In his sermon 'Nailed to the Cross,' Scott Brown explores Colossians 2:8-15, emphasizing the transformative power of the cross in believers' lives. He highlights that through the cross, Christians are protected from deceit, made complete in Christ, and their sins are forgiven and 'nailed to the cross.' This act disarms principalities and powers, showcases God's love, and redefines every aspect of life, from personal perceptions to societal issues. The sermon underscores the cross as central to understanding all events and emotions, urging believers to view life through its lens. Brown describes the cross as a tool for deep personal transformation and reconciliation, affecting thoughts, emotions, and relationships. The sermon concludes with a reflection on the importance of the Lord's Supper as a remembrance of Christ's sacrifice, emphasizing the completeness and forgiveness found in Jesus.

Yes, please find Colossians 2 and verse 8. 2, 8 and I'll be reading through verse 15. Colossians 2, 8 through 15. Beware, lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ. For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power.

In him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ Buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead and you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh He has made alive together with him having forgiven you all his trespass, all your, forgiving you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross, having disarmed principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them, that you would disarm the powers and the principalities. Oh Lord, we pray that you would give us great insight into how these things affect our souls and every part of our lives today, by your Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

We are continuing our survey of the accomplishments of Jesus Christ on the cross and why the Apostle Paul would say such a thing as God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why in the world would a man say I've determined to know nothing but Christ in him crucified. We're unpacking why all these things could possibly even thought of and said and lived by. And my focus today is in Colossians two verses 14 and 15, where particularly where the power of the cross toward those who believe is exerted in highly specific, highly personal, very particular ways. The power of the cross is exerted in the human personality and the human mind that goes to the depths of his soul.

And all of these things, of course, have sprung out of our exposition in the Gospel of John. We arrived at John chapter 19 and found ourselves at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ And now this is the the the ninth sermon on the cross of Jesus Christ. We decided to take a Not a pause on the subject, but a deeper dive into that subject. Everything that John writes in his gospel was written that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that in believing you might have life in his name. And so all of these things, of course, are dedicated to that purpose of John the Apostle who wrote the Gospel of John.

Now this passage teaches us that the cross keeps human beings from being cheated. You grow up in this world and you've been cheated. That's true. Everyone has been cheated by the thoughts of the devil working their way into our culture. And What we find here in this passage really is another description of the height and the depth and the width and the length of God's love to penetrate into your heart, to try to deal with all of your thoughts and all of your emotions.

And what we've seen so far is that the cross has been given by God to change absolutely everything in your life. It was not only meant to change your status before God to justify you, that's remarkably wonderful, But it was meant to change your view of everything and to change every attitude, every perception of the world around you. It's meant to transform your mind. It's meant to change the way that you look at every single person, the way that you look at every single emotion, the way that you look at every single problem in the world, the same the way that you look at the news cycle. It's meant to change everything and the power of the cross here in this passage deals with extremely helpful aspects of our feelings and our perceptions about our own lives.

And we all have perceptions about our own lives, both good and bad. And what God did on the cross was to reach into our hearts and change the ways that we think about ourselves and the way that we operate every day. And that's why we're talking today about what it meant for your sins to be nailed to the cross. That's really a phrase that has been burning in my mind for weeks and desiring to get to this text. And what does it mean to have your sins nailed to the cross and what does it actually mean that at the cross the powers and the principalities were destroyed?

And what you find here is Simon that they would look stupid to you. And here's another way to say it. First on the cross he sets us free from shame and then he destroys our enemies by exposing them. And they need to be exposed to shame them, to show you how foolish they are, to show you how ridiculous they are. And he pulls back their masks, everybody's wearing masks today and he says, look, look at who's behind the mask.

Look at who's really here. And how does that make you feel having, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements against us, having disarmed the devil and made a public spectacle of him. So that's the focus of what I would like to deal with today. And let's talk about what was nailed to the cross? I think we should stop there.

We began this series at the cross with Jesus Christ being nailed to the cross. But before I remind us of what was actually nailed to the cross and try to deal with it in some level of detail. I'd like to remind us where this whole worship service is going. Well, you know where it's going. If you've been here, it's going to the Lord's Supper.

We conclude all of our Sunday morning gatherings and all of our preaching with the Lord's Supper. We do that quite intentionally. That's our normal practice. It's always a blessing to conclude everything that has been said and sung and prayed with the death and the resurrection of Christ. And so in some ways, as I pray every Sunday, is a preparation for the Lord's Supper.

Well, what was nailed to the cross because when we engage in the Lord's Supper, we're remembering the death of Jesus Christ until he comes again. But let's kind of set the context by observing exactly what was nailed to the cross. And if you were there at the foot of the cross, what would you have seen nailed at the cross? Well first, there was the physical body of Jesus Christ. His body was marred, it was bleeding, his head was bleeding, he was bleeding from head to foot.

He had been nailed to the cross, a crown of thorns had been smashed on his head. He was mercilessly flogged. A purple robe was put on him to mock him that was torn off of him. He was wounded for our transgressions. Every dishonorable and painful experience that a human being can experience was experienced by Jesus Christ.

And the whole point of that is that Sinners deserve that treatment, but Jesus Christ bore our shame on the cross. We are the ones that deserve to be slapped. We're the ones that deserve to be mocked for our sins. We're the ones that deserve to be laughed at and belittled. We're the ones who deserve to be stripped naked and everyone see absolutely everything.

But Jesus Christ suffered in all those ways so that we would not suffer in those ways. Now Pilate could not find any fault in him. So what was nailed to the cross? Really the the the bleeding marred body of Jesus Christ, which Isaiah said you couldn't even recognize him, is there was no beauty, it was ugly. But the second thing you would see is a wooden plaque on the cross.

It was nailed there and written on it was the title that Pilate assigned to Jesus Christ, the king of the Jews. Of course the Jews objected to that and they said, Pilate, Pilate, no, no, no, please write, please write. He said he was the king of the Jews. Pilate would have nothing of it and he kept it as it was. But there was a third thing that was nailed to the cross that you could not see with your eyes.

It was invisible, but it was the greatest thing that was nailed to the cross. And that's what this passage speaks about. It could not be seen by human eyes, but they were the most damning things. They were the most revealing things that were nailed to the cross. It was a listing of all the sins of the world.

That was nailed to the cross. And what was nailed to the cross, though, could not be seen by the soldiers and the other onlookers. It contained billions and billions, trillions and trillions of words. These were condemning words, these were infractions that sinners committed against the law of God. Those would be composed of every single sinful thought that you and I have ever had, that the entire world has had.

These were awful records. These were accusations. These were condemnations. These were criticisms. These were exposures of failures, exposures of abuses, exposures of done in secret that no one else knows.

They were intentional sins. They were unintentional sins. Sins of ignorance, sins of knowledge. They included secret sins. Billions and billions of entries that no human being knows about were nailed to that cross.

That every private abuse, every public lie, every slander, every evil thought, every unkind meditation, every statement of pride, every lust, every theft, it was recorded at the cross. It was a heavy, massive billions and billions of words nailed to the cross all at one time. And so as we've considered the cross, you know, there, there, we've covered various powers and implications of the cross during this series. And of course, we, we, we have seen the body of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross. We've talked about the plaque nailed to the cross.

But today, we find ourselves in a passage of Scripture that actually speaks of the invisible thing that was nailed to the cross, our sins. It's an astonishing idea that God has given us here. And we began with working our way, you know, through the gospel of John. And, you know, the cross we've been saying stands at the crossroads of every important issue that comes to us. It is the crux.

The Latin word for cross is crux, which means it's the central matter. It's the most important thing. And it's the most important thing to a church, most important thing for a family. And it is the center of history. It is the primary interpretive grid of everything that's going on in your life right now.

Every emotion, every thought, every view of the news cycle, everything. Look at it from the cross. I think that's what we've been trying to say here. And it really is the central interpretive grid for everything that has ever happened in the world from creation until this moment, until the final exaltation of everything. William Perkins that English Puritan wrote of an incredibly detailed chart and he put every single point in summary form in circles on this large relief chart and right at the center he put the cross and he drew a line to every historical event from the cross.

I think it's appropriate that we that we think that way and we've been trying to look at the Word of God to try to Understand so far the man of sorrows who hung on the cross. That was the very first thing that we encountered We talked about boasting in the cross knowing nothing but Christ and him crucified We talked about what it meant that He was forsaken, that He cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now we talked about how the cross tears down walls between all people who embrace the cross, all people. That you lose your life at the cross, that you take up your cross and follow him, that it destroys your autonomy, but it gives you something far, far better. We talked last week about the consequences of refusing to take up your cross.

It's really the refusal to renounce your autonomy and to do your own thing in this life. So in this message, in this passage, we find even more about what this cross says. The Bible says that the cross Speaks there is the word of the cross and I think that we're at Another one of those markers of the word of the cross. What does the cross say and that is that? Sins were nailed to the cross and the powers and the principalities were disarmed.

Now I want you to connect these things to your own heart. I don't want us to just think about this in some intellectual fashion which we ought to consider it in our minds, but I want you to consider how this might affect your thinking and your emotions, the way you think about yourself, the way you think about this world, the way that you are thinking about what's going on around you in this world, the craziness that we're observing in this world, seeing things that we've never dreamed of before in our lives. I think that we should see even the political unrest that we see today, even the medical deceptions that have been foisted upon the world all through this lens as well. So here in Colossians 2, we have another explanatory test. And that test should also help us to continue to test our hearts, which is why John wrote his gospel that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that in believing in Him, you might have life in His name.

All of these things bring us down to that. And we've been asking from the very beginning in our studies, what would it take for you to believe? What would you need to see from Jesus Christ? What would you need to know about the world? What would you need to know about the purpose of life?

What would you need to know about the power of God? What would you need to know in order to believe? And so John in his gospel is constantly arguing for the beauties of the kingdom of heaven to try to woo you And me to see how good he is And that's what we find here passage alone That happened in the life of the believer And every single one of them I pray will affect All of our thoughts all of our emotions all of our perceptions about who we are and how we feel about one another, how we feel about ourselves, and how we interact with the world. And you have an outline in front of you. I'll just graze over them just so you can hear them.

But first, if you've come to the cross, you're complete in him. Second, if you've come to the cross, you've been circumcised without hands. Third, you've been buried with him in baptism. Fourth, you've been made alive. Fifth, you've been forgiven.

Sixth, the handwriting against you has been wiped out. Seventh, all your infractions were nailed to the cross and and eight the principalities and the powers have been disarmed this is the power of the cross of Christ so let's let's engage these one by one first of all if you've come to the cross you are complete in Him. That's verse 10. Jesus puts you completely together. He has everything you need.

He has everything you need. He has everything you need. Any need that you might identify today, run to Jesus Christ to fulfill that need. If you run anywhere else, you'll always find yourself even more and more frustrated. And He is the only one who can make you complete and will continue to make you complete.

In his earthly ministry, he was the healer of hurts. He healed physical ailments in order to show us how he heals all of your spiritual ailments. All of your spiritual ailments are healed in him. We are so unwise when we run anywhere else. You know, run to the success books.

You know, you'll find what you find there. Run to psychology. You'll find what you find there. Now run to psychology, you'll find what you find there. But if you run to Jesus Christ, you'll find true healing for your soul.

He touches your life completely. You know, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come. That's what we need.

We need new things to come in our lives. That's why the David cried out, created in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me. All of this is found in Jesus Christ. And when we give to the Lord's Supper, you know, this is exactly what we're doing. We'll be glorying in the completeness that Jesus Christ has accomplished on the cross.

Nothing at all can be added to your righteousness, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ that was secured on the cross. There are no works that will make you more acceptable to God. There are no attitudes that can better qualify you. There is no level of persistence in prayer or godliness that will give you more favor with God. There's no passion, there's no heightened passion.

Are you just crying out for more passion? Every Christian does. But don't think at all that you'll reach some level of compassion where God will finally say, You got it, buddy. Because your righteousness is not founded on your passion. It's founded on God's passion for your soul, which he demonstrated.

There are people who always want more than the cross to sustain their hope. They actually want more than the cross from the church. They want to see something else. They want to see something more interesting. They want to see something more practical, more helpful.

And they would like their hope to be based on these other kinds of things. And of course there are many good things that we long for. But the truth is that the duty of ministers is to bring out the glory of the cross of Jesus Christ and draw everybody's attention to that because it really is the only effectual solution for the problems in your emotions, the problems in your passions, the problems in your relationships. Every problem finds its solution in the cross of Jesus Christ and what what we desire to do here is to make it very clear that there's only one sufficient word and there's only one sufficient work that Jesus Christ is the only Savior and the Word of God is the only authority and we want to say that. Now in Galatia where the Apostle Paul was responding to, he was responding to a group, to groups of people who had risen up in that church and they always rise up in churches and they want something better than Jesus, They want something better than the cross.

And the the the Judaizers, which is what they were called, they wanted to base their acceptance before God and before one another on their works, on what they did, particularly circumcision and particularly the keeping of the ceremonial law. And the Apostle Paul regarded them as wolves in the church. And he said to the Galatians, who has bewitched you? And here in our passage here, the apostle Paul says, you know, who's deceiving you? Who's ripping you off?

And that's what this kind of idea does. And there are two things about the Judaizers. They really, well, they had good motives, you know, they wanted to look good. And first of all, they wanted themselves to look good. They wanted to have a reason to boast about their lives.

And they wanted to feel good about themselves. And they wanted also people to feel good about them. And they quote, wanted to make a good showing in the flesh, make a good showing in the flesh. They wanted others to praise them for making their good showing in the flesh. They wanted their flesh to be their boast.

They wanted to be proud of themselves and they wanted other people to be proud of them as well. But it was even more than that. The Judaizers themselves, they didn't just want to be thought well of personally. They wanted others to be their boast as well. They wanted to be able to boast in other people and the people that they were working with.

It says and as many as a desire to make a good showing in the flesh, they desire to have you circumcised that they might boast in your flesh. In other words, it's like the parents who just want to have a really nice family. They just want to boast in how good their children are. They say, yes, ma'am. They say, yes, sir.

And so that's really the only thing that matters is just sort of the showing that they make in the flesh and and that's the only thing that they really care about and Because they they want everybody to they want to have someone that They might boast in So that was that was that was their problem And Paul here in Colossians is saying these people are cheating you. Don't be cheated by these things that distract from the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul is continuing to explain the power of the cross. Well, the second thing that we've encountered here is that if you've come to the cross, you've been circumcised without hands. That's in verse 11.

In him you are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. So they, if you've come to Christ, you have been circumcised without hands. Not only are you complete in Him, but you have been circumcised without hands. Not only are you complete in Him, but you have been circumcised without hands. Now, in the same way that physical circumcision unmistakably marked your body, The circumcision of the heart without hands unmistakably marked your heart, changed your heart.

It put a mark on your heart. And the Jewish circumcision marked, of course, as you know, the male reproductive organ as if to set the whole being aside, to set your entire life force aside for God. And the circumcision was also a symbolic way of cutting away the old life. John MacArthur called it spiritual surgery. And that's what this circumcision is.

So the cross circumcises you spiritually in your heart and changes your heart. And that means that you know everything, everything in your life is affected by the cross of Christ. Your heart is the wellspring of your life. You know out of your heart comes everything. And so that's why it's easy for us to say the cross is the center of everything.

It really, if it's not sort of the central driver and definer of your emotions and your thoughts, then it's not accomplishing its purpose. And then thirdly, if you've come to the cross, you've been buried with him in baptism. That's verse 12. Buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith. In the working of God who raised him from the dead.

So Jesus died and was buried and what What the apostolic preaching of the cross teaches is that when Jesus died, you also died with him if you believe. And when Jesus was raised, you also were raised with him supernaturally. So when a person is baptized like we had our baptism last week, it was a symbolic illustration of the death and the resurrection of the believer. And you know in in baptism you're made clean. In baptism you've taken on a new identity.

Somebody once said that baptism is like a naming ceremony where you get it where you sort of declare I've got a new name. I'm not the same person I was and I want everybody to know that something happened to me. And I've never been the same since. So it indicates that you have entered into the family of God. That's why You're actually baptized into a name, into a different name.

You're given a new name, but you're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's Christian baptism. The Apostle Paul elaborates on this in Romans chapter six. I'll just read a couple of verses beginning in verse three of Romans six. Do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ, were baptized into his death?

Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death That just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father Even so we also should walk in newness of life So you're baptized with him you're raised and now you have a new life. So it affects everything. Now it affects everywhere you've ever walked since then. And that's why it's right for us to say that the cross really is the central defining force in your life. But if it's something else, you won't be going in the right direction.

And then fourth, if you've come to the cross, Not only have you been buried with him in baptism, you've been made alive. Verse 13, the first part of it, he has made alive, made us alive together with him. In other words, we were dead, Dead people are unresponsive. And Jesus brings the person alive. That's why we read at the very early verses in the Gospel of John, in him was life and the life was the light of men.

And Jesus later on in John 10 says, I came that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. You know, when I heard that, that absolutely blew me away first when I was a young man. He said, I am the good shepherd and I have come to give you life more abundantly. But you were dead, you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. In other words, you were marked for the devil.

You were uncircumcised. And I think what this means is that before we were Christians, we didn't need a life coach, because we were dead. We needed a resurrection. We didn't need a little bit of reformation. We didn't need to get our lives fixed up a little bit here and there.

Our problem was deeper than that. We were actually dead to God and we might have flattered ourselves as what nice people we were but the Bible says we were dead but we are made alive. The fifth thing that happens to you if you've come to the cross is that you've been forgiven. Verse 13, having forgiven you all trespasses. All trespasses.

How about that? Right up to this very moment, all your trespasses have been forgiven. Even the ones that you committed on the way to church. Even the sinful thoughts you've had while you've been sitting here in church, all have been forgiven if you're in Christ. You're free.

Now a real Christian will grieve over his sin, That's sure. But to forgive in a literal sense is to let someone off the hook. And you know what that's like. If you've ever been fishing, you know what it's like to let a fish off the hook and let him go. You just let him go.

You take him off the hook. The problem with us is we want to keep people on the hook. We want others to let us off the hook, but we want to keep other people on the hook. But God has let us off the hook. And it should affect, this is how the cross should affect every single relationship in your life.

If you really embrace the cross of Christ, recognize the power of the cross gives you the ability to let people off the hook that you are never able to let off before. Well sometimes that happens progressively over time. Some of you might even be sitting here right now and you still got people on the hook, but you know You got you got a you got to quit doing that Maybe today maybe this morning maybe right now in your seat You ought to just take that person off the hook and let that fish go free. That's what God did with us. That's what God did with you.

Their offenses will come, absolutely. You will be offended. But what will you do when your brother offends you? The sixth thing that happens to you if you come to the cross is the handwriting against you has been wiped out. Wiped out, that's verse 14.

The handwriting against you has been wiped out. Well we talked about this massive billion, billions and billions of words that were nailed to the cross, of words of condemnation. And these were, there was handwriting, these were handwritten record of debts. These were real debts, real sins written down. Your sins were written down.

And they were wiped out. They're called requirements in the New King James. These are decrees. Well, it's actually the word dogma. Dogma's against you.

And when you sin, there's not just dogmatism, there's bulldogmatism. Because there's real sin, and it's written down, and it's a requirement, and it's a rule or a regulation that's what that word means and and it was against us in other words it was written to condemn us it was contrary to us it was meant to destroy us it meant was meant to destroy our lives destroy our reputations and destroy everything it was meant to destroy our emotional life It was meant to destroy our emotional life. It was meant to destroy our picture of everyone and ourselves as well. Well, the devil, of course, is the accuser of the brethren. We, it's a hostile testimony.

But the handwriting, though it's accurate, though we do owe every single thing listed on the bill. The Lord Jesus Christ strikes it through, he wipes it out, he destroys it. Let me illustrate. Well, every child that I've known, particularly every little boy, goes through a phase. And that is the phase of the disappearing ink.

Maybe you've seen it. Little boys of certain ages love disappearing ink. Oh, it's just so hilarious, you know. And they come to you and they show you, you know, how the ink disappeared And it's just so amazing. And it's a great way to play tricks on your parents and your brothers and sisters.

But this testimony on the cross, these condemning, accusatory attacks against your character, which are true, they're like disappearing ink before gone. He wipes them out. He literally wipes them off the slate. They're gone. They're just no longer there.

You can't trace them back. Do you remember that hymn? It's a beautiful hymn, Horatio Spafford's hymn. It sort of gives us language to describe this thing. My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part but the whole, was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. So Christ makes the accusations disappear. The seventh thing that happens to you, if you've come to the cross, is that all of your infractions were nailed to the cross. That's verse 14, nailed to the cross and taken out of the way. Nailed, in other words, Posted as a testimony, first of all, nailed to the cross, and then taken away.

So you see, the apostle here is giving us various illustrations. He's saying, what happens to your sins when you come to the cross? Well, it's like they're wiped out. You know, they're like erased. It's like disappearing ink.

So that's sort of one illustration. Well let me give you another illustration. It's like that bill that was nailed to the cross. All of your sins are listed there, all of them, every single secret sin of every possible kind. And it's taken out of the way.

And never to be seen again. It's nailed, but then it's gone. It's taken out of the way. And it's not there. Where is it?

Where are my accusers? They're gone. They're gone. Your accusers are gone. You know, this is what I think is one of the most scandalous things about the cross is that your accusers are gone.

They really are. They're gone. It's amazing. Everybody knows how unfair that is to let someone go free who's really guilty. Nobody thinks that's fair.

And yet that's what God has done. Everybody wants to talk about injustice today. Well, we should, but let's be very clear. The most unjust thing that was ever done was when the Son of God was flogged and put on the cross. That was the most unjust thing that has ever been done And what did he do?

He said to everyone, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. The Bible will teach you how to handle injustice. So, your sins are nailed and then removed and the debt is cancelled. That's why the Apostle Paul would say in Romans 8, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation.

If your heart would condemn you, you need to go to the cross and understand it through the cross. The eighth thing, if you've come to the cross the principalities and the powers have been disarmed. That's verse 15. Having disarmed the powers and the principalities. So it was in the cross, in the cross that where Jesus triumphed in every part.

He was in triumphing in every way. He was fulfilling prophecies, triumphing that way. He was triumphing and making himself a substitute for sin in all of his suffering. He was he was destroying the wisdom of the wise But what does it mean to be disarmed it literally means to be stripped Just like Jesus was stripped he was also stripping and disarming, taking away all armor, all protection. The apostle uses the same word in Colossians 3.9, you know, which has to do with taking off the old man.

So there's a taking off, in other words, an exposing, showing the true colors. You know, it's not it's not really that hard to do today to show the true colors of the work of the devil. Just read the news. It's all you have to do. You'll see the true colors.

All the insanity, all the violence, all the lying, all the slanders just thrown in front of the whole world every single day, just devastating the entire world population with the filth of the world. When you read the news, you need to recognize that the powers and the principalities are being exposed. You always have to remember what is happening when you read the news. He made a public display, a public spectacle of them, in verse 14, triumphing over them. The idea here is the idea of the welcoming of victorious generals as they come back into the city.

And the whole crowd is lining the streets and they're marching through the streets in victory and their captives are behind them in chains. That's the whole picture that's here. The enemies are bound, they're humbled. And the powers and the principalities have been disarmed. And It's a public humiliation.

And I think that it's a public humiliation of the devil in the true church of Jesus Christ, where the church begins to live differently. And it's very important that we understand how to interpret what's going on in a society. You know, like for example, why all the social unrest today? Why all the ungodly laws? Why all the injustice in our courts?

Why the injustice in our prison system? Why do the rich get off just because they have expensive attorneys? Why? Why does that happen? And you have to understand why things happen.

And we've seen horrific things happen. We've seen moral collapse like we've never seen before. Why is it that today that men who are obviously men say that they're women? Why does that happen? And it's because of the fault.

It's because of that spirit of autonomy. And today, autonomy trumps even on to physically and how trillions of your cells scream out to say you're either a man or a woman but your autonomies trumps it. That's the kind of world that we live in, the economic breakdown that we have here. But all of this has to do with the fall and the rejection of Christ on the cross. And what we find now, you know, when we encounter this language of the powers and the principalities, I think we just recognize why we're given that kind of language to understand what's going on in the world.

And you can't really understand what's going on in the world without understanding the root causes of what's happening in the world. And you need to do a root cause analysis of it. And you have to do that with everything in your life. The emotions that you're having, the feelings, the thoughts you're having about people, you've got to do a root cause analysis of it and go back to find out what is really happening. And you know, I used to own an electronics factory you know over 20 years ago and you know we would produce defects in our factory you know producing electronic assemblies and we would have to when we would when we would use a defect we had to find out why that had, that defect happened.

And we had to do a root cause analysis. It wasn't enough to just say, here's the problem. That was not enough. And we have a manufacturing person over here, she knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's not simply enough to describe the outward problem and leave it at that.

You always have to drill down if you're going to find out. And it's an arduous task sometimes to drill down. It's a painstaking process. It can take days to try to find the actual root cause of a defect. But you had to keep asking why, why, why until you finally got to the bottom of it.

And in most cases, what we originally described the defect as wasn't actually the problem. There was a problem behind it. And it might have been a machine problem. It might have been a processing problem. It might have been a personnel problem, it might have been a supplier problem, it might have been a chemical problem, it might have been, who knows?

It might have had to do with something having to do with time or some other cause. But if we're going to interpret anything that's going on in the world, we've got to open up our Bibles. And when you open up your Bible and find the testimony of the cross, there you find the analysis of everything that's going on in the world today. And here in Colossians 2, we find a disclosure of the problems of the world. It's the powers and the principalities.

It shouldn't surprise us, it shouldn't discourage us. We know exactly what it is. It's the powers and the principalities. We don't need to be confused about it. It can break your heart.

But it shouldn't make you confused at all about what's happening. And root cause analysis really is a lot easier for the Christian. He can see right through things because of what the Bible teaches us. The problems are always tied to the works of the powers and the principalities of darkness that are at work in the world. It's actually very, very simple And these principalities were disarmed in the life of the believer.

They still run rampant in the world though controlled by God. God is sequencing all the work of the powers and principalities. That's one thing. But the glory of the cross for a Christian is that he has, God has broken the power of the powers and principalities over you. So you're different.

You're not a slave of the powers and principalities anymore. And you know The violence that's happening today is happening because something happened a long time ago. And it's a result of the fall. It's a result of the powers and the principalities. And we need to know why.

Why is there so much injustice? Why do we see all kinds of things happening in this world? You know, and it's because these evil powers tell lies. And these lies are really being destroyed in the true Christian community, but they run rampant in the world. The lies run rampant in the world.

The lies are being destroyed in the true church. And I just want to suggest something for your evaluation. I think that the greatest lies of the devil today are lies about personhood. And man made in the image of God. Lies about man as male and female.

The whole tragedy of abortion is a conflict over personhood. It's the lies of the devil about personhood. About when does a person become a person? And what do you do with a person, or can you kill a person inside your body? This is a lie about personhood that is being fought by the powers and the principalities.

And we need to understand that. And many of these lies sprung from Charles Darwin, at least in modern times, you can go back to Darwin, but you better not stop at Darwin, because it goes further back than that. Darwin's book that changed so much in everyone's understanding of personhood was called The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. Oh, favored races, what's that? It's just another lie about personhood.

That there are favored races. Charles Darwin's cousin in 1883, Francis Galton, then coined the term eugenics. And he coined that term to refer to the creation of a super race, to genetically create a super race, a favored race. It's a lie about personhood. The most ridiculous lie that came out of Darwinism is inferiority driven by skin color.

It's the most ridiculous banal lie and of course after slavery was abolished this took a life of it on a life of its own and this whole idea of inferiority based on the content of melanin in a person's skin was advanced so powerfully that it just destroyed so much. It destroyed love. It destroyed all understanding. The devil is a liar. He's a serpent of old and he's the accuser of the brethren and his greatest lies today are about personhood.

And if you want to do a root cause analysis of racism, oh I hate that word racism. It's such a ridiculous word. But don't go to slavery. Don't go back to slavery to find out the problem with racism. Don't go back to the Jim Crow laws.

Don't go back to the horrific segregation that existed right here in this state, even not very long ago. Don't go to recent mistreatment to try to understand what's happening. You have to go back much further than American chattel slavery, you have to go much further back than the feminists. The roots of this go back to the fall and since the fall these ideas have survived and they get promoted by the powers and the principalities. And you know it's interesting I was listening to some men discussing a recent statement by the Southern Baptist Convention on George Floyd.

It was a statement of compassion and repentance. And almost every SBC official signed it. And they were using the language in it of the people of color. And It read like this, we must all grieve and understand the hearts of our fellow citizens of color. And when I was listening to this broadcast, it was Daryl Harrison.

And he said that, you know, He was just taking exception to even using that language. Why are we using persons of color? He says it's a ridiculous lie. To say that people are somehow distinguished because of a little bit of melanin is a lie. And what he was saying is that the SBC is just continuing to promote a lie by using that kind of language, by talking about persons of color.

And what Daryl Harrison said, I believe, was every person on the planet is a person of color. Every single person is a person of color. Some got more, some got less. That's just the way it is. And that's the only difference.

It's a trace of a chemical. That's all it is. But these are just perpetuated lies of the powers and the principalities. And even Christians end up finding themselves using the same language of the liars. And then they went on to say in this broadcast, color doesn't have anything to do with reconciliation.

He says you can't even think about reconciliation in terms of color because reconciliation only happens between two hearts. It only happens between souls. That's the only way it can happen. And it can only happen when sin is crucified. It can only happen when the cross of Jesus Christ is the center of that relationship.

It's the only way it can happen. And all of the, what they were saying is that all of these other ways are completely futile and deceiving. And they really are, they are tricks of the devil. Because Reconciliation, we already learned this in one of the earlier sessions on the cross. Reconciliation can only happen at the foot of the cross.

It can't happen by negotiating something. It can only happen when two hearts submit their autonomy to God. And here we find that these powers have been spoiled in the heart of the Christian. They've been disarmed, they've been exposed. You know they're ridiculous, you know that they're lies and you've turned away from them.

You've turned away from the thinking of the world and your sins have been nailed to the cross and every other blood-bought saint, their sins have been nailed to the cross and taken away And when we relate to one another that's how we relate with one another in the church. Oh the depth and the width and the height of the power of the cross of Jesus Christ. So that's why the cross was meant to change everything about your life. Everything about the way you feel about yourself, everything about the way you feel about any other person, everything about the way that you walk, it is the center of everything. And praise God that our sins were nailed to the cross.

And, but don't be cheated. It's, you know, the church is always vulnerable to being cheated by the powers and the principalities. And love dies always when that happens. So, what does this have to do with Hope Baptist Church? I hope it makes you happier to hear it, that Jesus Christ has nailed all of your infractions to the cross, and he's taken them away, and blotted them out like disappearing ink.

They're gone. And that he who began a good work in you will complete it. And that God does forgive sinners and he sets them free at the foot of the cross. And so it's right for us to say that the cross is the center of everything. Every relationship, every thought, every attitude, everything.

Come to the cross of Jesus. It's the best ground you've ever stood upon. Let's pray. Father, we are amazed at the richness of your word and at how clarifying and helpful it is to everything going on in our hearts. Lord we thank you for the cross.

Why would we want to boast of anything else? Why would we want to know anything else but the cross? Now I want to just give a few moments of silent meditation before we move on so I'll give you a moment to ponder all these things that we've been made complete in him that we've been circumcised without hands, that we've been buried with him in baptism, that we've been made alive, that we've been forgiven, that the handwriting has been wiped out, that the infractions have been nailed and taken away, and the principalities and the powers have been disarmed. Let's just ponder that for a moment. Amen.

Amen.