Be Still And Know

Colossians 2:16-17 Don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths. For these rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ himself is that reality. Throughout history, religious people have been famous for their rules and regulations. We see it particularly clearly with the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. They lived meticulously according not only to the law of Moses but also to layers of other regulations which had been introduced by the rabbis. It isn’t surprising that in the early Church, one of the greatest challenges came from those who wanted to impose complicated regulations upon the new Christians. These came from many places, particularly from the Gnostics, whose religion was built upon complicated rules about eating and drinking and the observance of special days. Paul was not saying that all rules were bad. A well-ordered family, church or society will only work smoothly if there are rules. Paul’s conc

Colossians 2:14-15 [Christ] cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. The cross stood right at the centre of Paul’s understanding of the good news. Put simply, if you want to understand Jesus, you have to see him through the lens of the cross. John Stott, in his book [itals]The Cross of Christ[end itals], summed this up when he wrote: “There is then, it is safe to say, no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.” For this reason, Paul focused his preaching on the cross even though he was fully aware that the message didn’t always go down well. Jews found it a stumbling block because the law of Moses declared that anyone who hung from a tree was cursed. Meanwhile, non-Jews just found the idea of someone dying on a cross completely foolish. How could anyone find anyt

Colossians 2:8-9 Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. Paul didn’t believe in beating around the bush! He was so convinced that Christ was the complete answer to the human predicament that he saw every other philosophy as a waste of time. That didn’t mean he was unwilling to spend time listening to people with other beliefs. He simply didn’t believe that they had anything to offer when compared with Christ. When Paul visited Athens, he spent a great deal of time speaking with the philosophers and gladly accepted an invitation to address the Areopagus, which was the forum where the Greeks held debates. He sensitively referred to their own poets and thinkers, but his focus was always to proclaim Christ. It is the fact that Jesus was both fully man and fully God which marks him apart from other great teachers.

Colossians 1:22-23 You are holy and blameless as you stand before [Christ] without a single fault. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. What Christ has done for us is absolutely amazing. Failed and sinful as we are, he has totally forgiven us and made us right with God. He has made it possible for us to stand before him, holy and blameless and without fault. But that doesn’t mean we can now take it easy and do what we want. We need to stand firm in our faith and ensure we don’t slip away from the truth. In my experience, very few people who drift away from Christian faith do so because they suddenly disbelieve it. What normally happens is that they become distracted and busy with other things. Gradually, their work, family, sport or hobby claims their attention and they find it inconvenient to attend worship. Sometimes they move house and find it difficult to find another church in which they feel

Colossians 1:15 Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation. Most people have good things to say about Jesus. They like that he welcomed every kind of person; they admire that he was willing to stand up to the religious rulers of his time; they enjoy that he told compelling, down-to-earth stories and went out of his way to get alongside people; and they value how full of love he was. The apostle Paul, however, goes far beyond these kind comments. For Paul, Jesus showed the world exactly what God was like. Just as we can look at a coin and see what the sovereign looks like, so too by looking at Jesus we can see precisely what God is like. We don’t know exactly what Paul’s opponents were teaching, but it seems to have been a combination of Jewish and Greek thought. Paul’s answer was to give them the most magnificent and clear description of Jesus: he is not only the one who existed before anything was created, but is now the one wh

Colossians 1:13-14 [God] has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins. Paul was absolutely clear that when someone becomes a Christian, their whole life changes completely. We move to a new country! The kingdom of darkness is now behind us and we have entered the kingdom of light with Jesus Christ standing at the centre of it. In that new country, we experience freedom for the first time in our life, having been set free from all those things that conspire to enslave us. Slavery was an everyday part of Roman society. Paul often spoke of life before becoming a Christian as being like a form of spiritual slavery. Without Christ, we are slaves to our own selfish and ultimately destructive will, but through Christ, we can be set free. Under Roman law, it was possible for a slave to be freed. It was a process called manumission, and one of the ways of achieving it was for the slave to pay his master compensation

Colossians 1:11-12 We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. Life can be incredibly tough. Paul often spoke of the challenges he had faced which involved rejection, betrayal, shipwrecks, imprisonment, beatings and much more. He also knew that the Colossian church was going through a difficult time and needed huge strength to keep going in a godly way. They needed to know how to endure and be patient when they were under extreme pressure. Most people who face attack will fight back, but Paul knew that this was not what God wanted. The word for patience used to be translated as ‘longsuffering’. Being patient is tough enough, but to be longsuffering is beyond all of us. The only way we can keep on being patient is with God’s help. He helps us to be kind towards people who are rude and obstructive. He shows us how to face rejection with love and understanding. He enabl

Colossians 1:9 We have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Recently, I heard someone say that the situation they were facing was so desperate that all they could do was pray about it. They made it sound as if their circumstances were so hopeless that they were willing to grasp at any option, however daft. We need to be clear that the apostle Paul saw prayer in a completely different way. For him, prayer was not the last resort but the first. He prayed for the people in Colossae because, even though he didn’t know them, he cared about them and longed that they would thrive as Christians in a tough environment. Paul’s prayer for the Colossian Christians was that they would know God’s will. That always needs to be at the heart of our prayers. Prayer is never our opportunity to tell God what we think is best, or to ask him to implement the decisions we have made. Because God is all

Colossians 1:6 This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace. Following Christ always involves radical change. James and John had to leave their boats and their fishing nets and follow Jesus. Zacchaeus, the tax collector, had to make things right with all the people he had defrauded. And Saul, the devout Jew who was determined to stamp out the Church, changed his name and his whole direction of life, becoming Jesus’ most passionate ambassador. Christ meets us as individuals, so the changes that take place in our lives will be unique. As a teenager, I heard many amazing testimonies from people who had been dramatically changed by Christ. I heard about people who had been on hard drugs for years and who had found new life and liberty in their newfound faith. I listened to people who had pursued a life of crime and then met C

Colossians 1:4-5 We have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. Having hope is incredibly important. Dostoevsky, the famous writer, said: “To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness.” Above the entrance to Dante’s hell was the inscription: “Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.” The Colossian church were so confident of the future that God had for them that they were full of hope, and that inspired both their faith in Christ and their love for their Christian brothers and sisters. It was like an engine inside them producing nothing but blessing. Human life is often characterised by hopelessness. In 1850, Bishop Wilberforce said: “I dare not marry for the future is so dark and unsettled.” In 1851, the Duke of Wellington said: “I thank God I shall be spared from seeing the consummation of ruin that is gathering about us.” And, the following year, the Conservative polit

Matthew 28:8-9 The women ran quickly from the tomb. They were very frightened but also filled with great joy, and they rushed to give the disciples the angel’s message. And as they went, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they ran to him, grasped his feet, and worshiped him. The women who found the empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday morning must have experienced a riot of emotions. They had got up early to anoint the body of Jesus because this was the first opportunity to do so after the sabbath. Their astonishment that the stone of the tomb had been rolled away was compounded by meeting an angel whose face shone like lightning and whose clothing was as white as snow. The angel informed them that Jesus had risen from the dead, just as he had promised, and told them to go and tell the disciples. As they ran off, Matthew records that they were very frightened but also filled with great joy. Then, amid this tumult of emotions, they suddenly met Jesus himself. The women could not keep the amazing news of

Matthew 27:57-60 As evening approached, Joseph, a rich man from Arimathea who had become a follower of Jesus, went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. And Pilate issued an order to release it to him. Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a long sheet of clean linen cloth. He placed it in his own new tomb, which had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a great stone across the entrance and left. We know very little about Joseph of Arimathea. The Gospel of Mark tells us that he was an honoured member of the high council of the Jews, and that he was waiting for the kingdom of God to come. The Gospel of Luke comments that he was a good and righteous man, and the Gospel of John informs us that he was a secret disciple of Jesus because he feared the Jewish leaders. That’s all we know. However, this brief account of him going to Pilate asking for the body of Jesus reveals that he was a man of exceptional courage. This initiative could easily have exposed him to enormous risk both from the Romans and the

Matthew 27:54 The Roman officer and the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened. They said, “This man truly was the Son of God!” When Jesus died, the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom and there was a great earthquake. It’s no wonder that the soldiers, tough as they were, were terrified. We need to be very grateful to the Gospel writers for recording so much of what took place, but there is so much more that we would love to know. I find it fascinating that the Gospel writers tell us nothing of the response of the religious people. We know that some of the Jewish leaders were very sympathetic to Jesus. I wonder what Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea thought. And what about the disciples? Wouldn’t it be fascinating to know what their reactions were on this most traumatic of days? Matthew only tells us about the reaction of one group of people. We would hardly have expected to hear any comment from them, because they w

Matthew 26:26 As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take this and eat it, for this is my body.” The Old Testament prophets frequently communicated through actions, proclaiming their messages both clearly and unforgettably. They are often called acted parables. In the Gospels, we see Jesus doing exactly the same thing. On Palm Sunday, his entry into Jerusalem on a donkey powerfully declared that he was both a king and a man of peace. Then, on the night before his crucifixion, Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples and declared while breaking bread that it represents his broken body. The Passover meal is an annual opportunity for Jews to revisit the people of Israel’s miraculous liberation from Egypt. That historic event proved that God is a God of salvation. He is able to do things which are humanly impossible. During the Last Supper, Jesus stood before his disciples as the Saviour of the World. The disciples h

Matthew 26:7 While [Jesus] was eating, a woman came in with a beautiful alabaster jar of expensive perfume and poured it over his head. Things were hotting up. Jesus had launched a tirade against the religious leaders and they were now absolutely committed to seeing him put to death. We learn that they had a secret meeting at the home of the High Priest, Caiaphas, in order to plan this. Amid all of this ferment, we go to a home in the village of Bethany and meet a woman performing the most amazing act of devotion to Jesus. At the time, it was quite usual for a Jewish woman to carry a little alabaster jar of precious perfume around her neck. This perfume could be incredibly valuable, and in the Gospels of Mark and John, we are told that it was worth 300 denarii. That would be about a year’s earnings! It was a phenomenal act of devotion, and it is unsurprising that the disciples were shocked by what she did. They saw it as a terrible waste and reflected that the money could have been used to help the poor. B

Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” The battle of words between Jesus and the Jewish leaders had got to fever pitch. They had challenged him about his authority, and the Sadducees had just come up with a really awkward question about the resurrection. Now the Pharisees got together to push Jesus to the limit. They asked him a question they often discussed among themselves: “What is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” If Jesus tripped up on this question, they could label him as a blasphemer. But Jesus gave them the classic Jewish answer: loving God with everything you’ve got is the first commandment, and the second is loving your neighbour as yourself. Loving God should still be our absolute priority, and we

Matthew 21:12-13 Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves!” The joyful celebration of Palm Sunday is followed by something completely different. Jesus walked into Jerusalem and was angered by the sight of the Temple precinct crowded with traders. This was nothing new. In order for worshippers to make their sacrifices, there was a rule that they had to purchase their birds or animals in the coinage of Tyre. They therefore needed the money changers to convert their Roman and Greek coins into that currency. This system was developed over many years, but Jesus’ concern was that it totally obscured the real purpose of the Temple. Instead of it being a house of prayer, it had been turned into a noisy shopping mall within which unsc

Matthew 21:8-9 Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Jesus was in the centre of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting: “Praise God for the Son of David! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the LORD! Praise God in highest heaven!” At the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, we read about the Magi. They were important people from the East who visited Jesus after seeing a star, which showed them that a king had been born. At the time, their belief couldn’t have seemed further from the truth. Born to poor parents in a cattle shed, nothing suggested that Jesus was a king. But now, towards the end of his life, we see him being greeted as royalty. Spreading garments on the road and cutting down tree branches was the way they would welcome a king. The crowd was acknowledging that Jesus stood in the line of King David. But he was no ordinary king. Jesus surprised people throughout his ministry,

Colossians 1:3-4 We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people. It is unlikely that Paul and Timothy had ever visited the church in Colossae, but Paul and Timothy had heard all about the Colossians and they were constantly in their prayers. They knew they had not only a strong faith in Jesus but also a love for other Christians. This is the calling of every follower of Christ because loving him immediately brings us into relationship with other Christians. When we start following Christ, we are not cured of our natural selfishness, so it is sadly possible for Christians to be extremely self-centred in their discipleship. It is possible for us to focus on our own spiritual life and development and to neglect our responsibility to other Christians. This is deeply sad because we need the enrichment of spending time with our Christian brothers and sisters. We need to be challenged an

Colossians 1:2 [Paul and Timothy wrote:] “We are writing to God’s holy people in the city of Colossae, who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our Father give you grace and peace.” Colossae was not a particularly important town and was overshadowed by its rich and much more illustrious neighbours, Laodicea and Hierapolis. It is unlikely that Paul had ever visited the Colossians. However, in this important letter, he wanted them to know how significant they were. He calls them saints, God’s holy people. What mattered was not how they viewed themselves, or how other people saw them, but their relationship with God. He saw them as a special people, set apart for him. Many people are convinced that they are of no importance, and that it’s the people with gifts, money and influence who really matter in this life, but God would disagree with that. His view is that everyone is important because all of us have been made in his image, and if you have given your life to Christ, then you are a saint