Lessons From Colossians – Introduction
When we went thru Esther and then Nehemiah. We got to learn truths and principals thru the events and lives of people. We got to see it all played out before us. We could see God working as we read thru the story.
We are now going to switch to a different type of scripture. God’s Word contains many different what they call literally styles. There are historical accounts, and different types of those. There are ones like Esther and Nehemiah that are full of passion and heart and faith and prayer. Historical accounts like that are exciting and get you involved. There are also dry types of historical accounts like parts of Kings and Chronicles.
Scripture includes poetry sections. And different types there as well. Psalms is Hebrew poetry that is full of the emotions of the heart. They also include Proverbs in the poetry category but it is quite different. It concentrates on wisdom. The book of Job is also in the poetry category, but it is a total different type.
God created language and He knows how to use it. And God used all kinds of literally types in His word.
We are going to now take a look at the book of Colossians. It is very different. You could say that it is a huge amount of truths condensed into as few words as possible. There is no story that spans decades like there is in Esther and Nehemiah. But there is a story. It is just not all laid out before us in one place. You have to put some pieces together. Some of the verses in Colossians can easily be read over and the impact of what is being said is dimmed because they are stated without all of the context that sheds light upon it.
Colossians is one of those books that you have to take your time with. Do not speed read it. And I think it helps to take some time to understand the background of the person who wrote it, when it was written, and what was going on at Colossae that prompted the writing of the book.
We did some of that when we took a look at the life of Paul.
I think it is also helpful to know a little about where the town of Colossae was.
Although no excavations have yet taken place, surveys of the site reveal remains on the acropolis including a defensive wall and a pit lined with stones to the west.
An acropolis was the upper part of an ancient Greek city, frequently a hill mainly chosen for purposes of defense.
A theater lies on the eastern side and a necropolis to the north of the Lycus River, a branch of the Meander. A necropolis was what they called their graveyard.
And it was very common for Greek cities of any size at all of that period to have a theater.
All of that has been found and aligns with the time period of the book of Colossians.
We know that the Persians took over many countries, and fought with the Greeks from time to time and eventually the Greeks took over the Persian Empire.
Later the Romans took over the Greeks. So at the time of the book of Colossians they are a roman city, but still very much a Greek city as far as architecture, language, history. So you have a blending of Roman and Greek culture in Colossae.
Greek and Roman culture and traditions do not line up with Christianity. There are anti-Christian influences from the culture and its philosophy.
Colossae was a city of Phrygia and we know from the book of Acts that there were some people present from that country at the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came. And when Peter preached and 3,000 people got saved. We don’t know if any of those that got saved were from Phrygia, but those there that day would have been introduced to the Gospel and then went back home.
Paul did travel thru Phrygia on his second and third missionary journey. Not sure if he ever went to Colossae.
As we saw last week the book of Colossians was written about 62 A.D. by Paul from the Prison in Rome.
Jesus went to the cross about 33 A.D. There can be some debate on that. Some put it as early as 31 A.D. So about 30 years have passed since Jesus went back to Heaven.
A lot has happened over those 3 decades. As we saw last week Paul has learned some things over that amount of time.
Another principal that helps us understand Colossians we learned in Nehemiah.
What Tobiah could not do thru threats, and verbal attacks and force, he accomplished another way. Tobiah could not stop the building the wall, which was called the work of God. But after the wall was finished the work of God kept going. It just switched from building the wall to revival.
After Nehemiah left Tobiah made some kind of crooked no good rotten deal with the priest and moved into the house of God. And he stopped the work of God. After that the singers are gone, and the Levites gone back to their fields. And the vessels for the sacrifices taken out.
Tobiah ended up winning. What he could not accomplish from the outside, he did from the inside. The Old Testament is full of principals like this that explain the way things work.
Inside corruption is more dangerous than outside persecution. More harm can be done to the work of God from the inside than from the outside.
That principal worked in Nehemiah’s day and it worked in Paul’s day and it is still alive and well today.
Over and over in the New Testament we see letters were written to combat one type or another of corruption and false teaching.
Attack from the outside and Christians help each other and they pray and they receive God’s grace and help to get thru it.
Attack from the inside and things start falling apart much more easily. Someone on the outside teaches some heresy and it is ignored.
Someone on the inside teaches some false teaching, some error, and some of the people accept it. Especially if it is taught by someone who is respected. I have personally seen this up close. When error is being taught some people will put their respect of the person over what the Bible says.
This kind of thing can and does destroy churches. And not just churches. This principal also applies to corporations. When one or more people in a corporation start going a different way than the others and they start attacking each other. That can have the effect of making the board in a practical sense nonfunctional.
It is no longer about what the company is trying to achieve.
Attacks and wars from within are more dangerous than attacks from without. That is just a principal of life.
The devil knows all about this principal. And we see it over and over in the New Testament how false teachers were sent into churches and caused trouble. We see it in Galatians and Corinthians and in the letters to the churches in Revelation.
And we see it in Colossians. The false teaching going on at Colossae had to do with an admixture of Greek, Jewish and Oriental religions. Kind of a “higher thought” cult. It called for the worship of angels as intermediaries between God and man. And it insisted on the strict observance of certain Jewish requirements.
So you had Greek and Oriental religions being taught and at the same time observance of Jewish rituals being taught and it was getting mixed together.
And then of course you had some that were bothered about that and understood the danger. One of those that understood the danger was a man named Epaphras. So he travels to Rome to see Paul and ask for help.
Before Paul was arrested he had written several letters to help churches with their problems. 1st and 2nd Corinthians are examples. Those letters were copied and sent to other churches. By the time we get to the Colossians having trouble in their church, it was well known that Paul would help by writing a letter of instruction.
Epaphras cared enough about his fellow church members to go find Paul. He cared enough about God’s truth. Epaphras is loving God and his fellow man by making this trip. He travels all the way to Rome and finds Paul and tells him what is going on. Paul writes the book of Collosians and sends it to Colossae by Tychicus and Onesimus.
So now the back story is laid out. We know what has happened in Paul’s life and we know what is going on in Colossae.
So we are now ready to start looking at the book of Colossians.