Hollow and Deceptive Philosophy
Colossians 4v3-4
29th January 2021
Colossians 2v8
See to it that no-one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy,
which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather
than on Christ.
Paul had particular reasons for saying this to the church at Colossae in his day, but there are also reasons for us to pay attention now. There's a lot of hollow and deceptive philosophy about. Much nonsense is spoken in this country in our generation. Talk shows on TV spout huge quantities of untruth and foolishness. Don't be taken captive by any of this. There are plenty of people, and demons, who'll tell you that Jesus don't love you, that the Bible isn't true, that being a Christian is silly, or old-fashioned, or homophobic, or whatever, that Christians hate people. We don't hate anybody. We love people. We just hate sin, especially our own. We love sinners. We are sinners.
Do not be taken captive by hollow and deceptive philosophy. You can buy books that appear to be Christian, but when you read a few pages, you find that they say that some passages of the Bible aren't true, or that they're out-of-date, or that they contradict other passages of Scripture. Do not be taken captive.
This is so important. Churches that believe the Bible grow, and churches that don't believe the Bible die.
You will find very persuasive people, who will tell you all sorts of nonsense. They'll tell you that Jesus didn't really die, or He wasn't really God, or the Holy Spirit doesn't really heal people. Demons will tell you that even if He did, He wouldn't heal you because you're not worth it. Do not be taken captive.
Philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ is both hollow and deceptive. It has no goodness in it, and it's dishonest, but it can be persuasive.
We believe the bible is true. Never let that go, even on the days when you wish part of it wasn't, even on the days when you lose a debate with somebody who's smarter than you, or better educated with you, but wrong. Hold to the simple truth, the truth that will set you free.
At the time that Paul wrote this, we believe that there were two main problems at Colossae: one was the idea that to be a Christian you had to keep all the Jewish law, and the other was an early form of the heresy we know as Gnosticism, a weird system of philosophy which didn't accept that Jesus is God. And there are many religious groups today, some of which claim to be Christian, that deny that Jesus is God. Don't take them seriously. Do not be deceived.
The Baptist Union has a history of slipping from Trinitarianism into Unitarianism, from believing in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Sprit, into just believing in God the Father, and not the Son or the Spirit. This happened a long time ago, but it can still destroy churches and denominations. Good churches can be taken captive by hollow and deceptive philosophy.
Today's prevailing philosophy is that sin is not sin, that saying it is is hatred, that God loves everybody and everybody will be saved, or that there is no heaven or hell, and therefore no such thing as salvation. It's interesting that these are two opposite arguments for not believing the Gospel. Hold to the truth.
This hollow and deceptive philosophy… depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. You know that our universities, our thought leaders, our politicians, our media, have a fundamentally atheistic philosophy. They think we should work out for ourselves what is good and what is bad, what is true and what is false, rather than trust God's revelation, and therefore they come to very different answers to the answers we come to. Their beliefs depend on human traditions, human logic, human thinking, human philosophies.
In recent times, we've seen such human philosophies as Postmodernism, which teaches that what is true for one person is different from what is true for another person, that there is no objective truth; there's your truth and there's my truth. That's obviously nonsense. Apart from anything else, Jesus is the Truth.
Postmodernism leads to the idea that I can think what I want, and do what I want, and no-one can judge me for it, because it's my truth. This is anarchy and godlessness. Do not be taken captive by these things:
1 John 3v4b
Sin is lawlessness
Paul writes about "the basic principles of this world". We can't be quite sure what he meant by that. Perhaps he meant earth, air, fire and water. These were once believed to be the only four elements making up the universe. Perhaps he meant demons. Perhaps he meant the pagan religions of his day. But here's one way we might apply this today:
Science is the study of the basic principles of this world. Or at least, it's about the basic physical components of the universe. It tries to answer questions like: How do atoms work? How does magnetism or gravity work? If we start not with the Bible but with the idea that physics is the truth, that Stephen Hawking is the font of all wisdom, that the ultimate arbiter of truth is science, we will go wrong.
Firstly, science changes all the time, so it can't be completely right.
Second, science can't examine spiritual things. You will hear people say that there is no scientific proof for the existence of God, as if that assertion closes the discussion. But there's no scientific proof for the non-existence of God. To answer the most important question in the universe we need revelation. Science can't answer such questions, and scientists really should know better than to pretend otherwise. Science is the study of material things. It cannot be a way to study spiritual things. Do not be taken captive by science.
People will want to give you scientific reasons why the flood couldn't have happened, for example. But there were no scientists there to observe it. And scientific measurements today can't prove that God didn't change the way the universe works some time ago. There's no scientific evidence that God does that, and there's none that He doesn't. There can't be. It's beyond what science can do. Never imagine that a scientific argument can teach us anything about God, or spiritual realities, or the way the universe was before scientists. Don't be taken captive.
All this is saying is: Trust God and cleave to Him. Trust the Bible and cleave to it. Live above the fray of all the nonsense philosophy, all the hollow arguments, all the ungodliness. Don't let it touch you, because you're too precious to be ruined by their nonsense.