Got Jesus in your Boat?

Text: Colossians 2:6-15

Focus: Stability in Christian living

Function: To focus on Jesus

Form: Bible Study

Intro:

Do you have any memorable sermons? I have one. A former pastor, speaking about two incidents with Jesus in the boat.

In the first instance, the disciples were crossing the sea of Galilee when the storm came, Jesus wasn't with them, Jesus walked across the water, they thought it was the angel of death, they became very frightened and Jesus saves them.

In the second, the disciples are again crossing the lake, except this time, Jesus is with them, but sleeping. The terrible storm comes again, they panic and finally wake Jesus because He is sleeping while they are dying and Jesus rebukes the waves, the sea calms down, and Jesus chides them for not having faith. Jesus' implication is if they knew He was there, they should not have been afraid. And even more than that, if they belong to Jesus, and Jesus has a purpose for them, they should know that they are safe.

He was good at this sermon. I know, cause he preached it several times.

He kept coming back to the times when we are convinced that we are in despair, when we are hopeless, when we see no way way out, all we have to do is remember, that if we are believers, we have Jesus in our boat and everything will be okay.

I know it seems simple. Some may say it seems simplistic. But faith is important. Sometimes, faith is a choice we make. Without faith, Hebrews 11 says, it is impossible for to please God. And we will be looking at Hebrews, and Faith in the month of August.

It was a memorable sermon because although it was repetitive, and simple, it was effective.

And of course, that really has nothing to do with this text. Except, verse 8 where he warns the church watch out for people who would take them captive, in their faith, to mere philosophy and empty traditions. In Ephesians 4:14 the apostle talks about how easy it is for us to be tossed about by different winds of doctrine. Our boat is being rocked back and forth.

Have you ever met a Christian like that? Every week, there is a whole new way to solve all the problems in the church, or in the world. If only people practiced the Sabbath, if only they better understood the presence of God, if only people understood the proper role of authority in the church, if only they allowed this group in, or if only they exclude that group. And then you got the 88 reasons why Jesus will return in 1988, remember that one? Or, remember Y2K? The end of the world was happening. Or the Bible Code, supposedly there is a numeric code hidden in the bible, and it has messages about the future. Of course, researchers have used the same computer program on books like War and Peace, the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and have found the same prophecies hidden in the code. You can make anything up using that numeric system. Remember the book “11:59 and counting?” A parishioner wanted me to get the book in 1985 and said, “pastor, it proves that Jesus will return before 1990.” I pulled out an older copy of it that I had and it said that Jesus would return sometime in 1981, or 1982 and, if you didn't believe it, you were probably not really saved. My dad, a very patriotic man, a veteran of WWII said to me once, right after the Berlin wall came down, “You know son, when I as a child, we went to prophecy seminars where we learned that Hitler was the Antichrist. And what better proof was there that he made the Jewish people get a tattoo on their forearms?” Then, dad said: “when you grew up, it was always Russia, Gog and Magog, the bear of the North, Meshcesh and Tubal, (all from Ezekiel), and now that Détente with Russia has happened, the Antichrist is either Iran or Iraq. You know son, I think they have figured out that a lot of money is made on making the Antichrist out of America's current enemies.”

The point is, we can run off in many directions, always thinking if we have just a little more knowledge, or some new principle, a better understanding of the spirit world, the most effective tool for evangelism, then, and only then will we be successful as Christians.

So, in that sense, here we are in this boat, and the storm of distractions is all around us, competing for our attention, pride, and passion and Jesus is in that boat wanting us to trust Him to calm the waters.

The disciples lost sight of Jesus and got tossed around by the winds and the water, and in our practice of Christianity, the same thing happens when we start focusing on anything but Jesus Christ and His Mission on this earth.

So, Paul says this to them, in verse 8 and Ephesians 4, keep focused on Jesus, remember what He taught you, do the things Jesus did, live with the same attitude that Jesus had, and you won't get caught up in whatever current fad is being marketed to Christianity.

I love verses 6 and 7 from The Message: ^6-7My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.

What a great message to them, this group that kept saying, wait a minute, we need just a little more knowledge and then we will be ready to actually do what Jesus commanded us.

It is like saying to the preacher: “pastor, feed us a little more, we don't feel ready, feed us and then we will obey the Lord.”

It is almost like an excuse to say, “well it isn't yet my time...”

But God is saying to all of us, me included, just do it. You are ready. If you think you are ready because of your preparation, then you aren't fitting into my plan of faith.

I like to say, “remember David before Goliath.” Before he went into battle, the King gave him his armor. It was the finest armor in the land. Remember that King Saul stood a head taller than anyone in Israel, and David is just a boy. I can picture him in the armor, the helmet coming down to his breast, the shield resting on the ground coming up to his neck, the sword 20 pounds heavier than he can life. It must have been a ridiculous sight. David was wise, “I don't even know what I am doing with this, just give me my slingshot, because the battle belongs to God.

Look, we got Jesus in our boat and that is a sure sign of help. Just do it. The success of the mission is His concern.

Now we go down to verse 9-12.

This is what I mean when we say we have Jesus in our boat, Jesus on our side.

• In Jesus, all the fullness of God dwelt.

  • Jesus isn't an incomplete picture, he isn't “God light,” he isn't a subordinate being (and remember, the Colossians were struggling with the Deity of Christ).

  • Last week we read the song they sang about Jesus, how He was the Creator, the firstborn...

• In John 14, Jesus says, “it is good that I go away, because if I go away, I will come back to you...”

• We are indeed partners with God when the Holy Spirit is in us.

• Without arrogance, we speak for God.

• We are not God, but God is with us, and with us He is near to others.

Now we can go back to the boat. We are complete as long as Jesus is with us. And he explains the theology of why.

We were brought into His family, with His power and authority. There are two images of this, the first as the OT right of circumcision. It was a symbol that the Spiritual man superseded the physical, the fleshly person -the person who lives merely to indulge the flesh.

This is important to the Colossians. They were practicing this weird type of Christianity that commanded them to indulge in no pleasure whatsoever and they would be more spiritual.

He explains that first, the OT symbol of circumcision is indeed a symbol of placing the spirit over the flesh, but Paul says that the change doesn't come from body mutilation, it comes from God doing it inside of us.

Cutting out the tongue us not going to keep us from thinking of bad words. Cutting out the eyes is not going to stop us from lusting. Only the Spirit of God does that.

And the second image, the symbol that God changed for the church, a symbol that applies to both men and women was baptism.

Back into the water, and the boat rocking. In 1 Peter 3, Peter says, baptism's symbol comes from Noah and the Ark, the people of God saved through a a terrible storm that cleansed the world of evildoers.

And then he says, the symbol of baptism doesn't save you, but the work of God, how God changes your heart, that is what happens when we are saved.

In the midst of sin, of our own failure, of the fact that we will always struggle against a body that wants to do things its way compared to our Spirits that want to obey God, this storm of spiritual conflict that we are in that is rocking our boat, our salvation lies in Him, not us.

And that happened because God nailed sin to the cross and killed its power to destroy us when Jesus was crucified. 2 Corinthians 2:21 says it.

He became sin for us. We sang that song last week, Jesus Messiah. He became sin, who knew no sin...

Buried in baptism, the 1 Peter passage says. Noah was buried in the flood, and kept alive.

And in that process, we are forgiven.

The Colossians couldn't embrace the fact that Jesus was God and man at the same time because they knew in their own hearts their own failure to be perfect and they projected that on Jesus and said to themselves: “it couldn't be.”

I love the honesty in which they acknowledge their own sin, their own brokenness. There is a humility in that, but it didn't produce humble actions. Instead, it led them to this narrow self-righteousness that was and is impossible for anyone to maintain.

It is a hopeless existence.

So, we want Jesus in the boat. We have less of a chance of getting sidetracked if we keep our eyes on Jesus and keep on doing what He did, instead of our own thing. We can live by faith, trusting Him to help us overcome the struggles we have with ministry, and our own sinfulness.

And we cannot be saved without Him.

This last verse, “he canceled the debt against us...” He nailed our own “arrest warrant” to the cross. He disarmed Satan and his demons. Remember Satan's biggest tool against us is a lie. And when he tells us that we are still shameful people, he is lying.

When he says that to you, just say back to him, “no I ain't.”

God did it for me on the cross and there is nothing you can do about it

When those thoughts comes back into your mind: you are worthless, you are evil, you are an addict, you are stupid, you are a failure, you are a terrible person, you just say back to that thought, “it makes no difference what I was, even if some of that stuff may appear to be true. If I was bad, God now considers me the righteousness of Christ. If I was weak, or uneducated, or ignorant, God is my partner and He is smart and strong enough for the both of us.