Colossians 2:3

Colossians chapter 2, I’m going to be reading the first three verses. Our focus is on verse 3 this morning. For I would that you knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. May God bless to us His sacred and holy word this morning. Down through the ages, man has been on an ever-ending quest to find hidden treasure. men have run risks, endured great dangers, gone to the most extreme lengths, even to the cost of their own lives, in search of hidden treasure. You find men searching the ocean depths off the coast of Florida, looking for a Spanish shipwrecks, knowing those ships were loaded down with gold coins in huge amounts. You find man searching through the deserts of the American West looking for lost gold mines, like the lost Dutchman mine, believed to be in the superstition mountains east of Phoenix, Arizona. Man dreams of being rich, so he searches high and low to find treasure. Sadly, man fails to seek after the best treasure. or the true treasure. Man seeks after earthly treasure and fails to recognize that it’s going to pass away. It’s subject to being stolen, and you certainly cannot take it with you. However, Scripture reveals, there’s a much greater treasure to be discovered, greater than sunken treasure ships and lost gold mines. Spiritual treasured treasured treasure is priceless because it contains with it, the hope of heaven for those who find it. As with all treasure hunts, the key factor is where to search. And Paul here provides us with a spiritual treasure map in verse 3 of our text this morning. Let me begin by saying this. You should realize true religion has Christ as its central focus. In whom? begins verse 3. Now this passage speaks of Christ. Certain Old Testament books, you look through Proverbs or Job or Ecclesiastes and they speak about wisdom that human beings need in this life to enjoy true happiness and the need to seek after wisdom. And yet the scripture indicates it’s difficult to find. Job tells us in Job 28, Job 208, verses 20 and 21, once then cometh wisdom, and where is the place of understanding, seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living? But now Paul says, the secret is out. It is found in Christ. We could say that Jesus Christ is wisdom personified. Some commentators wish to read this text here in which, and they want to refer to the mystery of the gospel. in verse 2. However, I think there’s certainly greater support that it refers to the person of Jesus Christ. The word Christ immediately proceeds verse 3 here. And the great Christological section that we just studied in chapter 1 places a far more emphasis on Christ than on the mystery. And it’s not true that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are contained in the mystery, but rather the mystery. and all knowledge is contained in Christ. I think that is what the scripture would teach. So I think this passage certainly speaks of Christ. Christ is the sum and the substance of true faith. If you know the excellencies of Christ, there is no need for you to seek salvation or happiness anywhere else. For I am determined, Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 2-2, not to know anything among you, Christ and Him Crucify. All you need is a saving knowledge of the person of Christ, Christ, and the work of Christ, Him crucified. The Christian faith centers entirely on Christ. Thus, he is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning, and the end of it. The person of Christ, that he is God, that he is the object of worship, that he is the Son of God, is the Son of God, is the second person. of the Holy Trinity, that he is man, that he has a human nature, but a sinless one. He is the mediator, the one mediator between God and man, that he holds the offices of prophet and priest and king, that he’s head and savior of the church, that he’s the creator of the world, that all things were created for him, as the scripture indicates to us here in Colossians. We’ve talked about the work of Christ, how he perfectly obeyed the law of God, how he came and carried out the will of the Father, that he was a teacher par excellence of scripture, that he performed extraordinary miracles, that he is the high priest that ever liveth to make intercession for us, his people, that he is the king over of the saints, that he rules over all for the benefit of his church, that he’s a redeemer of the people God by the blood of his cross, that he’s the firstborn from the dead, and in Christ shall all arise. He’s a reconcileal of God and man. He made peace by the blood of his cross, and he’s the final judge of all men. We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ. Having this excellency of the knowledge of Christ, which Paul speaks of in Philippians 3.8, you can cast all else aside as refuse and duck. I make this observation. ignorance of the person of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ is really the source of all the error and all the heresies which have troubled the church down through the ages. And we’re going to look at verse 4 and 5 and we’ll see here soon how that there are those in the church here or those who are troubling the church that were, you know, bringing in different things, taking away from the person of Christ. If you truly know Christ, then you’re going to be content, resting in his satisfaction that he made on the cross. You’ll have no problem honoring him as you honor the Father. You’ll see the equality between them that the full deity of Christ will be recognized. You won’t have any interest in any other mediator. You don’t need Mary. You won’t need the saints. You won’t need an angel to pray. you would cast aside all your unrighteousness gladly embracing Christ’s righteousness because you recognize all your righteousness as this filthy rags whereas Christ gives you a perfect righteousness. So why would you want anything else? Why would you want something less? You would cling tenaciously that Christ is the only way to heaven realizing that there are those who would try to teach you another way. But Jesus said, I am the way the truth in the life and no way. man comes under the Father but by me. And so you will love Christ supremely and will continuously seek to know more about him. So the knowledge of Christ is the only adequate security really from error. This observation also, the second one. You may judge between sound and unsound churches by the place they give Christ. Paul said he preached Christ for everything depends upon Christ. Many so-called Christian churches have abandoned Christ proclaim a social gospel of some sort. The focus is upon meeting the earthly needs of people. Whether it’s helping the poor or feeding the hungrier, housing the destitute, that becomes the full focus of the church. I think we shouldn’t be concerned about the earthly needs of people. But my friends, the true need of everyone is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. I read about a survey taken of various Christian church members about the significance of the cross, and the question was this, would it make any difference in your life if Christ had not died on the cross? Forty-five percent said they didn’t think it would make any difference. 25 percent said, yes, but they couldn’t say why. 20 percent said, absolutely. It affects their life now and certainly their salvation. 10 percent said didn’t know. They didn’t understand what the cross was all about. The greatest danger there is is to have an outward form of a Christian church but Christ himself has been abandoned. That’s the greatest danger that you can have. There’s a Chinese idiom. which talks about buying the box and returning the pearls. A jeweler in the state of Chu wished to sell his pearls to a person in another state in China, and he made this box of high-quality wood, and he decorated it beautifully, and he perfumed it carefully, so that it gave off an exquisite, beautiful, rich fragrance. And then he placed the pearls in the box, and he presented it to their prospective buyer. well, the buyer was so taken by the beautiful box that he was willing to pay a high price for the box, but he returned the pearls. He didn’t want the pearls. The pearls were many times more valuable in the box, but that was rejected. And the idiom teaches this. It’s grasping the shadow and letting go of the substance or making a poor choice. Many churches are like that. They have all the trimmings of Christianity. They have the beautiful box, but they’ve cast aside the pearl of great price, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who is the sum and the substance of the Christian faith. When Christ is not the center of the church, and when his person is not given center stage in the chief focus and the preaching and the teaching of the church, then, my friends, the church is empty. of all wisdom and knowledge and all true Christianity. You should realize true religion has Christ as its central focus. Secondly, you should realize why true religion has Christ as its central focus and whom are all the treasures the Bible says of wisdom and knowledge. Now, you are assured that there are treasures in Christ. You know, when we use the word treasure, we’re not talking about insignificant things here. We’re not talking about mere trinkets, artificial gems, paper money, or anything like that. A treasure contains what’s precious, very valuable. Gold or silver, diamonds and emeralds, rare coins or something of that nature. Notice he speaks here of treasures in the plural. And he adds the word all the treasures here. He’s trying to emphasize here the abundance and the completeness of the treasure that is found in Jesus Christ. That’s what he places before us. Compared to this treasure, there is nothing else that can be considered a treasure. All else is worthless and of no value. This means that associated with Jesus Christ is a treasure that is so rare and so precious that you should abandon everything to obtain it. There’s an immeasurable abundance of riches found in Christ beyond your ability to calculate. So you are sure there are treasures in Christ. Now, you’re told what these treasures are. These are the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, he says. Now, the treasures associated with Christ are not material. They’re not carnal. not things that can be lost or stolen or something of this nature. But he speaks here about divine wisdom, spiritual knowledge. There is a very close connection between wisdom and knowledge. We’ve touched on this in our Bible study last week. Perhaps one relates to what is believed, and another what is to be done in regard to what you believe, how you apply it. but it’s evident that the apostle here speaks of the wisdom and knowledge of the truths of salvation that are found in reference to Christ. In verse 9 of chapter 1, we read for this cause, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Scripture says, and this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent, John 173. Ye doubtless, and I count all things but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. Philippians 3.8. Thoubians 3.8. Thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, which is in Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 315. The wisdom and knowledge found in Christ provides salvation from sin, from eternal death, and it’s priceless, because it teaches us about justification by Christ’s righteousness, about forgiveness of your sin, about peace with God, about heavenly inheritance, and having eternal life. It talks to us about spiritual change and how that we are made a new person in Christ, daily supply of grace and the various fruit of the Spirit is provided. How that we can have joy unspeakable and full of glory. How that we can be in a covenant relationship with God and adopted into the family of God. All these things are wrapped up in the person of Christ. It was a wealthy man who lost his wife when their only child was born. She died during childbirth. The widower decided he would hire a governess to take care of his son while he continued to work. And she did for a number of years. When the boy reached his teens, he also died. And then the man, grief-stricken over both the loss of his life and then of his son also died a short time later. No will could be located. And since he didn’t have any, relatives that survived him the state began the process of confiscating the deceased fortune and this man’s personal belongings were all put up for auction the old housekeeper had a very little money but she decided she was going to buy one keepsake for himself from this man’s estate and the one thing that she wanted was a painting that hung on the stairway on the wall for many years. That was a painting of the young boy that had died, that she was the governess of. And she had loved and nurtured for 15 years. When she bought it because no one else bid on it, she was able to get it for a real cheap price, she took it home, began to clean up the painting and the framework and so forth. When she took the frame apart to repair it, a paper fell out behind the cardboard backing and lo and behold it was the will of the man had died. And it said that the person who bought the pitcher would get his whole estate so that she was able to claim the whole estate based upon the fact that she bought the portrait. In the spiritual realm, all who believe in Christ and love Him have a vast treasure granted to them by God. everything comes to you through the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me make this observation. You are truly wise if you have the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Anyone who seeks salvation and something or someone other than Christ is altogether foolish. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are solely found in Christ. All things necessary for salvation are found in Christ. He that half the sun half life is what the scripture says. If you don’t have the sun, you don’t have life, and the wrath of God abides upon you. It’s the fool who would abandon Christ and seek to be saved by some other means. A second observation is this. You must not value secular knowledge above spiritual knowledge. There is a great amount of emphasis to say that. on the wisdom of the world in our society, a secular education, a college degree. And I’m not here to denigrate higher education. I’m just trying to put things in perspective. And I’m saying this. People are more apt to spend their time, their energy, and their money getting a secular education than they are in a secular education than they are in getting an education. education about spiritual things and about Christ. You know, people are very apt to place their trust in modern science with regard to the origin of the world, for example, as if it were the true wisdom and knowledge. Sadly, many professing Christians bowed before the idol of science and embrace all its theories as absolute knowledge which none should ever question. If all the treasures are wisdom and knowledge are in Christ, I tell you, this, there is none outside of him. Your greatest need is therefore not a secular education, even though we ought to be as educated, I think, for the cause of Christ as we can be. But what the greatest need is is, a spiritual education. Earthly wisdom offers no real help regarding living your life in this world or being prepared for the world to come. If modern science really provided true knowledge, why does it continuously change? Why is the science book already outdated by the time it’s printed? Because we have a new theory that now we’re following. It’s built upon conjecture and theories, and you can never really say this is the final truth. My friend, the truth is revealed through knowing Christ or eternal, they never change. So why is it that so much emphasis by Christians is put on getting a great secular education? They’re so little interesting. about studying and knowing Jesus Christ, because that’s where the true wisdom and the true knowledge exists. We would do ourselves well to spend our time studying the person and work of Jesus Christ. I, at one point, was going to be a philosophy major, and I’m studying philosophy in college in college, and I’m, you know, I’m studying philosophy. going through all these different philosophers. And the only thing I could think about it at the time was, here I am with someone who has the light. And I see all these men using the wisdom they had, earthly wisdom, groping around in the dark, trying to find the truth. And I’m thinking, it was just hard for me to study it because I’m thinking, why would I want to spend all my time studying what, you know, Descartes says? or one of these other philosophers, when I have the truth right here. It was difficult. Not that we shouldn’t study philosophy or we shouldn’t have knowledge of these things, but my friends, this is the primary goal. This is where we’ve got to put our focus is on what God says here in his word about Jesus Christ. Let us not put this in second place or third place or fifth place. Let’s put this in first place. Regardless of whatever education. we pursue in this life. This should be our primary education about Christ. And we can spend all our lives studying Jesus Christ. And believe me, I think we’re going to spend all of eternity still learning about Him as well. So you should realize why true religion has Christ as its focus. My third point is this this morning. You should realize the true religion’s treasures in Christ are hidden. In whom are hidden. he says all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge the treasures in Christ are hid from those that were lost now the trade these treasures are not exposed they’re not out in plain sight so to speak the natural man does not see Christ’s value that he doesn’t realize there’s treasure in Christ when he looks at Christ there is no form or comeliness that he should desire Christ. There’s no beauty that he sees in Christ. He’s despised. He is rejected of men because it’s hidden in him. Unless you are given spiritual eyesight, you’re never going to be drawn to Christ. It’s interesting to find after Christ’s rejection by the cities of Corazon, Besseta, at Copernium. Jesus prays these words in Matthew 1125. I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and the prudent and has revealed them unto babes. They didn’t accept me. They didn’t embrace me as the Messiah. And yet he thanked God. That God has hid these things. This is why Christ says in the parable that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hid in a field. You remember in Matthew 1344? Unless the treasure is discovered, why would you buy the field? But once the treasures discovered, you sell everything you got to get that field because you know the treasures there. Proverbs 252 says, it’s the glory of God to conceal a thing. For his own wise ends, the way of salvation in Christ, and Christ’s infinite value, are hidden by God from people. if you could discover Christ’s value by your own searching, by your own human wisdom, then you would glory in your ability and your discernment. But by concealing Christ’s priceless value and being the one to reveal it, God gets all the glory. He is the revealer of secrets. You and I are astonished by this because this is not the way we would do things. If you and I were doing it, we wouldn’t do it this one. We wouldn’t be hiding it. But God, for his own ends, hides the wisdom and the knowledge that is in Christ, the treasure that’s there. You remember how Paul in the book of Romans, after talking about the blindness of Jews and the enlightenment that God gives the Gentiles. And how one is to provoke the other jealousy, so that the Jews eventually are provoked a jealousy, the Gentiles coming to faith in Christ. He ends that chapter in Romans 11 by saying this, Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments in his ways past finding out, for who hath known the mind of the Lord? We don’t think God’s thoughts the way he does, and it’s hard for us to do that. He does things differently than we do. But he has his own wise ends for what he does. does. So the treasures in Christ are hidden to the lost. Let me also say the treasures in Christ must be searched out by the believer. Now look with me at Luke, this gospel, chapter 18, if you would, verses 31 to 34. And he took unto him the 12 and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the son of man shall be accomplished, for he must be, he shall be delivered under the Gentiles, and be mocked, and spitefully entreated to spit it upon, and they shall scourge him, and put him to death, and the third day he shall rise again. And they understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them. Neither knew they the things which were spoken. They didn’t get it right away. It was, for some reason, it was hid from them. Look at chapter 9 of the book of Luke also. And verses 44 and 45, Let these sayings sink down in your ears, for the son of man shall be delivered in the hands of men, but they understood not this saying, and it was hid from them, and they perceived it not, and they feared to ask him of that saying. They didn’t get it right away. They didn’t understand. understand him. Even when you’re a disciple of Christ, that doesn’t mean you have full and complete understanding of all the treasures that are in Christ. The scripture teaches you need to grow in grace and in this knowledge that you have in Christ. Treasure isn’t placed in plain view. It has to be sought. And that’s why Proverbs talks about it in chapter 2, about seeking after wisdom. Nor can we rely just on our own industry or discernment. But we must diligently pray that God would open our eyes, that I may behold, or we may behold, wonders things out of his law, as Psalm 118 says. Let me say this. The Christian faith is not for the lazy. We must search the scriptures, for they testify and reveal things about Christ. Do they not? What a rebuke to the nudge. non-doctoral Christianity of today where the focus is all on feelings and emotions. You know, the scripture says it’s the glory of God to conceal a thing, and then it adds, but the honor of kings, the search out a matter. Has not Christ made us kings and priests under God? We are to search it out. That’s our duty. We see an example of this in the Old Testament prophets, how they carefully see. research what God revealed about them, to them, about the things of Christ. They wanted to know when Christ was going to come. They wanted to know more about what was revealed to them. They get this glimpse of the work of Christ and what he was going to do. They didn’t understand it all. And they wanted to know more. Peter talks about it in 1st Peter chapter 1. And so they were studying, they were thinking, they were pondering, they were asking for more light on this subject. And you’ll notice how God. God, little by little, reveals the truth about Christ as we go through the scriptures. Until we come to the New Testament, we get the full-blown picture of what we need to know about Christ. But they were very eager to understand and know. You know, you can’t read Paul’s epistles without it being revealed to you, something from the Old Testament that teaches about Christ that was revealed. We can talk about the Feast of Israel. and when we look at the feast, we’ll be looking at those later on here in this chapter, Lord willing. They all reveal something about Christ. When we talk about the furniture of the tabernacle or the temple, you read the book of Hebrews. They all reveal something about Christ. The high priesthood, the sacrifices were all meant to teach something about Christ. The kingdom of David, we’ve been studying this on Sunday nights, foreshadows Christ coming king. There are types and shadows of Christ coming kingdom. Christ all through the Old Testament. The Psalms contain the very words of Christ, as we talked about. The major and minor prophets are full of truths concerning Christ. So the New Testament provides a rich theology concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s plenty of us for us to study all through our lifetime about Jesus Christ. Well, let me close. Down through the ages, man has been on the quest. defined hidden treasure. He’s looking all over the place. Ocean bottoms and throughout the deserts for the caves and treasure mines and so forth. But the real treasure, man fails to seek after. The real treasure is Jesus Christ. In true religion, where the focus is on Jesus Christ, you have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that relate to yourself. salvation and your true happiness. However, these treasures are hidden in Christ, and they have to be searched out. And therefore, search the scriptures. For they testify of the magnificence of Jesus Christ. From Genesis through Revelation. Well, let us close with a word of prayer this morning.