SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/2/2017 10:10 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Mysticism”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
2:18-19
Message of the verses: “18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.”
As we look at the end of verse 18 we see the words “inflated
without cause by his fleshly mind,” and this is speaking of those false
teachers. Paul did not want the
Colossians believers to be intimidated by them because of the false claims they
were making.
I just finished
listening to the 8th chapter of the book of Acts where there is a
man in that chapter whom the Bible states that he believed the gospel. However this is stated this man named Simon
who was kind of a big shot in this Samaritan town asked Peter to buy some power
so that when he laid hands on people they too could receive the Holy
Spirit. He was sternly rebuked by
Peter. People like to follow people like
him even though he was wrong and that is the case in the Colossian church where
people were being greatly misled by these false teacher because of the power
that some of them were showing, even though I believe that this power came from
Satan.
These false teachers were devoid of the Holy Spirit and
so they were going beyond the teaching of Jesus Christ as seen in 2 John 9 “Anyone
who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have
God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.” As Paul writes these men were not “holding
fast to the head,” and of course, that head is Jesus Christ as we saw in
Colossians 1:18 “He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the
beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have
first place in everything.” Jesus Christ
is described in verse 19 as He is the One “whom the entire body, being supplied
and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is
from God.” If we are to grow up in
Christ we must realize that it comes from union with Christ. John wrote the following words that Jesus
spoke in John 15:4-5 “4 “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear
fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5 “I am
the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much
fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”
John MacArthur writes “There is a tendency in human
nature to move from objectivity to subjectivity—to shift the focus from Christ to
experience. This has always intimidated
weak believers and threatened the church.
“Today this brand of mysticism is most commonly seen in
the charismatic movement—where Scripture is a distant second in importance to
visions and revelations.
“When such intimidation came from the sixteenth-century
mystical charismatics of Martin Luther’s day, the great Reformer was very firm
with them, clinging to biblical revelation and the centrality and sufficiency
of Christ. In particular, the followers
of Thomas Munzer and the radical Anabaptists gave great prominence to the work
and gifts of the Spirit—and to mystical knowledge. Their cry expressing their supra-biblical experience
was ‘The Spirit, the Spirit!’ Luther replied,
‘I will not follow where their spirit leads.’
When they were granted the privilege of an interview with Luther, they
gave their cry ‘The Spirit, the Spirit!’
The great Reformer was not impressed and thundered, ‘I slap you spirit
on the snout.’”
Now we have been learning in this letter to the
Colossians that Christ is complete, He is all we need for salvation, growth,
and victory in our lives, therefore we should never listen to people like these
false teachers that were in the Colossian church.
4/2/2017 10:35 PM
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