Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Case Against The Prosperity Gospel | New Testament | Colossians 2

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

"The worst thing that could happen to our faith is to think there’s something to add to Jesus or something better than Jesus that would get our mind off of him." Do you believe that is true? What do you want more than Jesus? Keith discusses Colossians 2 and the reality that there's nothing better than Jesus. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Colossians 2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Have you heard of the Health, Wealth Gospel? Sometimes it's called the Prosperity Gospel. Whatever name it goes by, it's one of the most destructive heresies that the average Christian is tempted by. In its crassest form, it says that if you believe Jesus, if you obey Jesus, if you really

have faith in Jesus, he will make you rich. But like I said, that's only the crassest version of the prosperity gospel. And there are many other more subtle versions of it. For example, you might hear that if you have enough faith, God will heal you from cancer. Or if you date God's way, you'll have a great marriage. Or if you do all the right things as a parent, your kids will turn out well. If you pray with faith, God will do whatever you ask him to do. The core thing that's wrong with the health, wealth, gospel, or whatever name you call it,

is that it teaches people to use Jesus as a means to an end. They are saying that what they really want is wealth or health or a great marriage or great kids, and they will use Jesus to get those things. But that makes all those things greater than Jesus. But the Bible is clear. There is nothing and no one greater, nothing or no one more valuable, nothing and no one more worthy of our worship and devotion than Jesus.

God can't give us something better than Jesus. God can't give us something better than Jesus because there isn't anything better than Jesus. All the blessings that come to us come to us in Jesus. Here's Paul in 1 Corinthians. Jesus is our wisdom from God. That is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. All those things are found in Jesus. Or Paul writes in Ephesians 1.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realm with every spiritual blessing in Christ. So all the spiritual blessings that exist are found in Jesus. When you have Jesus, then you get peace. When you have Jesus, you get joy or contentment or all the other blessings that God gives. And that explains why Paul talked about Jesus all the time. First Corinthians two, for I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul wouldn't shut up about Jesus. When you poked him, when you cut him, he bled Jesus. Because he knew that Jesus was God's gift to us and that if a person had Jesus, they had everything in life

that they needed. And this explains why Satan's strategy is to pull us away from Jesus. 2 Corinthians 113, but I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. So Satan seeks to tempt us away from Jesus by putting our focus. on other things, or by leading us down a path of sin that slowly separates us from a close relationship with Christ. Hopefully by now, you're getting the point. Jesus is central. Jesus is everything to the Christian life. You don't want to replace Jesus with anything. So one of the worst things that can happen to our faith is to think there's something we need to add to Jesus or something better than Jesus that would

somehow pull our focus off of him. Paul writes in Philippians 3, what is more? I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ. Paul says, you can have everything I have, because in comparison to Jesus, all that I have is garbage. So anything that pulls us away from Jesus, anything that devalues Jesus, anything that tells us that Jesus isn't enough is something that we must avoid. It is dangerous to our soul. And yet, someone is coming into this church in Colossians and telling them that they need something else. These false teachers are devaluing Jesus and pulling the Colossians away from Jesus through mysticism, legalism, and human philosophy. So Paul tells them in chapter 2,

verse three, in Jesus, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And in Christ, all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form. And in Christ, you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. It's why he says in chapter three, verse three, you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Did you hear that? Jesus is your life. Sometimes we make things too complicated. Every time we go to church, every time we read our Bible, every time we pray, every time we hang out with Christian friends, all those things are good for us because they connect us to Jesus. If you take Jesus out of them, well, they're just habits, they're just discipline, but they lose all of their power and

significance. Paul writes in Philippians one, for to me to live as Christ and to die his gain. We tend to focus on the second half of the verse that to die is gain. And that is true. To leave this world is to gain more than we have in it. But the reason is because of Jesus. That's why to die is gain because we get more and more of him. We get to be in his presence apart from our sinful nature. But right now in this world, it says to live is Christ. Can you say that? For me to live is Christ. He is my life. To a large extent, the whole book of Colossians is calling Christians to never drift away from Jesus, to never add anything to Jesus, to never fall for the lie that there is anything better than Jesus. Because that's what the false teachers are telling them. Here's chapter 2 verse 8. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

He's saying, be careful. don't fall for the false teachers and their empty philosophy because it's pulling you away from Jesus. And he tells him in verses 6 and 7 how to make sure that never happens. So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Paul takes them all the way back to the beginning of their faith and reminds them that when they received Jesus, they received him as Christ and Lord. They received him as God's

anointed king, the Lord who had all authority in heaven and on earth. Billy Graham once said, No man can be truly converted to Christ, who has not bent his will to Christ. He may give intellectual assent to the claims of Christ and may have had an emotional religious

experience. However, he has not truly converted until he has surrendered his will to Christ as Lord, savior, and master. Billy Graham is echoing the Apostle Paul. Because what Paul is telling the Colossians is that they won't be drawn away from Jesus if they live in submission to His Lordship. But there's even more than that. Paul wants them to remember the joy and humility and gratitude we experienced when we first started following Jesus. He wants us to

remember so that we can keep walking with him. In Colossians too, he also tells them that they were rooted in Christ. What does it mean to be rooted in Jesus? Well, I think Paul is, is referring back to Psalm chapter 1 when there is this image of this fruitful tree. There's a general rule that a tree's branches are equivalent to their roots. In other words, if a tree is going to have branches filled with fruit, they'll need a deep and widespread root system. And the same goes for us. The deeper our roots in Jesus, the greater spiritual fruit we will bear.

So Paul is making the point that we never outgrow Jesus. We never move past him. Jesus isn't the ABCs of the faith. Jesus is A through Z. He's the alpha and the omega. Finally, these verses end by calling us to Thanksgiving. Thankful people won't leave Jesus. They know that every good thing they have is from Jesus.

So if we're going to apply what Paul is says to us in Colossians 2, that means we need to be careful of any false teaching that tries to put distance between us and Jesus. Now, sometimes that's hard because Satan makes it hard. Satan tries to copy the Christian faith, and yet he has a little poison pill in it, something that is wrong, something that is off. That makes it hard to discern between that which is true and that which is false. When you were a kid, did you ever try to forge your parents' signature?

Maybe you forged their signature on a bad progress report or on a permission slip. If you did that, you tried to find the pin that your parents used. used, and then you tried to imitate their handwriting as closely as possible. Here's what you didn't do. You didn't grab a big magic marker and write it in your own handwriting. You wanted your forgery to look as close to the real thing as possible. False teaching always looks like truth, but you won't fall prey to it, Paul says, if you live in submission to Jesus, if you continue to sink deep roots in Jesus, and pursue the faith that you started with him all those years ago.