SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/9/2016 1:20 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 Intro to Colossians
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians 1:1-2
Message of the verses: “1 Paul,
an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2 To
the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae: Grace to you
and peace from God our Father.”
We are actually looking at the second SD on “The Crisis,” but did not actually get into looking at the crisis that was going on in Colossae as we only looked at how this letter came to be written by Paul.
Paul’s reason for writing this letter was in response to the news that Epaphras brought to him while in prison in Rome, and that news had to do with a heresy that was threading the peace and purity of the Colossian church. Dr. Wiersbe describes it as a combination of Eastern philosophy and Jewish legalism, which are elements of what the Bible describes as Gnosticism (NOS-ti-cism). The Greek word is gnosis pronounced KNOW-sis and this means to know. The opposite is an agnositic which means one who does not know. Dr. Wiersbe writes “The Gnostics were the people who were ‘in the know’ when it came to the deep things of God. They were the ‘spiritual aristocracy’ in the church.” This sounds like a good thing, but it is not. While listening to a sermon from John MacArthur yesterday on the first six verses of the 15th chapter of John’s gospel he described himself as a “Waiter,” someone who brings food to people, and he said that it was his hope that he did not spill the food as he brought it to the people. I have written about this before and that is what the order of how things are done in the church. Jesus Christ gave the message to His disciples who were apostles along with Paul, and then they were to pass it along to those who they had led to the Lord and were now pastors who would continue this process. The pastors receive what they are to talk to in their churches from the Lord as they read and study their Bibles and that is how we are to get our sermons preached, and so when MacArthur says that he is a waiter delivering what he receives from the Lord. The Gnostics were not like this as they thought they knew it all and were not receiving truth from the Word of God or from the Lord as they thought they were. We will never achieve a spiritual perfection this side of heaven as they thought they were. “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (Colossians 2:8).” Paul warns them of what the Gnostics were trying to do. Dr. Wiersbe says that this philosophy was based on traditions and not on divine truth as it grew out of the philosophical question, “Why is there evil in this world if creation was made by a holy God?” I suppose that these men forgot to look at the very first book in the Word of God where in chapter three of Genesis we learn where evil came from and it was not from God, but from sin, as Adam and Eve sinned which brought a curse onto the world, thus evil permeated the world as all of Adam’s offspring are born in sin, and because of that they sin.
There is more to this heresy that we will look at as we study the book of Colossians so we will wait until we get to the study of the book before we talk more about this.
In our next SD we will look at what Dr. Wiersbe calls “The Correspondence” which will be our last SD based on what he has to say and then will look at what John MacArthur’s introduction is about from his commentary and also from his first sermon he preached on Colossians which I have listened to a couple of times and found it very informative. We will take out time so that we can lay the ground work of this wonderful book before we dive into what Paul has written.
12/9/2016 1:51 PM
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