Continue As You Began

This morning's reading is uh from Paul's letter to the Colossians 2, verses 6 to 10.

Colossians 2:6–10

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

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

Welcome to our sweat lodge.

We will all be taking ayahuasca soon.

And we're gonna learn a lot about each other and one another.

My name's James Rathman, I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Uh thanks again for joining us.

This is our first day where our former kids' room is under construction as a Montessori school is moving into the west half, east half of the building.

And we'll be able to use that space once it's done in probably four, five, six weeks.

But for now, our children are outside, so I'm gonna preach extra long to try and really cook our kids.

Um, but uh before that, let's pray uh as we get into our text.

Holy Father, we thank you for bringing us together as a body today.

Lord, we ask that you would uh allow us to focus and and give our attention to your word, um, even in a warm room with white noise.

We pray that you would give us by your spirit a particular uh attentiveness, that that might be an act of worship.

And that your word, as we attend to it, uh, might become a part of our hearts, a part of our lives, that we might see it, and as we see it more, we might learn to see by it, that our hearts might be transformed by a deeper knowledge of you, something that you promise to give us, particularly as we gather together as a body under your word.

So we praise you for the specialness of an ordinary Sunday morning.

We ask that you would attend it.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a wedding for some folks in our church, Ian and Zanna.

I just like being fans of each other.

Um yeah, so Ian and Zana got married.

Man, finally, right?

And um Zanna's dad and I were talking before the wedding.

He's a missionary in Greece.

We were talking about the different cultures that we do ministry in, and um uh he was explaining that Greek culture, the relationship to Christianity is really interesting because they're um uh Orthodox, uh Greek Orthodox is what we say, they probably just say Orthodox, right?

And their uh orthodoxy is the national religion, so it's actually uh technically illegal to minister, if you're a Protestant or an evangelical, to someone who is uh Greek nationally, because to be a part of Greece as a nation is to be a part of this orthodox identity.

And he says that this creates this sort of strange background where there's an ordinary Western secular culture that would just be like the culture of somewhere like Denver or the rest of the United States or Western Europe, with an ordinary secular perspective that's dressed up in orthodoxy.

And so the way that the culture is is people assume that they're a part of the church, they assume that they're a part of the faith, that they underst have an understanding of the scriptures and the gospel.

But the reality is it's something more like patriotism than faith.

It's it's more of just a national identity than anything that particularly affects their heart or that they would think of as actually true.

As though you know Jesus was a real person who lived, died, rose from the dead, reigns now the heavens and the earth.

And uh he was asking about Denver and what Denver culture is like.

And I think we don't have that same backdrop.

We don't we don't have any sort of there's no religious overtone to Denver's culture where people would have, as part of their identity, some sort of religious understanding of themselves.

We're much more purely secular here in Denver.

Christianity is something that is likely not on anyone's radar at all.

Um when I was at, I do a lot of writing in coffee shops, because if you're a pastor of a certain age, it's the law.

And I I get to know a lot of the coffee industry.

And uh so I was even having a conversation this past week, uh, and everyone's talking about abortion right now, of course.

And I was thinking, you know, when Christianity comes up in this world, it's almost exclusively through a political lens and as an obstacle to be overcome.

So that's really like the small role that Christianity plays in the sort of cultural milieu of Denver.

If it's thought of at all, which it typically isn't, it is just an obstacle to be overcome, of sort of like this backwards relic that still seems to exist in our culture that hasn't really been purged out yet.

But with progress, you know, we these are the actual words we use, uh, it will be overcome.

Now, in both instances, as we were talking, I he was describing his place, and I was saying, that sounds like a tough place to do ministry.

It's hard to proclaim the gospel to people who've sort of been inoculated to it because they're from the day that they're born, they're taught that they're just a part of this thing and that their heart has no real connection to it.

And then in he was saying of doing ministry in Denver, that must be a hard thing.

If you're not on anyone's radar at all, what is even the entry point to discuss?

And if there's this, if there's this uh starting point for the conversation of Christianity or faith is just uh backwards and uh immediately perceived as an obstacle, that seems like a difficult culture to do ministry in.

And then we shook hands and said, it was great to see you, catch you at the anniversary or something.

I don't know.

Occasionally they visit.

I'll introduce you all.

That concern, you know, that pastoral concern of we're we're trying to have a church, a body of people that's surrounded by a culture that is uh almost aggressively deformative of our faith.

And so there's this pastoral concern of we don't want these people in our church to be taken in by that.

We don't want them to be deceived.

Because when you're just sitting in a coffee shop and you're talking with the barista, you know, you're you're a half step away from being convinced of something that is antithetical to the gospel.

And that concern is something that Paul shares.

You know, this is not a new concern.

Uh this is not a uniquely American concern, a uniquely American in the past 20 years or five years or whatever.

Um, when did everything go insane?

I can't remember.

Wasn't that long ago, right?

And it there's been a uh, but this has been a concern for the church forever.

Because there is no place that a church can be when it's proclaiming the gospel and seeking to understand and grasp the gospel where it isn't saying something that is antithetical to what the ordinary culture it is surrounded by is saying.

Because our claim is this Christ is Lord, and there is no other.

Now, every other claim stands in opposition to that, because every other claim is some sort of a claim to another lordship.

And so, Paul, in his letter to the Colossians today, in this part of the letter, his heart pours out to the church in Colossae to say, stay with Christ.

Don't be taken in and deceived by what you're ordinarily hearing.

Don't become convinced that there's something better or new or more innovative, or that we can progress beyond the initial steps that we've taken into Christ by the news of his redemption, by the gospel.

So his advice is as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Today I want our time together to be a sort of uh spiritual exercise where we build up your spiritual health.

You have you have strong antibodies and even strong fitness in your relationship with the Lord.

That way you can move about in a culture such as ours, such as Greece, such as ancient Colossi, and find that you are able to hold fast to Christ.

Let's try and do that.

First, we're going to look at how Paul describes an offensive posture that we take, and then he describes a defensive posture that we take.

And not to give away the ending, but all of this centers on this grasp that Christ is Lord.

I know we're so familiar with those words, right?

It's like a uh, you know, Nietzsche's metaphor for metaphors.

It's a coin that has lost its embossment and it's been worn out because we've passed it around so much, and we can't remember what used to be on it.

That's what saying Christ is Lord is like for us.

But we're gonna try and remember what that means that Christ is Lord.

Colossians 2, 6.

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

Okay, so Paul, if he's famous for anything, he's famous for his therefores.

There's nothing like a good Pauline therefore.

He's like a, I'll try and use a Colorado metaphor about something I don't actually understand.

He's like a trad climber.

That's a real word, right?

Yeah.

And he's uh has these anchors that he puts into the wall, and it he's hanging so much weight from them, and you say, how can it hold?

How can all of that whole that one little thing hold all of this weight of these people that are climbing up this mountain?

That's what Paul's therefores are like.

Here, he's hanging the first chapter and a half of this book all off of this one therefore, where he makes this pivot.

And so, what is he hanging on this therefore?

He's hanging the whole first part of the book, which is his initial praise for the way that the gospel has moved forward for the Colossians.

And then that becomes this prayer for the Colossians to mature in their understanding of Christ.

And that prayer overflows into this praise for who Christ is.

And then that praise for who Christ is dovetails into this explanation of what it means for you as a Christian.

What does the identity of Christ mean for you as you share in that identity?

And then it turns into this description of Paul's own ministry and the suffering that he has endured on behalf of the Colossians.

And all of that, all of the weight of this whole world of understanding that Paul has laid out that hinges on who Christ is as our Lord and Savior, he just hangs off of this, therefore.

In light of all of this, of what it means of who Christ is and what he has done for us, how should we then live?

To borrow an old Schaefer question.

How should we then live if this is true about Christ?

And this is the first thing that he says, therefore, because of all that is true about Christ that I has taught that I have taught you, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus, walk in him that way.

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

Now, this received in our sort of context and in contemporary American evangelicalism, we think of that as like the conversion moment of the description of received.

I received Christ Jesus the Lord.

But the word here is more about a generational passing down.

What Paul is saying is just in the way that I received Christ from Christ Himself as an apostle, and then I passed on my knowledge of Christ to Epaphras, and then Epaphras passed on his knowledge of Christ, which he received from me to you, these people who I don't even know.

As you participate in this story of how the gospel is spreading out into the world, and as you live in terms of it by your faith in Jesus, as you came into that particular understanding of who Jesus is, walk in that.

Don't stray from it.

This news of who Jesus is, this gospel that was proclaimed, which is that you have been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son because of the work that Christ did on the cross.

That is not just a doorway in, but that is the way forward.

Learning to live in light of the truth of the gospel is the perpetual exercise of the Christian.

It is not just 101.

It is 101, 201, 301, until you, I don't know a lot of other, maybe I don't know how school works.

But it goes on for a very long time.

It's like Einstein's joke about eternity.

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.

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

Now, Paul helpfully puts some more meat on that.

He fleshes this out in a particular way.

And then we're meant to just piece them together.

It's like he gives a, you know, five perspectives on this thing.

And he says, look at look at your growth in Christ like this.

And that's part of it, but it's also like this, and it's also like this.

So he says, rooted and built up in him.

So you're rooted.

You guys ready to hear how I'm finishing up my Greek class?

It's a perfect tense, which means that it's a past thing, which affects the present.

You are rooted in Christ.

The rest of them are present tense.

That means they are continuous action, a mode of being, a way that you live.

So you are rooted and built up.

You are rooted in him, but you're also built up.

There's a growth in your understanding of who Christ is.

And established, we don't really have a word like this.

So it's like establishing, being more established in the faith.

What does that mean?

We've talked about this so much as we try, as I'm trying through the sermon series to reinvigorate what these old dead words mean, like faith.

But faith we need to remember that's a relational type of knowing.

Faith is the way that you know any person, because to know a person, you are committed to them, and you're expecting a reciprocal commitment of them to you.

And so by being established in faith, you are expressing trust in a person who is God, because we don't know God like a list of propositions.

We know God like a person, because he has revealed himself to us as a person.

This is why the center of Christianity is faith.

That's why we operate in faith.

And so we become more and more established in that, like a marriage that becomes healthier and healthier as time goes on.

I know my spouse.

They know me.

I'm more committed to them.

I have more trust in them every day.

That is the picture of how we become established in the faith.

Just as you were taught, see, Paul ties it back.

Begin, continue as you began, move forward with the Lord just as he brought you in.

Remember, just as Epaphras taught you, Paul has such trust for what Ephras taught the Colossians because Paul taught Epaphras, and he trusts Epaphras.

He has faith in Epaphras.

And because of that faith, he has faith in what the Colossians have learned.

You see, it's kind of faith all the way down.

Some are turtles, ours is faith.

There's a trust at the center of this, just as you were taught.

And then he has to say something superlative, but but it's more than superlative.

It's a, it's a, you know, it's the word, abounding in thanksgiving.

We are the demeanor of our lives as we grow in the knowledge of Christ is to be people who are abounding in thanksgiving.

I learned a wonderful distinction a couple of weeks ago watching a YouTube conversation with John Verveke, who's great and I recommend listening to.

And he was describing this distinction between curiosity and wonder.

Now, he says that curiosity is a temporal or a time-bound value.

It's something that's good but only for a certain amount of time.

Whereas wonder is an eternal value, it's something that's always good.

Consider it like this.

If you were to read a mystery novel, and you find this mystery novel is that I'm curious about what will happen.

And that curiosity has some sense of enjoyment and some telus, some purpose to it that pulls you forward through the book.

But if at the you finish the book and you realize I'm just as curious as I have been the whole time reading it.

Now curiosity is not good.

Curiosity's no fun.

It's like the last three seasons of Lost.

Where you realize this curiosity was so great, it was so wonderful, polar bears.

And then at the end you realize, oh, they had no idea where they were going.

And my curiosity all of a sudden becomes painful, but wonder, wonder, oh, another thing to consider.

Once your curiosity is satisfied, then it's done.

You put your curiosity away.

Wonder is different.

Wonder is abounding.

Because when you uh find something wonderful, the more you learn about it, the more perhaps we could say your curiosities about it are satisfied, the more wonder you find in it.

It's an eternal glory, something like wonder is.

And so Paul uses a word like this: abounding in thanksgiving.

The more that you grow to understand Christ, understand just as you were taught, the very way that you were brought in, these simple ordinary truths of the gospel, the more that you grow to understand those, the more you will be abounding and seek to know and understand them more.

When we made the Hubble telescope, we pointed it at nothing and we found a whole cosmos, and we didn't think, great, we got an answer to that question.

We thought, let's build a new telescope, one that's bigger and even better with fold-out mirrors, you know, things like that.

That's wonder.

That's abounding in thanksgiving.

This is a good offense.

A good offense.

The offense is to continue as you came in in Christ.

Do not neglect to keep looking at the gospel.

Keep looking at this reality that Christ is Lord.

Now Paul moves into a defense.

You need to have some antibodies for the culture that you're in.

In Colossians 2 8, he says, see to it, that's active.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

Look at all that he stacks up.

You know, philosophy, empty deceit, that's just according to human tradition, the elemental spirits of the world.

That's all on one side.

And all of that thing that he's describing is antithetical to Christ.

Christ is the difference.

Now, this is a call for something like an active defense.

And we have to remember that Paul is writing a particular letter, right, to the Colossians.

So when he lists these things out, he likely has something in mind about their cultural backdrop, you know, about their Greek Orthodoxy, about their secularism.

And he's thinking, I want to provide some defense because I have this pastoral concern that they might find themselves lost in it, and that they might forget the wonder that they have in Christ, just as they were taught.

It might grow old and vague and uh it seem like something that's not worth entertaining anymore, something that they could perhaps progress past.

Now, what is that particular thing that he's writing against?

Well, there's a lot of different takes.

This is one of those things where you're interpreting an epistle where you only hear one side of the conversation, right?

You hear what Paul wrote to them, but you don't hear the interactions that the Colossians would have had back with Paul, where they were perhaps describing the issues that they were facing as a church.

So it could have been several things.

It could have been a sort of Gnosticism that was moving through the church, where it was a sort of a mind-body split where we were saying the only things that matter is the secret knowledge, and it's just beyond the horizon.

Once you attain it, then you will be able to attain salvation.

It could have been something like the Roman mystery religions, which all which operated in that same sort of way.

We have the secrets to a fulfilled life.

We are able to experience the good life, just come in and participate and think like the Scientology business model.

That's the way those operated.

They don't get weird until you're in too deep and they have all your friends, and so what do you do?

Or, and this is this one's actually particularly likely, is a move towards Judaism.

Within the Colossian Church, it seems as though there was a real draw back towards Judaism for those that had become Christians.

These are Gentiles who had converted to Christianity, and they might say, you know what, we need to just complete the whole thing and go all the way back to Judaism.

This is where the truth of the matter really lies.

Adopt this culture, adopt these practices.

And so that threat was really there.

What of those was it in particular?

I don't know.

Lots of very smart people who I read disagree on this, and I don't know enough Colossian history, and apparently neither do they, to make a statement of look, this is what it is.

Also, kind of a side note, like a city like Philippi has been uh uh studied archaeologically.

It's been dug up.

Colossae, where that land is, it's just farmland.

And because farmers own it, it's it hasn't been archaeologically investigated.

Isn't that wild?

But you know, gotta eat.

So we don't have any particular evidence for colossa.

But I think Paul's ambiguity here is not unintentional.

It's guided by the Spirit, and all scripture is God-breathed and profitable for the church for all time.

And so that means that there are things in here which are particular to the Colossians, but are also for us and for all of time.

So I think if we can grasp the generality, then we can begin to look through this to see how this plays out in our own culture today.

Now, what we see here is the shape of his argument is that any worldview or philosophy or mode of being that does not have at its center or at its foundation or at its height or at its aim Christ as the Lord.

This central fact, the central reality that Christ is the Lord.

Any perspective which does not have that is antithetical to Christianity.

This is the central reality.

Of course, right?

What new did I just learn?

The preacher says, keep Christ as Lord central in your thinking.

Yes, I know.

That sounds just like something that you say.

Okay, but I want us to play with this a bit so that we can explore that what Paul is saying here is wildly more fundamental than the words might seem at first take.

And we can start to see that by exploring what is this philosophy that's full of empty deceit, all these things that are just human tradition, that are just from the elemental spirits of the world, like a reasoning just from what we can see and touch and feel up from the world.

We can look at this by having a deeper look at kind of the philosophies or the empty deceit that form our background knowledge and naming those more completely.

Right now we're at an interesting moment, worldview-wise, in our culture, because we're at a moment that's transitional.

We are moving from a modernism which has lasted for about 400 years and has been the background understanding of how we should participate with knowledge in our culture for a very long time, until like 2015.

And then we have begun to move into a time of post-modernism.

And so these two worldviews are warring with each other here at the end of the age.

And there's a in this war, they're both kind of heightened to their extremes.

Much of what we see in the culture war as it plays out is just the death of modernism and the warring of postmodernism against it and the death throes of modernism.

I better put some meat on these words before all of my words become completely useless.

So, uh, modernism, let's put that into a story.

Modernism is the quest for absolute certainty by removing from the human knower any sort of subjectivity or irrationality.

Irrationality.

I spell it with an E.

Any sort of subjectivity or irrationality.

That's modernism.

Quest for absolute certainty.

So here's the classic modernist story, Brene Descartes, and I'll follow it up with a joke.

So be prepared.

Here's Descartes' story.

Sitting alone in a chair, he says, I am going to doubt all that I cannot be absolutely certain of, because I do not want to hold or submit myself to any false beliefs, that which I can't be absolutely certain of.

So he sits alone in his chair and he meditates, and he tries to get to the absolute foundations of stone, of something where he can build all of his reasoning up from.

So he says, I'm going to doubt everything.

I'm going to doubt my own existence.

I'm going to doubt the existence of others and other minds.

I'm going to doubt everything that I can possibly doubt.

And then he has this magical sleight of hand where he says, Well, there's one thing I can't doubt while I'm doubting.

I can't doubt that I'm doubting.

And if I'm doubting, I'm thinking.

And if I'm thinking, I exist, now say it with me.

I think, therefore, I am.

What is the center of truth in the modernist framework?

The self.

The individual, rational actor, who has removed from himself any sort of subjectivity, and removed from himself any sort of irrationality, so that we can objectively know absolute truth.

That is the quest of modernism.

Now, what's built into that, and this is why postmodernism, I would say, is not really another thing, it's just the development of modernism itself, because this is already baked in.

Okay?

Once the person has become the arbiter of what knowing truth is, then we're like a half step away from saying the person is the arbiter of saying what truth is, of describing what truth is themselves.

When we say that the individual person is the arbiter of being able to know what truth is, that rational actor, then yeah, I'm repeating myself, but it's worth saying again.

We're like a we're just a half step away from the subjective individual being the one who gets to name what reality is.

And that is the war that is happening in our culture.

One is saying, I know what objective reality is because of my reason and rationality.

This can just be simply known.

That is the right.

And the other is saying there is no such thing as objective reality.

There is only what we experience and then project onto reality itself.

There is no such thing as objective reality.

That's the left.

And so postmodernism and modernism, you know, to borrow a line from the Joker, we're destined to do this for all eternity.

This is an unstoppable force that meets an immovable object.

And that's what it looks like here.

When you hear discussions, especially in Christian culture, which this isn't much of a thing anymore.

This is more of a thing like the 90s and the early 2000s, where there was this discussion, we have to defend absolute truth.

They weren't talking about a Christian perspective of what truth is.

They were defending modernist syncretism with Christianity.

That's a bold claim, but I think it's true.

Because we hadn't developed a biblical way of understanding how we come to know the truth and how we come to understand the world.

Now here we see how that happens.

How the Bible teaches us to come to know the truth, to understand the world.

We see that the big mistake that the modernists and the postmodernists have made is they have left out of their reasoning God as the absolute.

Not in the way that the modernists say, which is that by pure reason and rationality we can describe to you what absolute truth is.

What happens when when we do that?

When we need no God to do that.

Because the revolutionaries overthrow, and then they become twice the tyrants that they overthrew.

Or you get an advancement of scientific, absolute scientific rationality, that is able to say we have the power to create a perfect race, and we can wipe out the ones that don't conform to it, and by our reason and pure rationality, we're able to make what this is.

You get like Nazi type of thinking.

And then with a postmodern absol with a postmodern absolute that says, not that there's an objective reality of which I can know and bend to my will by my own reason, but rather that says there is no objective reality, and therefore I can describe whatever I'd like to describe, and then cause society to bend around that interpretation.

To be honest, there's something about that that's like that's like uh Stalinism, but Stalin's even more modern.

I don't think we've seen the terrors of the fruit of postmodernism yet.

I think that that will be this century's experiment, and I think it will be catastrophic to do that.

In The Hobbit, uh, Tolkien says, it does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations when there is one nearby.

Good advice.

When you're trying to understand the world, it does not do to leave God out of your calculations when he is the creator, he is the sustainer, he is the one who has made it and given it to us, he is the one who has made you and causes you to know and understand it only by your relationship to him.

So, what type of deconstructive thing are we saying to our culture's warring worldviews?

Christ is Lord.

You have left this most important thing out of your calculations.

Something beyond something something that is that is beyond your own meditation in a chair, something that's beyond the power that you've granted to yourself to be a self-creator that gives your own laws to yourself.

Something that instead you must deal with as an absolute and who deals with you as a person.

And so, how do you come to know the world?

How do you come to know a thing like that?

You put your faith in him.

And by your faith in him, your knowledge becomes a participation in what he has promised you.

And then you grow in your understanding of him and your understanding of the world and the way that it lays itself out.

John Frame calls this way of thinking servant thinking.

This is what is our defense against the empty deceit of the philosophies of our day.

We need to learn to think from the outset, not as creators, but as creatures, ones for whom objective reality is never grasped by us, but only given to us by the one who gives himself to us.

So that we relate to all knowing as by entering a personal relationship.

So, what does this mean practically?

It means we let the one who made us describe ourselves to us.

What is the objectivity that we're seeking?

It is an objectivity is not something you will ever find in yourself.

You will never experience it, ever.

So stop trying.

Certainty, objectivity.

I want these words to be anathema to you because I want you to always think I am a subject.

I'm always looking out my own eyes.

But there's good news.

I am meant to know God personally, as his servant, as one I put my faith in.

And as I trust him, I grow in deeper and deeper trust in him.

It becomes like a wonder of a thing.

Says why Christianity can be so hard to describe to a culture like ours, because they'll say something like, How can you be certain that it is true?

And what we did for the last century was, oh, we can be certain.

I can play the game that you're playing, and I can play it better than you.

Here's how I can compete by adopting your presuppositions of certainty, which was foolish.

We created atheism.

And what we should have said was, certainty, what are you talking about?

That's not the way you know anything.

The way you know things is by putting some skin in the game, putting faith into the world that you're experiencing.

That's the way you grew to know anything.

How did you learn the language that you're talking to me by?

You looked at your parents and you loved them.

And as you loved them, you learned the words that they used.

They became a part of you, and they formed the very shape of existence for you as you learned to name chair, chair.

It was by love and relationship that any of your knowledge came into this.

And Christ as Lord is saying, that is the case for everything.

Because to know anything, you need to know the creator of it, the one who made it, the one who made you.

So commit to me, invest in me, participate in me, have faith in me, and you will not be deceived by these empty philosophies anymore.

You will not think of yourself as self-defining, and you will not think of yourself as an absolute control.

You will not say things like these petty arguments where we say something like facts don't care about your feelings, and then the other side says, feelings don't care about your facts.

And then God comes in and says, Facts, what are you talking about?

I'm a person.

And you know me by getting to.

I'm getting a little passionate.

Let's finish up our text.

Listen to this.

This is his reason, okay?

Why?

Why?

Why see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy?

Why see to it that no one takes you captive according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ?

For listen to the he gives these two couplets that are so extreme that they're almost paradoxical.

The first couplet, for in him, in Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

They're almost, they're so extreme to almost be paradoxical.

The whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

What does that mean?

God, a true knowledge, an absolute, the one in whom we the one true absolute, the one true objectivity, the one true self-sustaining being who, as he looks out his own eyes, only sees what is certainly true.

Made himself to you knowable, relatable, able to be perceived and understood, entered into relationship with, revealed himself to you.

Don't you hear it?

That existence itself, who is God, calls you into a knowledge of him by making himself like you.

So don't be deceived by these things that aren't Jesus.

Don't be deceived by them.

And then it becomes even more personal.

And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority.

He does the same, don't you see?

It's the same pattern.

The fullness of God dwells bodily.

And you have been filled in him.

You, in him, all authority, the head and rule of all authority.

You, you, don't you see these impossible dichotomies, the imminence and the transcendence, these two oppositions that are pulled perfectly together, that are meant to explode your mind about who Christ is.

Is Esther Meek, who's she's this wonderful philosopher who's going to be more and more famous, I think, as our culture disintegrates and we need people who see clearly.

She says the most important fact about reality is that God is the covenant Lord, the covenant head.

This is the most important fact of existence.

And so that means we relate to God as a covenant Lord.

A covenant is a way of saying that there are patterns for relationships.

And that as we enter those patterns for relationships, then we can be known by one another.

And we know this friends hang out.

That's a pattern of the relationship.

If you don't hang out with somebody, then you do not be friends.

We know that to experience and participate in relationships, there are these patterns.

God is the covenant Lord, the covenant head.

And we, because of Christ's grace, have been filled in him.

That's not what we normally say.

We would normally say something like filled by him, right?

Or filled with him.

But Paul is trying to do, he's trying to just explode our categories so that we might get a glimpse of what Christ means.

So you've been filled, which seems like something that comes into me, and then in him, which feels like something where I get put in, you know?

This is like filling up a bottle of water and tossing it into the ocean.

This is the completeness of our surrounding.

Let's finish here.

Don't be deceived.

See to it that you remember how Christ has brought you in.

That the one who is the true absolute, although you and your sin deny him, has filled you in him.

Pray to Jesus.

Put your faith in Jesus.

Live obediently to Jesus.

And might you find yourself abounding in such a thanksgiving, full of such a wonder at who He is, that it is impossible for you to be deceived into anything that is not according to Christ.

Are there any questions?

It's because we covered it.

What could you possibly have any questions about?

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Consider him in whom the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Unfortunately, I have to read more.

In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, our covenant Lord, most important fact of reality.

In the same way also, he took the cup after, I'm just gonna cry while I say it, so deal with it.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Don't be deceived.

Father, we praise you for making yourself known to us.

Let us continue in the way that you have brought us in.

Lord, let us let this be an act of faith in remembrance of you, as we participate with who you are, that way we might know you and abound in thanksgiving.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.