Why Should We Pursue Biblical Training?

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable. Let’s look to the Word, all right? Colossians 1. I’m going to read just verses 27 and 28. We’re going to look even before that and some after it, but Colossians 1:27–28 really captures exactly what we want to see this morning and even next week as well. Colossians 1:27: “To them…” speaking of the Gentiles, “God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” Then, verse 29, “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

A Definition…

For the next two weeks, we will look at how this text in particular relates to the idea of biblical training. I have a simple definition that’s provided there in your message notes, if you’d look at that. Biblical training is the equipping of God’s people through God’s Word. I defined it as the equipping of God’s people through God’s Word.

There are other things that we could add: God’s Spirit in the context of the local church. However, I just wanted to give a simple definition so that we’re all on the same page, that biblical training is the equipping of God’s people through God’s Word. Next week, we will look at how is it that we should pursue biblical training. This week, I want us to look at the question, “Why is it that we should pursue biblical training?” Why is it that the Word of God should be central?

I want you to understand that everything that we seek to do in the Disciple-Making Institute…any classes, any education, knowledge that we provide here at The Church of Brook Hills, it is not intended to be an end unto itself. It is not that we want to offer Bible classes for the sake of Bible knowledge. We want to offer classes for the sake of God’s glory, for the sake of making disciples, for the sake of equipping this body of believers to do the work that God has called us to do.

So, I want to ask you the question, whether you’re interested in signing up for classes, whether or not you ever intend to participate in that facet of the ministry of Brook Hills, I want to ask you a question: Where is the Word of God in your life? Is the Word of God central to everything you do, everything you believe, every attitude that you have? Is the Word of God central to everything that you do and everything that I do?

Colossians 2 1–5 Encourages Us to Pursue Biblical Training…

For the sake of our souls.

All right, I want to give you…offer you three reasons this morning why the Word of God should be central in everything that we do. Why is it that we should pursue biblical training? Reason number one why we ought to pursue biblical training, why the Word ought to be central. Why? For the sake of our souls. We should pursue biblical training for the sake of our souls.

We know that Paul wrote Colossians from a prison cell. In fact, if you look to the very last verse of the book of Colossians, you see that he says, “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.” Paul was in prison the same time period in which he wrote Ephesians and Philippians and Philemon. Paul had never apparently visited the church at Colossae. It was not a church that he had started. Apparently, some believers had come to hear him during his ministry at Ephesus. They had heard the gospel. They had gone back to Colossae, to the area of Laodicea, and not far away they had established a church.

However, now word comes to Paul that there is error that has crept into the church, that false doctrines have crept in, and teachers are teaching things that are contrary to the Word of God. We see that, in fact, in Colossians 2:4. Look down in Colossians 2:4. Paul says, “I say this in order that no one may delude you, may capture you, with plausible arguments.” They were coming in, teachers were, into that body of believers, and they were teaching things that sounded good, that had the ring of truth, but it wasn’t exactly what the Word of God said.

If you look over in Colossians 2:16, Paul gives the specifics of what it is they were teaching in Colossae. Look down in verse 16, Paul says,

Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head [speaking of Christ] from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

So, we see the picture that people had come in. They were teaching things that were sounding right, and so they weren’t necessarily denying that Christ existed or maybe not denying all of the key doctrines of the faith, but they were denying the sufficiency and the supremacy of Christ and said, “If you really want to be holy, if you really want to be righteous, if you really want to go after God and be pleased, and God be pleased with you, then you will follow certain days, and you will follow certain months, and you will observe the Sabbath, and you will observe the new moon, and you’ll participate in this festival, and you won’t drink this drink, and you won’t eat this food. You’ll do and do and do.”

I want you to notice how Paul combats that. Paul does not go down point by point and say, “This is why the new moon is wrong. This is why the Sabbath is wrong. This is why the food and the drink ideas that they are teaching is wrong.” Rather, he says, in verse 28, “Instead of all those things, here’s what we will do.” In verse 28, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” “They will do all these things. Let them do all these things. Let them teach all these things contrary, but here’s what we will do. We will proclaim Christ. We will warn about Christ. We will teach about Christ. We will behold Christ. We will sing about Christ. We will worship Christ.” Why? “Because all of these other things, though they may puff us up and though they may have the sound of truth, they pale in comparison to the Son of the living God.

“He is the image,” Paul says in Colossians 1:15. “He is the image of the invisible God. He is the firstborn over all creation. For by Him,” Paul says, “all things were made: things in heaven and things on earth, things visible and things invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities; all things were made through Him and for Him. And in Him all things hold together. He is the head of the church, His body; and He is the firstborn…” He says, “He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. In Him…for all in Him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, things in heaven and things on earth, making peace by the blood of His cross.” All those days, all those weeks, all those months, the Sabbath, the moon, the food, the drink, everything pales in comparison to Him.

It’s exactly what we see in Colossians 2. Flip over in Colossians 2, and I want you to notice, maybe take your pen and underline or circle or maybe star all the places where Paul speaks about “in Him,” “with Him,” or “of Him,” speaking of Christ. In verse 9, “In him the fullness of deity dwells bodily…” Verse 10, “You have been filled…” How? “…in him.” In verse 11, “In him also you were circumcised…” In verse 12, “You were buried with him in baptism and raised…” How? “…with him through faith, who raised him from the dead.”

In verse 13, “You were dead and trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh…” And what? “…God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all of our trespasses, by canceling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside…” Glorious verse: “…he set it aside, nailing it to his cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame…” How did He do this? He did it by triumphing over them in Christ.

Brothers and sisters, the treasure for our souls is not found in what the world has to offer. It is not found in man-made rules and regulations. It is not found in the things that we do or that we do not do in order to please God. The treasure for our souls is found in Christ alone. The treasure for our souls is found in Christ alone. Paul says, “We will proclaim the Christ of God, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints, Christ the hope of glory.” Paul says in Colossians 2:3, “…in whom…” speaking of Christ, “…are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

Someone has said, “He is not just all that we need; He is all that we have.” Calvin said this. It’s in your worship guide if you’d look. Calvin said, “There is a great danger…there is a great danger in the Christian life of seeing Christ and our being in Christ as sufficient for some but not all of our heavenly treasures.” In other words, maybe we get saved and we recognize our need for Christ, but very soon after that, we leave Him behind, as it were.

However, look at what he says. He said, “But if we seek innocence, it will be found in His virgin conception; if we seek mortification…” Dying, killing of the flesh, in other words. “…if we seek mortification of the flesh, it will be found in His tomb; if we seek power for living, it is found in His resurrection; and if we seek the gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in His anointing.” It is all in Christ. “He is enough,” he says, “for our holiness. He is enough for our sanctification. He is enough for our souls. He is enough for our families. He is enough for the world. He is enough for today. He is enough for tomorrow. He is enough in life, and He is enough in death.”

Where do we read? Where do we read of that sufficiency? Where do we learn of the treasure that God has in Christ for our souls? It is not in the newspaper. It is not on the TV. It is not on the Internet. We learn of the sufficiency of Christ for our souls in His Word. We learn of the sufficiency of Christ…the revelation of Christ is found only in His Word.

It’s a sad truth, sad reality, that many believers are experts in trivial matters but are unsure in the weighty matters of the Word of God. You say, “What do you mean?” I mean that we know all about celebrity culture, and we know all about reality TV, and we know all about the latest fashions and movies. We know all about Alabama and Auburn, but maybe, we are ignorant of the Word of God.

That’s not to say…hear me, please. That is not to say that every believer needs a degree, every believer must go to seminary, every believer must participate in the classes that we are offering. “If you want to understand the Word of God, here is where you understand the Word of God.” That is not what I’m saying. Adrian Rogers said, “The Word is so majestically deep that scholars could swim and never touch the bottom, yet so wonderfully shallow that a little child could come and get a drink of water without fear of drowning.” The Word of God is clearer by His Spirit.

However, it is to say this: The Word of God is a buffet for our souls. We feed in the Word of God. The Word of God contains the treasure of Christ, and God has graciously given us the Word. We have copy after copy after copy of the Word of God in our homes, on our computers, in our phones, and many of us do not even know it. However, for the sake of our souls, Paul says, in whom are the treasures, all of the treasures…not 99 percent of the treasures…all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ, and that revelation is found in His Word. We pursue biblical training for the sake of our souls.

For the sake of Christ’s church.

However, notice also, we pursue biblical training for the sake of Christ’s church. We pursue biblical training for the sake of Christ’s church. The Word should be central in all of our lives for the sake of our brothers and sisters. We do not merely train for our own soul, for the edification of our own soul; but, rather, we train, we seek the Word of God, we study the Word of God, we give ourselves to the Word of God for the sake of the edification of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Look what Paul says in verse 28. He says, notice the word, “everyone.” “We warn everyone, and we teach everyone with all wisdom…” Why? “…that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” He says that we are to present… “We will one day,” Paul says, “present brothers and sisters unto God.” That means that there’s coming a day at the end of our lives, and I don’t know exactly how this works, how it looks, but there will be a sense in which Paul will present the Colossians to God. There’ll be a sense in which you will present me, and I will present you. There’s a sense in which all of us are presenting ourselves unto God for His glory.

I want you to notice how incredibly important this is in the grand scheme of things. We may look and say, “You know what? That’s future. That’s way out there. I don’t want to even think about that. It’s not in the front of my mind.” However, I want to show you why it should be. Look in Colossians 1:21. Paul says in verse 21, “You, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death…” He has saved people. He’s reconciled people. There were people that were enemies to God, and now he has made them friends of God by His blood. Look what he says, “In order…” Why did He do this? Why did He die on the cross? “In order to present you…” Plural, “…holy and blameless and above reproach before him.”

One of the chief purposes of the cross…it’s not just a personal salvation that is in view, that I get my ticket to heaven and I’m good. One of the chief purposes of the cross is that God, in Christ, would present a people unto Himself who are holy and without blame. Christ died in order to present us as holy before Him. Christ died in order to present us as holy before Him, to take a people, as Ephesians 2 speaks of, people who were dead in trespasses and sins, to take collectively a body of people who may be identified as corpses, who are dead…there is no life; there is no vitality in us…to take those corpses and, by His power and by His blood, to raise them from the dead, and not only to raise them from the dead, but to turn them into a radiant Bride, so that one day, we will all gather around at the marriage supper of the Lamb, and we will cry out “Hallelujah” and “Behold our God, glory and honor.” We will say, “Praise God because the marriage supper of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready. She has adorned herself in fine linen, bright and pure.” Not because of anything that we have done, but God is doing the work so that He will present to Himself people who will demonstrate His power to cleanse them, to give them life, and to make them holy and just before Him.

If you put that together with verse 28…if you put verse 22, that this is the purpose of God in the cross, and you put that with verse 28 where Paul says that, “I am laboring, I am striving to present this people as mature in Christ,” it shows us that God is giving us a part…by His grace, He is giving us a part, a responsibility, in this work of reconciling and redeeming and presenting a people to Him for His own glory. So that means that I am working on you, and you are working on me, and this person is working on this person, and on and on it goes as each of us takes responsibility for presenting one another mature in Christ for His glory.

I think about…in my own life, I think about all the people that God has entrusted to me, in varying degrees of authority, in varying degrees of influence, but I think about my wife. I think about my three children and one that’s on the way. I think about the people that I lead here at Brook Hills. I think about people that are in my small group, or I think about people that live around me or just the people that God…that I work with, that God’s entrusted for me to work with, and I know that one day, at the end of the ages, I’m going to present those people to God in some fashion. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know how that works, but I know that that day is coming. God, help me. I don’t want to come to the end of my life and stand before God and offer to Him a house or a car or degrees or accolades or achievements or positions or all the things that this world can afford. I want to come at the end of my life and, by God’s grace and God’s help and God’s Spirit, I want to come to my life and present to Him my wife, and present to Him my children, holy and blameless and mature in Christ.

Colossians 2 1–5 Calls Us to Prepare Our Children to Meet God

So, that means that ultimately I’m not preparing my children to be successful in this life; but, rather, I am preparing them to meet God. That is an awesome responsibility, and you have the very same responsibility, in varying degrees, in varying ways. You have brothers and sisters who are in need all around you. Their marriages are falling apart. Maybe their kids are on drugs. Maybe their finances are in shambles. Maybe they’re contemplating an affair. Or maybe, like most of us, they’re just good at hiding everything, and they have all kinds of wrong desires and wrong attitudes and wrong beliefs and wrong behaviors, and they’re a mess, and God has given you the privilege and the responsibility to speak into their lives, and God has given me the privilege, the responsibility to speak to people in my life.

Hear me, church, what I do not need is your advice, and heaven knows you do not need my advice. What the people around us need are not worldly prescriptions that you can find in a self-help section of a bookstore. What they need is a word from the living God. They need for you to speak into their life truth, not error. They need the truth of the Word of God.

You say, “Well, but don’t we have counselors for that?” and “Don’t we have ministers of the gospel? Isn’t that what we…for those hard cases, for the difficult things, don’t we need that? Isn’t that what we have those people for?” However, Paul says, in Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens.” In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, he says, “We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and be patient with them all.”, which means that you are not just a church member. I am not just a church member. If we have been born again by the Spirit of God, we therefore are a priest unto God. Therefore, we all have the responsibility of interceding for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We have the responsibility for speaking truth into their life, and we will have the responsibility one day of presenting them unto God.

Where will we find a word from God? Where is it that we will find what it is that we need to speak into their life? Our presentation as holy before Him will be accomplished through His Word. Our presentation as holy through Him is accomplished through His Word. Paul says, “We warn everyone. We set things right.” In other words, where do we get that warning? We get it from the Word of God. We teach each other. What do we teach them? We teach them the Word of God. Notice, we do not necessarily rely…in fact, we do not rely exclusively on our experience, what we have seen along the way, although God may in time use that. What we ultimately, most desperately, need to speak into people’s lives is the Word of God, because only the Word of God has the power…only the Word of God has the power to transform.

Isn’t that what Jesus prayed for us? In John 17, Jesus prayed for His followers, and He prayed for followers all throughout time until He returns. In John 17:17, He said…He prayed, in fact, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” If Jesus, the Great High Priest of our souls, would pray that we would be sanctified through the Word, why would we try to sanctify anybody else through anything that we have learned, anything that we have seen, that goes contrary or that does not match up, that does not have the authority of the Word of God?

It’s the very same thing. If you want to look at the picture of the home, the very same thing we see in Ephesians 5. Paul encourages husbands; he says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church…” Then, he says this: “…that he might sanctify her.” Notice how Christ sanctifies His church: “…having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing…” Brothers and sisters, there is a tried and true method of sanctifying our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is not through the latest innovation; it is not through the latest program. The tried and true method of sanctifying the people of God is the Word of God used by the Spirit of God.

For the sake of God’s glory.

So, why would we search for anything else? God has given us everything that we need, everything that we need for godliness for ourself, and for our brothers and sisters. So, we pursue biblical training. The Word must be central for the sake of Christ’s church, for the sake of our souls, and notice, last, we give ourselves to the Word for God’s glory. We pursue biblical training for the sake of God’s glory.

I want to suggest to you that, even if it were not beneficial for your soul, and even if it were not beneficial for the souls of others, the Word still ought to be central. I want to show you why. Look in Colossians 1:25. In Colossians 1:25, Paul says, “Since I became a minister…” I want you to notice, as we read through this, notice all the times that Paul speaks about revelation, about a public nature of revelation, about making fully known ideas that we are to see and to behold what God is doing. In verse 25, “I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you…” Why? “…to make the word of God fully known…”

Again, in verse 26, “The mystery hidden for ages and generations…” What? “…but now revealed to his saints.” In verse 27, “God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery…” In verse 28, he says, “We proclaim him.” It’s public. In verse 29, “I struggle with all his energy he powerfully works within me.”

Then, again Colossians 2:2, he says, “That we may reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ.” God intends for His people to behold His glory. God intends for His people to behold His glory, to behold who He is in His nature, His perfections, His perfect knowledge, His perfect grace, perfect love. He intends for us to behold who He is, and He intends for us to behold what He has done.

That’s why in Isaiah 40, as Isaiah prays, “What shall I cry out? What shall I tell the people?” In Isaiah 40:9, he says, “Get up on a high mountain. Go up on the mount of Zion and cry out to the people, ‘Behold your God.'” “Behold your God,” He told to the prophet. It’s not just that God has chosen to make known His glorious treasure. He has chosen to make known how great He is. That there is nothing that compares to it.

I just got finished in the last few years…in fact, I’ve been working…had been working on a dissertation for about four years on a dead Baptist that nobody knows. If papercuts count, it involved blood, sweat, and tears, and 200-something pages; I don’t remember. However, I can tell you how many pages my wife has read. That is zero, and I get that. I don’t want to read it either. In fact, I even purchased a copy for my son so that when he grows up, he can choose not to read it as well. It’s no big deal. It’s no big deal if anyone ever reads a thing that I have written, but it is an enormous thing if God would give us His Word, and God would reveal in His Word how great He is, and God would reveal in His Word what great things He has done, supremely in Christ…if God would reveal all of those things to us, and we would read it no more than we read blogs on the Internet. God intends for us to read His Word.

The Colossian heretics had devised all sorts of doctrines and ideas around days and angels and festivals and all these other things. Paul says very clearly, “There is no glory in the vain imaginations of men, but there is great glory in everything that I have written and everything that I have done.”

Colossians 2 1–5 Invites Us to Behold God’s Glory

God intends for us to behold His glory. I heard this, I think, so clearly. I was listening to a sermon, years, years ago. It was a sermon on the supremacy of God in marriage by John Piper. As he was preaching, he mentioned that in his counseling with young couples, he would often ask them, “Tell me, why is it you’re getting married?” They would sometimes respond, “Well, because we want to glorify God in our marriage.” He would then ask them, “Well, tell me, what is the glory of God? Explain to me in your own words what the glory of God is.” He said person after person, young person after young person, came back to him with vague and empty and vacuous answers that meant nothing, that had nothing to do with the glory of God as revealed in the Scriptures.

Piper says, “Well, I’ll tell you what the glory of God is.” It’s a long quote, but I want you to hear the glory of God. Piper says,

God wills for us to know the supremacy of His eternality that makes the mind of man explode with the unsearchable thought that Christ never had a beginning but simply always was, with the glory of His knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a matchbox, and quantum physics look like a first-grade reader. The glory of His wisdom, that He has never been and He never will be counseled by men. The glory of his authority over heaven and earth, without which not one demon can move an inch. Or the glory of His providence, without which not one bird falls to the ground or one single hair turns gray. Or the glory of His Word that upholds the universe and keeps all the atoms and molecules together. Or the glory of His power to walk on water and cleanse lepers and heal the lame and open the eyes of the blind and cause the deaf to hear and still storms with a word and raise the dead. Or the glory of His purity never to sin. Or the glory of His trustworthiness, never to break His word or to let one single promise fall to the ground. Or the glory of His justice, to render all accounts settled either in hell or on the cross. Or the glory of His patience to endure our dullness for decades and decades. Or the glory of His wrath that one day will cause people to call out for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them. Or the glory of His grace that justifies the ungodly. Or the glory of His love that dies for us even while we were sinners.

This is our Savior. This is our God. Brothers and sisters, mark it down. When we have true thoughts about God, we will experience true worship of God. When we have true thoughts of God, that will lead to true worship of God. It’s why Isaiah, in Isaiah 6, says that he was in the temple, and he saw the glory of the Lord, and he heard, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” and his response to that was to fall down and to say, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the glory of the Lord Almighty.”

It’s why, when Peter was fishing all night and did not catch anything, he comes back to the shore, and Jesus tells him, He says, “Go out again and cast your net on the other side of the boat.” He does just as Jesus says, and he brings up a net full of fish, and what is his response? What does he say? He looks at Jesus and he says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinner.” It’s why John, on the Isle of Patmos, when he received the vision on the day of the Lord, as he saw the man with the bronze feet, and he saw the man with the flaming eyes and a face that shined like the sun in full strength, it is why he fell down as though he were dead. It’s because true thoughts about God lead to true worship of God. One more time: Where do we receive true thoughts about God? Where do we receive a true revelation of God? Worship-fueling thoughts about God come from His Word.

I have no intention, and David has no intention, and the elders have no intention, of teaching classes here at Brook Hills that do not move the soul, that do not lift the heart, that do not move us to worship and to glory in God. If we teach classes that way, then we just need to shut the book and go home. Any time, every time, that we seek the Word of God, it should certainly feed our souls, remind us of our concern for our brothers and sisters across this church, but it ought to lead in every case to worship of God, because this book is intended to teach us what God has done. The Old Testament, as David showed us in Ruth, pointing forward to a redeemer in Christ. The New Testament pointing back to what He has done. All of it is intended to lead us to worship Him and to glory in Him.

That’s why Psalm 19 says that, “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether.” Then, what does he say? “More are they to be desired than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward.”

I want to give you an opportunity to respond to the Word of God this morning. You say, “Well, how do I respond to this?” I just want to ask you a very simple question: Where is the Word of God in your life? Is the Word of God central such that you’re experiencing the treasure for your soul? Is it central in such a way that when you talk to brothers and sisters in Christ, you’re speaking the Word of God, you’re giving godly counsel, not what you learned by your own experience, but rather what God has shown you in His Word? Is it central in such a way that when you read it, your heart burns unto God and you glorify God for who He is and what He has done?

This is nothing that a class can fix. This is something that only the Spirit of God can do. Where is the Word of God in your life? Is it on the periphery, something you do when you have time, something that you do when you have occasion, or is it all-consuming so that you feast on it for your soul; you read it, study it, you pray over it, you give it out for your brothers and sisters in Christ? Is it central in such a way that when you read it, you say, “All glory be to your name.”?