Uh, let me begin by just telling you a little bit about myself. Um, I have pastored in Scottsdale for about 40 years, um, for a big chunk of the first part of that as a senior pastor in South Scottsdale. And then, um, I, uh, was for 22 years, the executive pastor at Northridge where I met John and uh, it was excited to see him, uh grow as a youth pastor and then as speaking and, and then going out and planting a church. It's really exciting to see. Um, I'm also the father of four and, and uh, grandparent of eight, um, and last December just a couple of months ago, my wife and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. So, thank you. I appreciate that. Um, when people hear that they say, what does it take to uh, be happily married for 50 years? And I always have the same answer. I'm not, I'm not sure if any of you would like to hear what that answer is. Ok. Um Then I'll tell you, um, actually two weeks before we were married. Um, and I always carry this with me. Um, I, I have a little journal that I filled out with the rules that, uh Lynn was gonna need to follow and I, I let her know we have a section on money, how much she could spend and, and then we have a section on housekeeping, uh, both prior to Children and then after we had Children, um, there's a section on, um, and I'm not gonna read that one to you. But, uh, a anyways, I brought it to Lynn, she read it and she signed it and, uh, you know, only a couple of times in the 50 years, actually, probably four or five times. I've had to pull it out when she was doing something and say, you know, the rules and she'd go, oh, ok. And everything was better. Um, and, and for those of you who think that's a really good idea. I should do that. Um, we, we have Curt and Jill Webber who are here and they lead a marriage class on Tuesday nights. Their first one was, uh, last Tuesday and they have five more sessions. And if you think it's a good idea to present rules to your spouse, um, you really need to be at that class. Ok. Could I encourage you to do that? Um, but interestingly as we continue this study that John's begun in the book of Colossians, a similar thing is going on in the church, the Paul has, has seen people come to Christ and they are excited about their relationship with Christ and, and they're going, I'm so in love with Christ and I feel so loved by Christ. And there's a group of, um, uh, joy suckers who just suck the joy out of people by going to them and saying now that you have this relationship with Christ, that is so cool. Let me give you a list of rules for you to follow. And somehow they think, and we're gonna see this as we go through this passage. They think that by following the rules, you're gonna get deeper in to a relationship here. You are in a relationship with somebody who loves you, who cares about you, who wants the best for you, they support you and now you're gonna go back to rules and, and I gotta tell you that for many Christians, many people who walk with Christ, their walk with Christ is more about the rules. The, the, and, and there's some of you sitting here and going, uh, uh, you know, wait a minute. There are rules. Anybody here like rules. No. No. Yeah. Do you know what? Have you ever watched a sporting event where they blew it on the rules? Yeah. You know, some of you have broken TV. S at that point when you were watching them, we like rules but rules don't help us in our relationships with someone that we love. They just don't because most of us try to get to the edge of the rules. I, I have three boys. That means they are all adults and doing fine. There, there was this period of time that we call teenage and they always wanted to know the rules and interesting, not so that they could hit the bull's eye. They wanted to know where's the target and, and they wanted to know where's the edge. I, I remember Lynn one day we were, we were on vacation in, in California. And she came, my wife Lynn and she came, and she said to me, I just saw a bumper sticker. That's so funny. I go, what was it? It says how much can I sin and still get to heaven a and, and really when you have a list of rules and here's this group of people and we're gonna see it as we go through Colossians that were coming in and they were saying here are the rules and if you just follow the rules, you will have a good personal relationship with Christ and these people and Paul is going nnn No, you already have a good relationship with Jesus Christ. And so what we're gonna, we're gonna talk about, I've kind of titled it self-awareness because um lots of times as Christians, we're not aware of who we are. And so in this section, Paul is gonna go, this is who you are and this is who you're not, this is who you are and this is who you're not. This is who you are and this is who you're not. And you're gonna say it sounds like the same thing over and over and it is, it is, it's so similar each time with just a little bit of a twist on it. So the first thing that he tells them is in Colossians two verses six through seven. And he says you are living in Christ. Pastor John did this section last week, but I just really wanna reemphasize it because it begins this section on this is who you are. You are living in Christ. So then just as you received Christ, Jesus as Lord continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness. Two words I wanna focus on just for a moment in that section. The first one is Lord lots of times as Christians, we think Lord is Jesus first name, it's Lord Jesus Christ. So we pray to Lord and it's, that's the name, that's not his name, that's who he is. Um It it's other times in the New Testament, translated as master. And and the people in Colo, Colosse had no confusion as to what this word meant because many of them, if not, most of them were slaves, they had a master every day when they woke up, they wanted to know what the master wanted them to do. And so it says that we have lo the Lord, we, the lord lives in us. It means we are living our life for the Lord because he's living in us. That's who's living out of us. I tried to think of a picture that would help us understand that because most of us want Jesus Christ to be Lord. Most of the time periodically we go, you know, I, I think I'll take control here but it's a little bit like me going to my wife and saying, honey, you're the number one woman in my life when she gets a smile on her face and I go Betty Lewis number two and Sarah Lynn is number three. But don't worry, you're number one is, is she happy being? Number one? Some of you are going, I don't know, it seems like a good deal to me back to the marriage class. Kurt and Jill are right there. No, she doesn't want, she doesn't want to be number one. She wants to be the only one, you know, in the, in the old testament. God says that you can call me jealous because jealous means I will not tolerate a rival if I go to Lynn and I say you're number one. But here's number two. And number three, I can guarantee you the locks on the doors will be changed because that's not who she wants to be. Is Jesus Christ, Lord of our lives or is he a significant influence in our life? Because if he's a significant influence, he doesn't want to be, he doesn't wanna be. He wants to be the Lord of our life. And we have, it says he's living in us. The Lord is living in us. The second word I wanna focus on is the word grateful. It says overflowing with thankfulness, overflowing with thankfulness. Um Are you a thankful person? Are you a grateful person? Is if, if you got three of your friends together and said, uh, hey, I was just thinking, uh I'm trying to figure out what words kind of describe my life. How, how about thankful? And if they fall off their chair laughing, then probably you might want to work on that area. Uh Have you, have you ever tried to help someone? And maybe it's a, a friend, maybe it's a brother or a sister, maybe it's a parent, a cousin, someone at work. You really wanted to help them, but no matter what you did, it wasn't enough. Have you ever had anyone like that or when you finally they asked for something else? He said, I, we I can't do it. And I said, well, you've never really helped. I don't know if you've ever had that experience, but if you have, I could have told you up front that that person is not a grateful person, that's not who they are. And if you would have identified that quickly, it probably would have saved a lot of confusion in your life, but this is not about them. It's about us. Are we thankful people? Are we grateful? Do we live our lives in a way that just seems. Wow, you are so grateful. Um Polycarp was an early Christian um leader and he was tied to a post one day. A wood was piled around him and they said we're gonna set you on fire. All you have to do is deny Christ and we'll take it all away. And he looked at them and he said, you, you do realize you're threatening me with paradise and they set him on fire. But see his opinion was that all that can happen. Let me see what you're saying is if you don't deny Christ, we're gonna send you to him. I'm good with that. Are we a person who is that grateful? And we think of Christ as being that much in control of our life? Or, or do we have excuses for why things aren't going well? Well, I made a bad investment. Well, my wife did this to me. Well, at work, they did the, do we always have an excuse or do we find in life that God has made us so thankful for all that he's given us? So the first thing we need to know is that we have uh you are living in Christ, you, you're living in Christ. The second thing you need to know the negative side is you are not slaves to lies and traditions. Two again, 22 words I want us to focus on and the word is slaves. Um You're going, I don't see the word slave. Here's what the passage says. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and on basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. The, the, the word to take captive literally was people Steelers. It was uh um people who would, when, when an army would go out and conquer a group of people, some of the people they would capture and they would bring back, they would steal them and bring them back as slaves. Um And so they were taken captive. So maybe you have a translation that says, don't let anyone enslave you um through hollow and deceptive philosophies that depend on human tradition. What was happening in the Colossians church is that there was this group of people who said you, you just have to follow these rules. We have these simple rules, you know, they, they, they're not complicated. Do you know when, when I was, when I was young, you've got so many more now to follow. I, I just had a, a few. It was don't drink chew or dance or go out with girls who do so. So it's real simple. But now there's all kinds of rules. Um And, and following those rules, does that make your walk with Christ better. Of course not. If, if you're just following the rules, it is not enhancing your relationship with Christ. But if I'm living my life for Christ, if he is in me, do I have to follow rules? Do I follow rules at home? Because Lynn has a list of rules on the refrigerator. If so we have a really messed up marriage. But if I go, she loves me, I love her. I want the best for her. She wants the best for me. Why would I, why would I want to do anything that would hurt her or, or make her unhappy? And so if there's gonna be an area of disagreement, we'll sit down and talk about it. And, and so I, I share that with you because here was a group of people in the church who had a whole list of rules. You need to follow these things in each of our points. We're gonna keep coming back to, here's the list of rules and so you can either live your life as though you love Christ or you can live your life in guilt because you're messing up on the rules because we all try to figure out how to get around the rules. Here's the sec second thing that you are, you are filled with Christ for in Christ before we get to that. Do you know what II I just wrote down that I love this song. This, this this song when you talk about being enslaved. If you, you heard the song Brandon, if you, you've heard the song, I think of I'm no longer a slave to fear, but I'm a child of God. Could, could, you, could the band come out, can, can you come up here and lead us in that? Because what I want you to understand is that we have tools that we can use to reinforce. So what I would like you to do right now is as the band comes, I want us to stand. We're gonna sing a song we can do it. Come on. Very good. OK, we're standing and we are gonna sing, but I don't want you to sing by the rules. I want you to be enthusiastic in your passion for understanding that you are no longer a slave, but you're a child of God Brandon. You ready? Alright. Let's fix our eyes on Jesus with I surround late frown. We are Children. Thank you. Praise team and thanks for singing. Is it does it, doesn't that make more sense? Doesn't it make more sense to live our lives as a child of God? Than as a slave to fear that we're not following all the rules. Exactly right. And you know what? There's, there's some of you here who you're going. I just can't even fathom not doing that. I've done my whole life doing that is, is just trying to follow the rules, trying to be good enough and, and when a light switch clicks on and we go, no, no, no, no, I'm a child of God. It changes everything friends. The second thing we see is that we do not only are living in Christ, but you are filled with Christ for in Christ. All the fullness of deity lives in bodily form. Do you know what that says? That Jesus is 40% God. Some of you who wrote down 40% you crossed that out quick. No, 100% God. He is the fullness of deity. He is God 100%. And guess what? He's got 100%. And you have been given the fullness in Christ who is the head over every power and authority? Can you, can you grasp that thought for a moment that, that the God who created the universe fills us up. He's, he's able to, to fill us fill every corner of our lives and, and that we go. Yes. Yes. I now get to live my life exactly the way God wants me to just, just guided by Him. What helps us more, um, a list of rules or a relationship with someone. Let me give you an example. There have been those particularly a person who has suggested that my driving is, is not the best a and so I have a choice. I can go down to the department of Motor Vehicles and I can get that little booklet on driving and I can set it in the seat next to me. And as I'm driving down the road every once in a while I can flip the pages and kind of make sure that I'm driving according to the rules or regularly. A part of, uh, Mission Grove is, uh, of a friend of mine, Corey butler who's also, um, a Phoenix police officer and I could have him in the seat next to me. And as I'm driving, I could be saying, hey, Corey, how am I doing? And Corey could say, hey, Dan, you know, legally you're, you're, you're doing fine, but you know, you're kind of crowding that line a little bit. You're not going over it, but maybe you want to slide back more to the middle. Oh, ok. Little ways down the road. Corey. How am I doing now? Yeah. You know, Dan, legally, you're driving the speed limit, but you're over in the fast lane and there's a whole lot of people who wanna zip by you. Maybe you wanna move over into one of the other lanes, which one is gonna be more effective in helping me be a better driver. The booklet or my relationship with Corey and him being right there with us. The fullness of Christ is in us. The fullness of Christ has been given to us and he guides us friends. You, you understand this, I, I share this with the guys all the time. You know what uh I just, we go, I, I'm just not sure what God wants me to do. 99.9% of the time. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Does God want me to move to Sheboygan? I don't know. I can't imagine why. But does God want me to yell and scream at my kids? II, I sit there, I, I don't have to go just a second. I need to pray about this. Dear God. Should I be yelling and screaming? I'm waiting for an answer. No, I know right away. You know, as I going down the highway and a guy cuts me off. Lord, should I get on his bumper and just lay on my horn? Really? Yeah, you had to pray about that. I don't think so. 99% of the time, we know what to do. God's put it in our heart and we, and we kind of wander away. You know, Lord, should I, I go to lunch with that, that woman at work in our hearts. We go, don't go there. It's, we're, we're already told and you go. Yeah, but legally it's ok but we know where our heart is. We don't know. It's probably not the best thing to do. Lord, should I be doing this? You already know the reason you're asking is, you know, there's so many things with my wife that I don't even have to ask. You know, a couple comes to me and says, hey, do you and Lynn want to go to a horror movie? Yeah, pretty much not. Well, don't you want to ask Clinton? Pretty much not? I know, I, we have a relationship. I know what she likes and she doesn't like a, as, as we walk with Christ and Christ fully in us. We know what Christ wants, don't, we don't, you know, are you often confused on these moral decisions? I think not. I think we know. And so what it tells us is that Jesus is fully God and he's given to us. So here's another, this is who you're not. You are not judged for religious activities. Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to religious festivals, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath Day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come. The reality however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who lights and false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you from the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen and is his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the head from whom the whole body supported and held together by its ligaments. And s news grows as God causes it to grow. Do, do you know the, the Jewish people had all kinds of laws? You know, it wasn't just the 10 commandments. They divided them up. Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. Why is that important? Because God loves us and he wants us to have rest and he wants to have us have time with him. And there is what it is. But the Jewish people took it and they, they, they found ways to divide that up, up into these little slices of rules. You know, one of the ways they looked at it is they said, you know what, um, if you're not gonna work, remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. So we're not gonna work on the Sabbath. And therefore you can't walk more than a stone's throw away from your house. Ok. How far is that? Well, what you do is you go get a pup tent. If you have to go on a little bit of a longer trip, you go, um, get a pup tent, you take a stone, you throw it, you walk out to the stone, set up your pup tent and I'll call that home. Take the stone, throw it again. They literally would do that. And if you say, well, that's bizarre way back then, let me tell you what would happen if you went to Israel today today, today, where 97% of the people who live in Israel are not, not religious. Ok? But if you go on a tour, you go there and you go to a hotel, maybe it's a 10 story hotel in your room is on the eighth floor and it's now sundown on Friday night from sundown on Friday night till sundown on Saturday night. When you go into the hotel and you wanna go up to the eighth floor and you get in the elevator and you push your button uh for the eighth floor. When the elevator finally comes, you get in, you're the only one in the elevator and it goes and it opens on the second floor. You go who pushed the button and then it stops on the third floor and then it stops on the fourth floor and it stops on the fifth floor. You know why they do that? They program the elevator so that you don't have to work on the Sabbath and pushing the button is work. And so in order for you not to do that, they program the elevator all day to stop on every floor up and down. See those were the, the rules and, and o obviously, they didn't have elevators in those days, but the reality was here was a group of people that were coming into the Christian church and, and they were saying to them, you know, it is so nice that you have this relationship with Christ. But here are the rules. Let's give you the rules so that you can have the right relationship. And Paul says, don't make anybody judge you by the rules. And by the way, there's some of you here who are going. Oh, my goodness. This is so cool. II, I no longer have to live by any rules and, and some parents are here going. Boy. I wish I wouldn't have brought my teenager into this one. The reality is we don't have to, we get to, I don't have to live a certain way so that God will go. Oh, you're good enough. No, I love God and he loves me and I want to live a way that is God honoring and God pleasing. Does that make sense? One way is about rules and guilt in one way is about joy and relationship. I give you a quick illustration. Has anybody ever gone out to the airport to pick up somebody? And you sat right outside the security thing on the chairs out there? Well, imagine sitting there and on one side of you there's a guy with a bunch of roses, bunch of flowers and, and he is waiting for his wife to come back from a business trip. And on the other side, you have a man who's got a bunch of flowers and he's waiting for his wife to come back from a business trip. And, and the guy on your left is having an affair in his soul filled with guilt and he's so worried his wife is gonna find out. And so he's got those flowers and when she comes off the plane and he sees her coming up, he runs up and he gives her the flowers and he plants a big kiss on her and the other guy just, he and his wife are having an amazing relationship. They love each other. They want the best for each other. He sees her coming and he, he jumps up and he runs and he gives her the flowers and he plants a big kiss on her, but he is filled with nothing but joy. The behavior looked exactly the same. It, it looked totally the same. They were radically different. One was totally motivated by guilt. One was totally motivated by obligation and the other was motivated by relationship and, and in the church at Colosse, there was a group of people that were coming in and they were saying, yes, you have a relationship with Christ but you need to keep the rules and, and Paul just went. No, you're missing the whole point. And in fact, it says this, it says you are dead with Christ. Here's who you aren't, here's who you are since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world. This week, I was wearing a uh a T shirt that talked about God and um went and got my car washed up up here at Cobblestone and, and then as I'm waiting for the car to go through the car wash, a guy comes up to me and says, oh, so you're involved in a church and we started talking. He says, yeah, I'm 80 years old. And he says, five years ago, he says, I've been for 75 years. I was involved in a church with all legalism. Keep the rules, keep the rules, keep the rules. And five years ago, my granddaughter asked me to come to this church and, uh, see her get baptized. And he says, I went there and, and I've never been back to my other church. He says, I, I came to Christ and it's such a joy. I, he says, I now at 80 years old, I work in the children's program. He just, he wanted to serve, he wanted to do it. He was, his life was filled and not with rules. See, that's what baptism is, is. It's a picture of dying with Christ and coming back new. And it says that we have died with Christ. The third thing that we are not, we are not controlled by rules. You're going, you've said that. Yeah, Paul says it over and over here in verse 20. It says why? As though you still belong to it, do you submit to its rules? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. These are all destined to perish with use because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body. But they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. The do you get the picture? One is based on a relationship and one is based on rules. So often we try to motivate people to live a God honoring life by telling them all the rules. When in reality, all we need to see is that Jesus Christ loved us, gave his life for us and now we are able to respond by loving him. Do you see the difference? And, and you may have grown up in, in a church, you may, you may have grown up with, with parents who beat you, beat it into you. And I don't mean physically, but just over and over and over that you have to keep these rules and or you can, you can continue to grow in the fact that Jesus Christ is in me and he loves me and he cares about me and I wanna live in a way that's pleasing for him. So I don't know where you are at. You know, like I say, sometimes the behaviors can look identical. Um but one's motivated by guilt and one's motivated by love. Paul knew he was a sinner, but he knew he was saved by God. He knew he was loved. So what I'm gonna ask us to do is we're gonna, we're gonna stand and we're gonna end the service with a prayer. But before we do, I wanna read one more section of Colossians, but I'd like to read it while we're standing, often times they would stand for the reading of scripture just out of respect. They, they would say I don't have to, but I love God and they would stand and, and, and listen to Paul's words in Colossians chapter two verses 13 to 15, when you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins. Having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and it stood opposed to us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross and having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. That's who we are. We are a child of God and Christ has defeated the rules so that we could have a relationship. Father. I thank you for these people. Uh I pray Lord that as they walk out, they will walk out different, different changed that they will walk out either recognizing that they are a child of yours and, and that the guilt and shame that that would keep them from a close relationship with you is just washed away it, it, it, it's just gone because the light switches come on and they see that they are loved by you. I pray Lord that each person would have that. And if there are those here who Lord so desperately want that, I, I pray that they will not leave today without talking to someone about how they can experience that kind of a life. I thank you Jesus for loving us, for caring about us and for walking out with us. And I pray that this army of people will go make a difference in their community. We pray these things in your name for your glory, Jesus. Amen.