want you to see.

Notice how Paul starts here.

Put your eyes on the text with me, Colossians chapter 2, verse 6.

Colossians 2:6

Just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Paul here is talking about the soil that your life is planted in.

I don't garden much, so I don't think about soil.

But I have been sent to Bradford Greenhouse enough times to know that you do need to think about soil.

I've bought enough fertilizer, I've come home with the wrong kind of soil, and so I know this that plants need the right soil to grow in.

And here is the truth that Paul is illustrating for us that a life that grows into eternal life must begin in eternal soil that only the spirit can produce.

And so let me draw this out.

Let me draw what Paul is saying in theological terms for you, okay?

He's saying it a little simply, so let's complicate it a bit, okay?

That's I mean, my past my my uh homiletics, you know, preaching teacher would not like what I'm doing here, but let's make this a bit more complicated by putting it in theological terms.

What Paul here is saying is just as you were justified, just as you were given right standing with God, so then be sanctified.

In other words, your spiritual growth has to be rooted in what God has already done in your life, not in what you need to try to do.

Now, this is so important for us because legalism reverses the order, doesn't it?

Legalism says that your justification is based on your sanctification.

Legalism says that if you want to be right with God, you better prove it by gaining new territory.

You better become a wider, better Christian.

And Paul here says that there is no territory, new territory to gain.

You have been given everything.

By faith in Jesus Christ, you have received everything.

And so you must drive deeper into what you have already received.

You can't grow for God unless you have already been made right with God.

Discipleship, maturing discipleship is impossible apart from deliverance.

And loved one, you need to understand, it has always been this way.

Before God expects that his people would live for him, he always delivers them.

So that in the epicenter really of morality in the Old Testament, Exodus 20, when Israel received the Ten Commandments, before God ever says, you shall not, he says this in Exodus 20.

He says, I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

See, before you start living out the Ten Commandments, you must understand that the reason you can do that is because of your deliverance.

We saw this as a church, didn't we?

As we went through Ezra and Nehemiah, what needed to happen before the people could live in the land that God had won for them in Jerusalem?

They needed to be delivered from captivity in Babylon over to Jerusalem.

This is all throughout the scriptures.

I'm reading Leviticus right now, and it's in Leviticus.

Before the Levitical priests can serve in the temple of God, what do they need?

The cleansing of the blood of the Lamb.

Grace.

Grace is always before growth.

Salvation always precedes obedience.

So when Paul here in Colossians 2, 6 tells us, just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, the question then must become, first and foremost, before we go anywhere else, is how do we receive the Lord?

And more importantly, have you received the Lord?

Paul's already told us as we get to this point exactly how we received the Lord.

Back in chapter 1, verse 7, you can look there with me, he reminds the Colossians how it all began for them.

He says, You heard the word of truth from Epaphras.

That's where it all started.

With the preaching of the gospel.

And Paul says elsewhere that you cannot believe unless someone preaches.

And so the Colossians had heard Christ proclaimed, but I want you to understand that it wasn't just a hearing with the ears, it was a hearing with the heart, because what we find in Colossians 1, verse 4 is Paul saying, We heard of your faith in Jesus Christ.

Colossians 1:4

And here we get to chapter 2, verse 6, and we get the full picture that not only did they hear, not only did they trust in Jesus as the Savior of their sins, they received him, Christ Jesus the Lord.

They heard the gospel, they believed the gospel, and they submitted themselves to the reign and rule of Jesus Christ.

And loved one, this morning, the most important question for you is this have you received Jesus like that?

For all of history, there is only one way into the eternal life that Jesus offers.

It is through faith and submission to Jesus as the Savior and the Lord of your life.

Have you received Him like that?

Have you bowed the knee?

Declaring that Jesus is Lord because there's simply no other way.

I need you to understand this is where abiding begins.

That you cannot grow in any eternally significant way apart from here, beginning with receiving Christ as your Savior and as your Lord.

But I want you to see the beauty of this verse.

It's this, that the need to receive Christ does not end when you first come to accept him, while your legal standing with God is of perfect righteousness, and we praise God for that.

The reality, right, is that our life is far from perfect.

We live in this tension between our justification with God being that of perfect standing before him.

But our sanctification is far from it, isn't it?

I mean, is anybody here perfect?

If so, I would love for you to stand up right now and just come up and preach this sermon.

Because what you're hearing from is from an incredibly flawed person.

None of us have arrived.

And what Paul is telling us here is that Jesus is not this one-time disposable savior that you come to and it's like, okay, now I'm good for eternity.

No, you wake up daily with this fresh need for mercy.

And if if the Lord were to, for one second, stop pouring out his infinite mercy on you, you would be destroyed for eternity.

We need the mercy of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

We need the reign and rule of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And the beauty of pursuing growth is that, loved one, if your faith is in Jesus Christ, do you understand this?

That you grow under the protection of the reality that God views you already complete.

This is the opposite way.

This is like, you know, if you started a fitness journey, this would be like starting with the after picture.

How awesome would that be?

You know, we all have the before picture, not so awesome.

But we got the after picture, right?

Like, could you imagine if we had the after picture first?

And this is what the gospel is.

You have perfect standing in Jesus Christ.

Let me illustrate it another way.

Put a picture up on the screen here.

Maybe you guys can tell me what this is.

It's gonna come up right now.

Yeah, here we go.

Nice.

Yeah.

Um I mean, I don't know if there's any like tree experts, so maybe I'll just tell you so I don't save the embarrassment.

But this is a oak tree.

And this is about, you know, I went on Google Images here.

I'm not maybe I cut corners in the sermon.

I didn't take the picture myself, okay?

It's just confession time.

This is a fully grown oak tree.

It's gigantic, it's huge.

It's an oak tree.

And and what the scriptures say about your justification is that when God looks at you, he sees you as his own son.

And the theological question for you is this: how much more maturing did Jesus have to do?

I mean, again, Sunday school, right?

Like, none.

He was perfect.

Jesus was perfect, and so God looks at you, and you know what he sees?

The perfect righteousness of his own son.

In terms of your justification, there's no need for any more growth.

This is the gospel promise.

Christ, the Master Gardener, has knit himself to you, and he has begun a work in you.

And while he does that work, he gives you his righteousness so that God sees the final product.

Now, let me show you something else.

Look at this next picture.

Does anyone know what this is?

This is an oak tree.

Now it's fascinating, isn't it?

Because when you think about the quality of both these things, they are radically different.

Can you see it?

I mean, this thing is held up by a stake in the ground.

And yet, as we look at this, what do we say?

Well, it's an oak tree.

Well, it certainly doesn't seem like it, does it?

Certainly seems a lot weaker than that last oak tree we looked at.

It certainly seems like it's much more of a baby than that last oak tree we looked at, and yet it is an oak tree.

And we know that if this has the right gardener's touch, it will develop into that fully grown oak tree.

And so it is with you, loved one.

When God sees you, he sees your weakness.

You never confess something to God and He's been like, oh crap, who did I choose again?

You've never come to God in weakness and he's like, okay, I mean, give me a few days here.

I'm gonna have to go to the drawing board with the Holy Spirit on this one, okay, because I don't know what we're gonna do with what you've just brought to me.

Jesus knows who you are, and he is the master gardener.

And what he wants from you, listen, loved one, is this for you to abide in him so that you can grow in him and be rooted in him.

And for all of eternity, you will be this oak tree that when you look at your growth, you will say, There has been no other reason but Jesus Christ chose me and cultivated me to be like this.

You see why Jesus hates legalism?

Because who are you to say, Oh, look, listen, look, I'll grow myself, okay, Jesus?

I don't need you.

Jesus wants glory from your life.

And here you are trying to do it yourself.

You may feel small.

You may be incomplete.

You may not bear the fruit that you see in other people.

But if you've received Christ, you are his.

And you are being brought to maturity.

And I need you to know that truth brings me such hope.

Because there are sins in my life where I just sometimes, you ever feel like this?

Sometimes I just feel like I may never get rid of this sin.

Like, guys, I sometimes feel like, man, I might deal with this forever.

And yet I want you to know that your and my weak faith is nothing like Jesus' faith in his own power.

And Jesus can plot a line from where you are right now to who you are becoming in him.

And so our question this morning is this how do we become increasingly like that mature oak tree?

And what I want you to see secondly is this that we must root ourselves in Jesus.

Notice what Paul says.

He says, just as you receive Christ Jesus, so walk, but there are there are incredibly important words here, and he says it twice so that we might not miss it.

So walk in him, rooted and built up in him.

These things must be, must happen in him.

Now, Paul here is opening the hood on spiritual maturity and asking, how does it work?

How do you grow?

And here's the answer: spiritual growth is the work of closing the gap between who you are in Christ and who you currently are in your flesh.

That's the work of spiritual maturity.

If we were to put a definition to what we are after in this series and what we are really after as a church, as our mission is to see lost people saved and saved people matured and mature people multiplied, the answer is this: that we close the gap between who we are today and who we are becoming theologically in Christ.

This is why growth must begin with abiding.

That's why Paul uses three quick illustrations, all to show us the same truth.

We walk in him, we are rooted in him, we are built up in him.

Paul says spiritual growth is like walking with Jesus, so that your pace comes to match his pace, so that your cadence matches his cadence.

He says spiritual growth is like rooting into Jesus, so that he becomes the daily source of life.

Like the roots of a plant.

What do they do?

They pull life from the soil, and that life feeds the whole tree.

Paul says spiritual growth is like building on a foundation where every part of your life is structured on Jesus Christ.

And so you get the image.

Walking in step with him, roots deep into him, a foundation built upon him.

What Paul is getting at here is the hidden strength that comes from a life that is in Christ.

Now, what does that actually mean?

I want to get as far away from just like sort of mystical, like, oh yeah, you gotta just abide in Christ, man.

You ever had that sort of help with your problems?

You come with like a sin problem?

Like, listen, man, just abide.

It sounds kind of like surfer talk, doesn't it?

Like there's no real meat to it.

And I want to get to the practical meat here because Paul is telling us something immensely practical.

When Paul says that your life needs to be rooted in him and built up in him, he's saying this: that you need to take care of what is underground.

The thing that you need to target if you want to grow is what is hidden, the parts of your life where no one that no one else seen, sees, the roots of your life, the foundation of your life.

This is your heart.

It's heart level work.

Real growth does not start at the behavior level like we often treat it, don't we?

I mean, we see our problems.

You know, we we understand, man, I just can't read the word.

So I'm just gonna start reading the word.

You understand the problem is that we've skipped the heart and tried to get right to behavior.

Paul tells us here to aim at what is hidden.

We must aim at the heart level, the desire level, the fear level, the identity level.

At the heart level, every one of us is driven by something, by some sort of desire.

In fact, I trust this will be helpful.

I I think you can really boil down the desires of our heart into four different categories.

The first is I actually don't know what the first that's gonna come up is.

Can you tell me what the first is?

Here, it's gonna come.

Power and approval.

It's a two-for-one this morning.

The first is power.

This may be the desire of your heart.

When this is the desire of your heart, your heart screams at every minute of the day, I want influence.

I want success.

I want control.

And the fear of your heart, when the desire is power, is humiliation.

If your heart desire is power, life only has meaning when you get results.

So that the fruit is when there aren't results, often you're angry, you're frustrated.

A second heart desire is approval.

Approval is when your heart screams, I want to be liked.

I want to be accepted, I want to be affirmed.

And the thing that your heart most fears is rejection.

So that life only really has meaning if you are loved.

And the fruit of seeking that outside of Christ is this constant anxiety that maybe you won't be enough.

This people pleasing.

A third heart desire that might be yours is comfort.

Comfort comes from a heart that screams, I want ease, I want pleasure, I want security, and I and I fear the things that are stressful.

I fear hardship.

Comfort says that life only has meaning if I can relax.

And so when things get hard, I trust in the savior of escapism.

I pursue the idol of laziness.

I fear boredom.

Fourth heart-level desire is control.

Control says I want certainty, I want predictability, I want order.

I fear chaos.

So that life only has meaning if I am in charge.

And the fruit of that then is that if we're not in Christ, we're constantly worried that things aren't going our way.

And we're constantly uh running the race of micromanaging the people around us.

Frustrated that we can't have ultimate control.

Now, listen, as I look at this list, I don't just find one.

I don't know about you, I just I find four.

I find that these desires are just alive, like each one of them is alive in different ways, and my heart is like this tangled mess of all these desires.

But you begin to understand that whatever you are rooted in, that will shape your behavior.

There's no other way around it.

The desire of your heart will always produce fruit, whether to the glory of God or to your shame at a behavior level.

Let me illustrate what I mean for a moment.

In every marriage struggle I've seen, the and any really any any relationship struggle, the problem has never boiled down to a personality difference.

I mean, I don't know about you, but most marriages show that personality is not the problem because so often, I don't know if it's like God's God just loves humor, so he loves to look down and laugh at our house, but so often the person you marry is the complete opposite person of you, right?

I see some spouses looking at their, you know, spouse, yeah, yeah, that's you.

You are totally the difference.

It's not a personality thing, it's a heart thing.

Take this for example.

Suppose that one spouse is driven by approval and the other is driven by control.

Well, the approval-seeking spouse will do anything to be liked.

Well, the control-seeking spouse will learn that if they give approval at the right time, they can get control.

Now, what happens when you have two people in a house who learned that?

Chaos.

Constant disappointment, resentment.

And what happens when those two people with those heart idols start multiplying little idol, you know, ankle biting idol idol factories?

Chaos.

Can I get an amen from the parents in the young room, right?

Chaos.

It's not a communication problem.

It is not a personality problem, it is a root problem.

It is a sin problem.

And so, what is then the solution to our heart-level desires?

Well, well, let me start with what it's not.

Okay, the the solution here is to not just not don't desire those things.

Listen, there are a lot of worldviews that say the problem with humanity is desire.

I mean, that's really the bedrock of Eastern philosophy.

Desire is the root of all evil.

The problem is that you desire.

And listen, the problem, let me tell you this biblically, is not that you desire.

The problem is that you desire these things that God made you to desire, that were made for you to seek Him, but instead of rooting yourself deeply in the foundation that is Jesus Christ, you search for it in the world.

And so the application here is this: we don't need to erase our longings, we need to re-root them.

We need to worship God, that He has made us a people who feel and feel strongly, a people who long for things and long for them with great intensity.

Because it is those longings, when we rightly understand the gospel, that will drive us to the only place that we can find hope.

This is why Jesus has said time and time again in the Gospel of John come to me, who all who are thirsty.

Loved ones, that thirst is a good thing.

If you are here and you feel empty, you feel like you're squeezing life out like a sponge and it's just not giving you what you want.

I want you to know that that is because God loves you.

And if you didn't feel that, maybe you wouldn't search for a place that you can actually find joy.

We need to root ourselves deeply in the one source that can satisfy Jesus.

Now, listen, this is the tragedy.

And I don't even know if tragedy is the right thing to call this.

I think this it is the most absurd thing in the whole entire world.

Listen, that is a powerful claim, maybe hyperbolic, you know, the favorite tool of a preacher, but it is the most absurd thing in a world when a Christian who has been brought into the vault that is Jesus Christ and every spiritual blessing in him.

It is the most absurd thing when a Christian longing for comfort leaves Jesus Christ and goes to try to find it in the world.

Is anything else more absurd than that?

Can we be honest?

You know, we look at the world and we shake our head at everything that's going on.

And yet, is anything more absurd than to be theologically in the place where there is every spiritual blessing and to leave it?

Because isn't that what's in Christ's vault?

Like theologically, what is in there?

Look what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 21 to 23.

1 Corinthians 3:21–23

He says, All things are yours.

All things are yours, whether the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours, and you are Christ, and Christ is God.

And in Ephesians, Paul says that in him we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Boots on the ground.

This is exactly what Paul is saying.

Everything that your heart desires, you find in him.

Listen, at a behavior level, you are not gonna find in Christ often what you're looking for at a behavior level.

You know, this is what the prosperity gospel has gotten wrong.

They look at a behavior longing, right?

Well, people want to have riches and they want to have nice cars and they want to have money.

The prosperity gospel says, well, if you just come to God, he will give you that.

And God isn't interested in giving you things that will ruin you for eternity.

In fact, he's very interested often to withhold those things in his love so that you might search for him.

But what God does do is he gives you the desire of your heart.

So, so listen, you might be uh pursuing materialism and buying the things of the earth, amassing as much money as you want, because what you really want is approval.

You want other people to look at you and say, oh, they must do well in their job.

And it's absurd because what you have is the approval of God in Jesus Christ.

You want control, but you belong to the one whose word holds the universe together.

You want comfort, but you rest in the arms of the good shepherd who says, Come to me, all who are weary.

You want approval, but you are clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ.

You want power, but you're united to the one before whom every knee will bow.

This is the absurdity that we leave that for something less.

Instead of drawing from Christ's endless supply, we wander off into the world hoping someone will throw us a crumb.

And they do, don't they?

The things of this world, they certainly please, but the scriptures say they are a fleeting pleasure.

And I know I don't need to, you know, exposit what that means because you've tasted the world and you have seen that it just does not lastingly satisfy.

And so here's the application we don't deny heart desires, we redirect them, we acknowledge our longing for approval, for comfort, for control, for power, and we plant those longings deep in Christ.

This is what it means to abide.

But how?

How do we do that?

Well, this leads to our next point that we must renew our mind.

You will notice that in this picture, you cannot reach the roots.

If you need to re make the roots healthy, you cannot reach them.

You could get a shovel and start digging it up, but it just, you will, like you will ruin the roots in that.

Something must happen.

And once we get above ground, what we find is this that we must renew our mind according to the gospel.

Look at what Paul says.

He says that we are to be established in the faith, just as you were taught.

And so we're getting very practical here.

To walk in Christ, to be rooted up in him, is to be established.

It is to be strengthened, it is to be stabilized, made firm.

And here's what's important for you to understand that in this verse, the established, that verb is passive.

It means that you aren't the one who establishes yourself.

You don't make yourself strong.

You're made strong by something else.

What is it?

You see it here in the text, look down at the text with me.

He says, established in the faith.

God makes you strong by something outside of yourself.

Church, that's a great thing.

Amen.

Amen.

Because spiritually, aren't we kind of weak people most of the time?

Don't you kind of feel like spiritually, you're like, it's like every day is like your first time in the gym.

And you know, you're picking up the spiritual weights, and you look over, and there's, you know, a juice head over there, and he's bicep curling, the thing that you're just like squatting with, and you're like, well, what am I even starting?

That's how I feel spiritually.

I think I lost some of you guys in the illustration there, but here we are.

I feel weak.

And God here is saying, strength doesn't come from you, it comes from something outside of you.

The faith.

Now listen, the faith here isn't a personal belief, it means the content of the gospel, it is the truth about Jesus Christ.

Jude talks about this.

He says the faith once deliver once for all delivered to saints.

And Paul makes it even clearer here when he says the faith is something you were taught.

In other words, this isn't new information.

What you need in the Christian walk for maturity is not new, hidden, secret, advanced theology.

It's what they heard, the Colossian church heard from Epaphras on day one.

And so here is the point maturity does not come from something new.

It comes from going deeper into something you've already received.

And what's happening in your heart is a result of how you are renewing your mind.

Paul says that the spirit and the flesh are at war in the book of Romans.

And you must understand that daily you are in a battle.

It is not a physical battle, it is a battle for truth.

And the outcome of that battle, win or lose, affects the desires of your heart.

And the problem is that when you and I see immaturity in our life or inconsistency in our life, often what we do is our instinct is just to try harder.

We white knuckle it, we push harder, we serve more, we just kind of muscle through it.

And God is teaching us something important here: that effort without direction is dangerous.

That if you bring the wrong weapons to war, it doesn't matter how hard you try, nothing will change.

Let me give you a picture of that.

In 1854, during the Crimean War, a group of the British cavalry called the Light Brigade.

They received instruction from their commander, but it was poorly communicated.

And what they were told then was to charge the enemy artillery.

It was vague, but they took up the command.

The problem is they misunderstood what direction to charge, and so hundreds of soldiers in the light brigade on horseback charged straight into a valley that was lined with Russian cannons.

It was heroic.

It was filled with passion.

It was filled with energy.

It was filled even with love.

And yet it was misguided.

Tragically.

Later, the poet Tennyson would write, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.

And that is exactly what happened.

They charged in with all the energy they could muster, but they had no clarity, and the result was a massacre.

And I want you to understand that this is what happens in the crack the Christian life when we just try harder, but we don't root ourselves in gospel truth.

We charge into parenting, marriage, ministry, temptation, but we have no direction.

We have no weapon.

We're full of effort, empty of truth, and it will never lead to victory, loved one.

Only to spiritual slaughter.

Now listen, don't get me wrong.

We cannot pendulum swing here and assume that effort is the problem.

Effort is not the problem.

You remember what Peter said.

Make every effort.

But effort without the right weapon is suicide.

And so Paul says this in 2 Corinthians the weapons of our warfare are not the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

In other words, loved one, you can't out hustle the flesh.

You cannot outrun temptation.

You need weapons.

You need spiritual weapons.

Here's the principle, and I think this will be immensely helpful for you.

The degree to which you mature as a Christian is the degree to which you win arguments with yourself.

Let me say that again.

This is so important.

The degree to which you mature as a Christian is the degree to which you win arguments with yourself.

Mature Christians still feel the pull towards approval and comfort and power and control.

But the difference is that they combat those lies with truth.

Battle's constant.

It's a daily battle.

In fact, even as I prepared this message this week, was given a real example of this.

I was meeting with a group of senior pastors from our fellowship of churches from the GCC, and these are men.

I don't know if you could gather, you know, in a room men who I've watched more closely for the last 10 years.

Just so I so respect these men and have benefited from their ministry for over a decade now.

And for whatever reason, I think just in the sovereignty of God and you know bringing temptation and challenge into my life, over the span of the week, a few comments were made about my fitness.

Now I've you know just flopped a fitness illustration there, so I don't know what's important anymore, but here we are.

And I I can be honest with you, I'm not exactly a Greek statue, but if you catch the right lighting and you, you know, you wear a tight enough shirt, you can deceive anybody.

If you take anything away from this message, maybe that's it.

I don't know.

And I know that, by the way, all of these comments were really just smoke and mirrors because one of them was made, I was eating literally the biggest donut I have ever seen.

And this person's like, How do you do it?

And I'm like wiping powder off my face, like, man, you know, it's all about a caloric deficit.

That's what you got, you know.

I'd also just eaten five guys.

Anyways, this isn't confession time, so I'm gonna just carry on here.

In the moment, you know, I laughed, it's just a comment.

But later, I found myself thinking about those comments.

I found myself even the next morning, as I opened up the word and was supposed to be worshiping the Lord, I found myself doing something deeper, really cherishing those words and replaying them in my head.

And what I was doing was I was letting them settle on my heart, not just as like a throwaway encouragement or something that's said, you know, in conversation as filler, but I was letting it settle on my heart as validation.

That revealed something.

That I needed to go to step one.

I had to receive Jesus again.

Not salvation again, but a fresh reminder that I am already received in Christ.

I was craving approval, not from God, but from a man I was sharing a jelly-filled donut with.

And you see the absurdity of that.

Like when we crave approval of men, what are we doing trading the approval that we have in Christ from God for the approval of man?

So I had to stop and I had to ask myself, what have I already received?

And the answer was the full, the perfect, the eternal approval of God through Jesus Christ.

That was my starting point.

But I needed to go then to step two to root myself in the truth.

This wasn't about a behavior, it was about my heart.

I had to ask myself, what am I really seeking here?

What do I really want?

Why did that comment land so deeply?

And what I wanted was really to be seen.

I wanted to be admired.

I was trying to draw life from the approval of man, believing that that would quench the thirst of my heart for approval.

So I had to say, Jesus, I want you to be the source of my identity again.

I want to sink my roots back into your life.

I don't want approval from men, I want approval from you.

And to do that, I had to renew my mind.

This is where the battle kicks in.

I to start arguing with myself, to remind myself, to preach that my worth is not in what others say, that I'm not more valuable just because someone noticed something.

I'm not, I am already known, I'm already loved, I am already approved in Christ.

There is nothing left to win.

And here's what happened.

As I walked through that receiving Christ again as my foundation, rooting myself in Him, renewing my mind with the gospel truth, something profound happened.

The gospel became really good news.

My heart began to change.

I remembered I was in the vault of Christ's riches, and something started to rise in my heart, and it was this gratitude for what Christ had done.

That leads to our fourth point that we close with is this.

Look what Paul says that when you live this life, you are abounding in thanksgiving.

Abounding in thanksgiving.

Word abounding means overflowing.

It's not a polite thank you.

It is a heart that cannot contain joy.

And when you think about it, what else could happen when someone receives Jesus, roots their life in them, and renews his mind with his truth?

The outcome is worship, the outcome is gratitude, the outcome is joy and the reality that God has given you everything you desire if you will just abide in him, so that the ultimate outcome then is glory.

And Lord, here's why that matters.

Because God wants glory from your life.

And the life that brings him glory is not the life that looks the most busiest.

It's not the life that seems the most disciplined.

It is the life in which Christ is the most cherished.

And Christ needs to be cherished at a heart level.

He is enough.

That's what glorifies God, not just when Christ is obeyed, but when Christ is enjoyed.

So, church, let me say this one last time.

Step one, receive.

Step two, get root.

Step three, renew.

Step four, rejoice.

And step five, repeat.

This is the life of a maturing disciple.

It's not performance, it's not perfection, it's abiding.

So we walk in him.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you, Lord.

Lord, we thank you for your deep love for us.

We thank you for the truth of the gospel.

That in Christ we have received all that we need, every spiritual treasure.

God, we thank you, Lord, that you are good.

So that you've spoken to us this morning by your word, by your servant Paul.

And Lord, we pray that you would help us to walk, Lord, as simple as it is, to walk in him, to receive him again, to root our lives so deeply in him, to renew our mind with the truth.

God, we love you and we bless your name.

We pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Could you stand and worship with me?