Col 2:6-23 - Staying Alive
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
We’ve been watching a series lately called “Inventing Anna”. It the semi true story of a con-artist who convinced lots of wealthy people in New York that she was an heiress and managed to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from them and others without them having any idea of the danger they were in. Clearly they weren’t expecting someone to lie so effectively and when you’re unaware of danger you’re much more vulnerable than when you’re looking out for it. And that unawareness of danger is the crux of the story.
It’s also the crux of the situation into which Paul writes this letter. The people in Colossae were in a dangerous situation but they didn’t realise it. The false teachers sounded so plausible. So Paul writes to warn them, and to remind them how they were taught to live the Christian life.
He begins with three warnings, then he gives three principles, then he sums it all up, in 3:1&2 with an overriding principle for Christian living, “Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
3 Dangers
So what are the warnings he gives?
Col 1:13-23 - All God Has To Offer
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
The popular narrative around religion today is that all religions have something to offer and none is any better than the others. I say the popular narrative because the adherents to a number of religions including Christianity would strongly deny that final assertion. We can certainly learn some things from other religions but at the centre of Christianity is the understanding that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life and that no-one comes to God except through him. Muslims would disagree of course as would most Buddhists. But because we’re supposedly a Christian country we especially get criticised for that claim to uniqueness.
Well, you may not be surprised to know that nothing much has changed in this respect over the last 2000 years. As I mentioned last week, the church in Colossae was being infiltrated by a group of people who claimed that belief in Jesus was OK but he was neither the only way to God nor the most effective way. In fact it seems they had a three pronged approach to getting closer to God.
They claimed that they could show you a special form of spiritual knowledge and faith that would allow your spirit to be freed from the limitations of your physical body. This was important because in their view the material world was evil and therefore so too was the human body. Connected with this, they taught that Jesus didn’t really have a physical body otherwise he would have been tainted by sin. Rather he was a purely spiritual being with just the appearance of a human.
They promoted the observation of various forms of personal abstinence that would assist you in overcoming the shortcomings of your material body: for example prolonged fasting, which they thought would help you to achieve personal perfection; not bodily perfection but spiritual perfection.
They also suggested that you needed the assistance of angelic beings and other mediators to communicate most effectively with God.
The result of this teaching was twofold: on one hand it led to severe asceticism, denying the body through fasting, etc.; and on the other hand, because the physical body didn’t matter, any sort of physical sin was just fine.
So Paul sets out to demonstrate how wrong these false teachers are. His first corrective is what we saw at the end of the passage last week. They needed to remember that
Christ is the Saviour and Redeemer of Us All
Grace in Action
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
How are you at being thankful? Has it been harder over the past couple of years to give thanks as we’ve gone into one lockdown after another? It was hard to be thankful when holidays had to be cancelled and we weren’t allowed to travel more than 5km from home. It was even harder for those of you who had elderly parents locked away in nursing homes unable to be visited, or worse, who had loved ones die and they couldn’t have a proper funeral to farewell them with all their friends and extended family; or who had grandchildren born interstate or overseas and had to wait for months and in some cases years before they could meet them. If you were one of those who had to quarantine in one of our quarantine hotels you might have been thankful for the first couple of days but I imagine that was wearing off by the end of the second week.
I was coming home from the doctor’s a few weeks ago having been told I had another ailment that needed treatment and I have to say there wasn’t much gratitude in my mind for having been allowed to live to old age; and that’s speaking as an optimist! Imagine how pessimists must be feeling. If you’re one of them then I hope the rest of your life will be better than it probably will be!
More seriously though, when Paul wrote this letter to the Colossians he was in prison in Rome. Sort of like being in hotel quarantine but without the comfortable bed and regular food deliveries! In fact a very unpleasant experience, I imagine: guarded by soldiers who probably wished they were somewhere else; totally dependent on his friends for food and warm clothing; perhaps wondering whether he’d survive the judgment of Caesar. Yet what we find as we open up his letter is an outpouring of thankfulness and encouragement, not to mention commendation of these Christians that he’d never even met.
Colossae was a small town not far from Laodicea and Hierapolis, the two main towns in the region. It’s not mentioned in Acts because Paul never went there. The gospel was brought to them, we read, by Epaphras, probably around the time when Paul was in Ephesus.
The Answer to Futility
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- Written by: Steve Webster
The Great Resignation
Have you heard of the so-called GREAT RESIGNATION? In Europe and the USA many people are choosing not to return to their pre-Covid employment situations. Some cite frustration with overbearing bosses, and abusive workplace conditions. Others, a sense of meaninglessness having reflected during lockdowns on the hard labour they gave for someone else’s gain.
One interviewee said recently, “Life is more than working for a few dollars in cold, heartless workplaces for someone else’s profit.” (remember that most of the world’s poorest labourers have no such relative freedom as to choose to leave their jobs.) Such words must send chills through the captains of industry who hope to see company profits rise again.
The pandemic has pressed a hidden reset button in many lives, leaving:
- a latent frustration and anxiety that just won’t dissipate,
- or a gnawing dis-ease about society’s wrongs and dysfunctions producing a deep yearning for something better; a return to “normal” isnot enough!
REFLECT: Do either of the above resemble your feelings at times? Have you felt a sense of futility or purposelessness, hoping for something more than this? (I’m referring only to momentary and occasional experiences of existential anxiety. If you experience recurring feelings of emptiness or despair please do seek help from appropriate medical and psychological professionals.)
Joshua 20 - Seeking Refuge
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Seeking Refuge Audio
You may wonder what this short passage has to do with the conquest of the land. Is it just a bit of padding added in to make up the 250 pages requested by the publisher? Well, no, in fact it’s an important piece of civil ordering for the nation of Israel.
You often hear people complaining about the violence we see in the Old Testament. You may be one of those people. We cringe at the thought of an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” It all sounds so barbaric.
Yet, how do people deal with personal injuries inflicted on them by someone else in a world where there’s no police force, no criminal justice system, no courts? One way people deal with it is by the vendetta, seeking vengeance for an injury done to them. But a vendetta, as you probably know, soon becomes a blood feud. It’s often between two families or clans, begun because of an injury by one person to a member of the other family that needs to be avenged. But it easily escalates to the point where each injury is repaid by a greater injury. And the justice of the situation soon becomes irrelevant. You knock out my tooth and I’ll come back with my big brother and knock out two of yours. You kill my sheep and I’ll kill your cow. You kill my brother and I’ll kill your children. It’s like an episode from some crime series, except there’s no police force to help you. The only law is the law of the jungle. The stronger or the more organised will always win.
But what if you want to have a people who’ll live justly among themselves? What if you were God setting up a civil law for your newly formed nation? How would you do it?
Joshua 7-8 - What Happens When We Fail?
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
What Happens When We Fail? Audio
Jericho has been destroyed. The people are no doubt rejoicing at how well the battle has gone and now the next stage is to climb the pass to where the city of Ai stands defending the entry into the hill country of Canaan. But things don’t go quite as well as they imagine.
If you skipped over the first verse of ch 7 you might think that Joshua and his spies have been a bit over-confident following the triumph at Jericho. After all they only send 3000 men to attack Ai without really knowing what awaits them. Some commentators suggest that the problem was that Joshua didn’t stop to ask God for guidance. That’s certainly the case in a couple of chapter’s time when the Gibeonites trick him into accepting them as members of their community. But it’s not the case here.
The text tells us clearly what the problem is. A man named Achan has taken some of the booty from Jericho, things that had been devoted to God, and as a result God’s anger has burned against the Israelites.
Joshua’s actions are those of a good leader. He listens to the advice of the spies and sends a small battalion to attack what appears to be a weak city. But they’re totally defeated! And he can’t understand it. What’s gone wrong?
Joshua 5-6 - Overcoming Obstacles by Faith
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Overcoming Obstacles by Faith Audio
It’s interesting to reflect on the importance of symbols. I wear a wedding ring on my left hands as a symbol of the lifelong commitment I’ve made to love honour and cherish my wife. In your workplace you may wear a name badge or lanyard as a symbol of your right to be there. When I was growing up people would wear a symbol like a Mercedes Benz icon with an extra vertical line at the bottom as a symbol of their desire for an end to war. This week you may well have seen images of the 911 memorial on the World Trade Centre site set up as a symbol of the nation’s stance against terrorism and as a reminder of those who died in that attack 20 years ago.
Well, as we progress through the book of Joshua you’ll find that symbols play an important part in the telling of the story.
Two weeks ago we heard about the crimson cord used by Rahab as a symbol of her faith in the God of Israel; last week we heard about the pillars of stone set up by Joshua as a reminder of their crossing of the Jordan, as a symbol of God’s presence with them as they enter the promised land; and today we begin with two even more significant symbols for Israel.
