October 1, 2025 • 21 mins
What if the ideas blurring your faith are older than you think—and far sneakier? We trace the enduring pull of Gnosticism, the age‑old promise that secret knowledge can lift you above ordinary life, and we measure it against the clarity of Scripture. Colossians 1 stands like a lighthouse in the fog, naming Jesus as the visible image of the invisible God, the creator who holds all things together and reconciles heaven and earth. That vision doesn’t invite escape from the material world; it dignifies bodies, limits, and place as the arena where grace takes root.
From there, we walk into Matthew 11 and hear Jesus thank the Father for revealing truth to the childlike. The invitation lands with force: come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. We talk about why spiritual elitism feels tempting, how “Theobro” culture shows up in classrooms and pews, and why the gospel refuses to be paywalled by expertise or mystical technique. Evangelism, we argue, is not passing a doctrine exam; it’s telling the truth about where Jesus found you and how his gentle yoke fits the real weight you carry.
We also name the opposite ditch: chasing private spiritual highs and calling them truth. Experiences can be gifts, but they are not the measure of reality. Scripture, community, and the slow fruit of transformation—forgiveness, costly love, steady faithfulness—keep us grounded. With “theology from the street, not the balcony” as our compass, we invite you to lay down the ladder of secret insight, step into honest relationship, and rest in a gospel that is wide open to the weary. If this conversation helps unblur your view of Jesus, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs rest, and leave a review to help others find the hope you found.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
For me, we are in a very interesting series about
Gnosticism over the past coupleweeks, and we'll be continuing
it today, too.
We're calling it blurred becauseit feels very easy for the
gospel to become blurred in ourown lives.
Sometimes we think we reallyunderstand what the gospel is
and what the gospel means, andthen all of a sudden we look in
(00:22):
the mirror after a while and werealize that we've been drifting
a little bit.
So, how does that compare toGnosticism?
Well, Gnosticism for me is afascinating subject.
Actually, as an undergrad, I wasa religious studies major at a
liberal arts university.
So I actually got to take aclass on Gnosticism as something
I was interested in.
I wanted to figure out what thisgroup believed, why they were
(00:45):
the way they were, what wassignificant about uncovering
their library of lost gospels.
I wanted to know it from theinside out.
And then when I went toseminary, we kind of looked at
Gnosticism a little bitdifferent because we see how
Gnosticism takes the familiarstory of the gospel and then
twists it a little bit intosomething separate.
(01:05):
Even though it uses the samecharacters, the Gnostic myth
takes on its own theology, itsown meaning, and how we apply it
to our lives can be very scary.
So today I want us to thinkabout how Gnostic ideas can
still creep into our own livesand quietly distort the way we
understand our faith.
(01:25):
So we're gonna do this in twoparts.
One, I'm gonna explain what theheck Gnosticism is.
I've already said it a thousandtimes.
You're gonna hear me say it athousand more times.
And then uh we'll look atColossians 1.
If you ever encounter Gnosticideas, I think Colossians 1 is a
great place to start.
And then we're gonna turn to theGospel of Matthew to hear about
what Jesus says about our faithand what happens when Gnostic
(01:48):
ideas might creep into ourlives.
So let's kick it off bycountering the Gnostic myth.
Our first point.
So what is Gnosticism?
So Gnosticism comes, this rootword gnosis.
Gnosis means to know, it justmeans knowledge.
You see it in Greek, uh, we seeit in the New Testament Greek
(02:08):
all the time.
But this group was a fringegroup of Christianity.
They had a lot of diverse uhregions and practices, but they
kind of held on to the idea thatthere was this secret knowledge
about the universe.
And if they could access thatsecret knowledge, that would
free them from the constrictionsof human existence.
(02:30):
According to one of the Gnosticmyths, there was this original
very spiritual world.
And then one of the creatorsturned away from that spiritual
world, and that's how thephysical world came to be.
In that myth, Christ is notactually creator God.
Christ is this emissary fromlike a more benevolent God.
So there's a there's asignificant theological
(02:52):
difference between Christianityand Gnosticism.
But the big premise was this: the material world, our flesh, (02:55):
undefined
our bodies were the source ofevil.
For Gnostics, if they could tapinto this secret knowledge and
they could shed the weakness,this material world, they could
go back to the spiritual world.
The body imprisoned yourdivinity.
(03:16):
It was trapped inside this body.
And so if you were able to beenlightened through these
Gnostic secrets, then you couldrecall that lost spiritual
world, that you could live toyour fullest self.
They would also feature thisheavenly messenger who would
deliver the secret knowledge toinitiates, allowing them to rise
(03:36):
to that fullness, that diviness.
And so we really didn't know awhole lot about Gnosticism until
the 1940s, when in an Egyptiancave we uncovered a library of
Gnostic texts.
This is, you probably heardabout it in the 2000s, the
Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel ofJudas, the Gospel of Mary
Magdalene.
So it became very popular then.
(03:59):
But what we also have is uh anolder Christian theologian from
the second century namedIrenaeus.
And we knew he talked aboutGnosticism a lot and why it was
a deviation from the originalgospel.
And that's really all we had fora while.
But one of the places thatIrenaeus always goes when he
encounters Gnosticism, he goesto Colossians 1.
(04:21):
And that's what I want to dotoday.
I just want to start counteringthis Gnostic myth.
Let's go to Colossians 1, 15 andsee for ourselves what is the
gospel that we believe.
So we'll look at Colossians 1,we'll start in verse 15.
It says this Christ is thevisible image of the invisible
God.
He existed before anything andwas created and is supreme over
(04:43):
all creation.
So we're already kind of undoingthat Gnostic myth.
Christ existed from thebeginning and created
everything.
Verse 16, for through him Godcreated everything in the
heavenly realms and on earth.
(05:07):
Everything was created throughhim and for him.
He existed before anything else,and he holds all creation
together.
So already in this short threeverses, we're undoing the
Gnostic myth.
Christ is eternal, Christ iscreator, and Christ celebrates
(05:27):
holding this material worldtogether.
Our physical world was part ofGod's design, not a deviation.
Stephen talked about this lastweek.
God breathed the breath of lifeinto humanity.
That is a good thing.
God called creation good.
We are part of God's design.
We're not a deviation.
(05:47):
We're about welcoming thekingdom of God here on earth.
We're not about trying to fleeall of this.
We have been reconciled andredeemed.
Let's continue with verse 18.
Christ is also the head of thechurch, which is his body.
He is the beginning, the supremeover all who rise from the dead.
So he is the first in everythingfor the fullness, for God in all
his fullness was pleased to livein Christ.
(06:10):
And through him God reconciledeverything to himself.
He made peace with everything inheaven and on earth by means of
Christ's blood on the cross.
So these few verses that we justread are actually a hymn.
So in Paul's letter to theColossians, he starts.
(06:31):
And we kind of think about hymnsthe way we think about the
Psalms.
It's actually written the sameway.
It's indented a little bit.
It's easy to memorize.
Paul is meeting the community ofthe Colossians where they're at.
It's kind of like if you've evergone to a perhaps a Lutheran
church or a Methodist church andthey say the Apostles' Creed.
This is one of the first creedsin the form of a hymn.
(06:53):
This is what united theColossians faith together.
And in this, we have an ode toChrist and who we are in Christ.
All things have peace.
Heaven and earth are made wholein Christ's victorious work of
reconciliation.
And in this we find great peaceand we find great rest.
We also see that there's anaspect of Gnosticism in this
(07:15):
hymn that goes, that becomesundone.
And that is that the gospelisn't a secret.
And that's what I really want toharp on today.
Gnostic thinking made peoplebelieve that salvation was only
for the spiritually elite.
But you don't need to bespecial, smart, or in the know.
The gospel is for anyone andeveryone who is willing to
(07:36):
receive it.
So for the rest of our timetoday, I want to talk about how
the Gnostic myth appears in ourown lives, especially as it
relates to secret knowledge oreven spiritual elitism.
So let's get into balancingknowledge, enlightenment, and
faith.
So back in seminary, uh I wasalways amused at watching some
(08:00):
of the residential students.
They're usually fresh out ofundergrad and they go right into
divinity school and they'reready to go become pastors and
theologians and PhDs.
And as me, I've started thisjourney as kind of a bit of a
second career.
So it's really funny to watchthem kind of group together.
You can see them in the classevery time.
They always want to talk to theprofessor, they really want to
(08:21):
be wise, they want to kind ofshow off a little bit.
And there was a particular groupof guys that earned a nickname
for themselves.
We called them the Theobros.
And the Theobros, if you had aclass with the Theobros, you
knew because you were nevergoing to get to ask a question
and you were never going to talkabout the class material because
they were going to be too busytrying to, you know, get a
(08:44):
letter of recommendation fromthe professor.
I don't know.
But it was not a term ofendearment.
Theobros was not a term ofendearment.
Now, over the years, I'veexperienced my own thirst for
knowledge.
I have.
And that's led me on quests fora secret way to interpret
scripture or a secret way toencounter God, a special way to
(09:05):
encounter God.
But really, if I think about it,I want to do that because I want
to encounter God in such a waythat I feel a sense of authority
over other people, especiallywhen I'm on a hunt for something
special, something unique,something that makes me feel
smarter or better.
But that's not the gospel.
And it couldn't be further fromwhat Christ meant by coming here
(09:28):
to reconcile all of creation.
I wonder how many of you heretoday have heard the passage,
come into me, all who are wearyand heavy burden, and I will
give you rest.
This is actually the passagethat I want us to finish our
time out together looking at andsee how Jesus undoes the Gnostic
myth in the Gospel of Matthew.
There is no secret knowledge.
(09:50):
Jesus in this passage is goingto remind us what the economy of
salvation or who matters in thekingdom of God.
So let's take a look.
We'll hop over to Matthewchapter 11, and we'll start at
verse 25, and we'll read for alittle bit.
It says this at that time Jesusprayed this prayer, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, thankyou for hiding these things from
(10:13):
those who think themselves wiseand clever, and for revealing
them to the childlike.
Yes, Father, it pleased you todo it this way.
My father has entrustedeverything to me.
No one truly knows the Sonexcept the Father, and no one
truly knows the Father exceptthe Son, and those to whom the
Son chooses to reveal him.
(10:36):
Then Jesus said, Here it is,come to me, all of you who are
weary and carry heavy burdens,and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, let meteach you, because I am humble
and gentle at heart, and youwill find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy to bear, andthe burden I give you is light.
(11:00):
Now, at first glance, Jesus'words sound strangely Gnostic,
right?
Thank you, Lord, for hidingthese things.
That almost sounds like asecret.
But Jesus is actually doingsomething dramatic here in the
text.
Jesus is turning faith upsidedown against the Pharisees,
against the wise, against theclever.
(11:20):
And so for a second, I want usto look at a point about Jesus
bringing us rest in ourhumility, especially in the
humility of our spirit.
If you were here or perhapswatched online about the
Pharisee and Me series that wejust finished back in August,
the Pharisees were thesespiritually elite experts in the
(11:40):
Jewish law.
Yeah, those Pharisees, thescribes, the Sadducees.
Essentially, they thoughtthemselves to have a clear
understanding of God, butespecially they thought they had
a clear understanding of God'swill.
And many of Jesus' discipleswere anything but experts in the
Jewish law.
In fact, Jesus' disciples wouldhave been considered sinners,
(12:01):
breakers of the law by thesereligious experts.
Especially think about, we'retalking about the gospel of
Matthew, think about Matthew, atax collector, someone that the
local community would haveconsidered a traitor for selling
out to the Roman government.
However, it was disciples whowere open to Jesus' revelation
of God.
And while these Pharisees, thesetheologians, these clever
(12:22):
rejected Jesus' revelation, thedisciples accepted it.
And when it comes to matters offaith, we need to keep
acknowledging how little we knowthat Jesus chose to meet us in
our brokenness.
Jesus did not meet us in oureducation.
Jesus didn't meet us in ourbrilliance.
And Jesus definitely did notmeet us in our perfection.
(12:46):
In Matthew 5, this is what Jesusrefers to as the poverty of
spirit.
It's the poor in spirit that thekingdom of God belongs.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,for they shall inherit the
kingdom of God.
That's what the gospel is allabout.
And it is the awareness of ourown poverty of spirit, mind, and
heart that disposes us to rereceive God's gift of God's Son.
(13:11):
Jesus assures us here that whenwe receive the Lord out of our
poverty, we will be enrichedbecause we are brought into
Jesus' own intimate relationshipwith the Father.
Trusting in our ownunderstanding will always lead
us astray, especially when ourknowledge leads us to judge
other people.
(13:31):
How many times do we hearChristians criticize one another
for their theology and confuseit with their faith?
Oh, you know, they really don'tunderstand penal substitution or
Christus Victor.
Can they really be Christian?
They don't understand howsalvation works?
Or, oh man, they don'tunderstand what the end times is
(13:53):
all about.
Can they really be Christian?
Or they don't understand churchhistory.
They don't know what Gnosticismis.
Can they really be Christian?
But knowledge in those areasdoesn't reflect a poverty of
spirit that Jesus speaks to inthis passage, and it has no say
in what it means to havechildlike faith.
(14:14):
Instead, this knowledge orpursuit of knowledge creates
false wisdom.
It clouds our judgment, it seeksmastery over the Spirit of God.
The Gnostic myth is that themystery of Jesus is hidden and
must be discovered.
But the truth revealed by Jesushere in this passage is that the
gospel is for the weary and theburdened, the childlike.
(14:38):
And so next, I want us to lookat how evangelism in this sense
is born out of relationship, notknowledge.
Because another problem ariseswhen we believe that the Gnostic
myth, that knowledge isprivileged, and then we start to
feel too intimidated to shareour faith that we call our own.
How many times have we felt tooafraid to share our own faith
(14:59):
story because we are concernedabout not having all the answers
around Christianity?
I mean, think about societyright now.
How do we even begin to shareour faith and like parse through
all the confusion and the chaosthat we're experiencing as a
faith and as a nation?
So let's stop for a minute andthink about our own faith
stories.
(15:20):
I think life and the moments oflife that brought us here today
included a series of crucialfaith moments, or perhaps a
singularly distinctive momentwhere your faith in Christ
became whole.
Now, was it because you sat downand read a systematic theology
book, cover to cover, and at theend you're like, you know what,
this makes sense.
(15:40):
Thumbs up, I'm on board withJesus.
I don't think so.
I bet if we really askedourselves, we had a moment of
faith because we were shownGod's love.
Whether that's because we feltthe divine presence of the Holy
Spirit meeting us, or perhaps wewere shown the radiance of God's
(16:03):
love by someone we hold dear.
Someone who really showed us,Come unto me, all you who are
weary and heavy burden, I willgive you rest, for my yoke is
easy to bear, and the burden Igive you is light.
And that's what we need toremember here as a missional
community in Madison, Wisconsin.
Being evangelistic does not meanhaving all the answers.
(16:23):
It means showing God's love andsharing how Jesus met you in
your brokenness with others.
It means prioritizingrelationship rather than
knowledge, a relationship withJesus first and foremost, and
then relationship with others,relationship with your Christian
community.
My theology professor, at thestart of every theology class,
and I think we should do thismore often, I think every time
(16:45):
we get up here or we want to doa small group or anything, we
should say this quote.
He would always start by saying,theology is done from the
street, not from the balcony.
Theology is done from thestreet, not from the balcony.
And as soon as we allow theGnostic myth to take root in our
lives, we stick, we quicklystart looking for the stairs to
(17:08):
that balcony.
We want to see how high we canclimb, how many books we can
offer, how many people we caninfluence.
Rather than remembering the realimpact is done loving our
neighbor and tending the broken.
Now, lastly, I do want to talkabout one more topic where we
conflate spiritual enlightenmentwith truth.
(17:30):
Because the last part of theGnostic myth I want to touch on
is when we make that oppositeassumption, not about knowledge,
but where we promote feelings ofspiritual enlightenment over
truth.
It's a balance.
There's two sides to it.
In other words, we assume thathaving some deep, private,
mystical experience is thehighest goal of faith.
The kind of thinking that canpull us into the Gnostic trap
(17:53):
because it suggests that there'sthis secret, hidden
enlightenment that only a selectfew can attain, as if only
certain people or certainexperiences are actually
experiencing God.
It pops up in our lives insubtle ways.
Perhaps we start relying more onour spiritual experiences than
scripture, or we start relyingmore on our experiences than our
Christian community.
(18:15):
Perhaps we say to ourselves, ifI just feel close to God and
peaceful, that must mean I'm onthe right track, no matter what
my life actually looks like.
And I think the biggest trapwhen we conflate spiritual
enlightenment with truth is thatwe start to believe we no longer
need to grow in Christ.
We begin operating under theassumption that our spiritual
experiences alone define who weare, so we don't have to
(18:37):
actually put on Christ or liveout the gospel in our daily
lives.
We convince ourselves that,well, I am who I am, and that's
enough.
Even if our lives aren'treflecting Christ-like love,
Christ-like humility, andChrist-like obedience.
Now, I do want to be clear: experiences of spiritual (18:52):
undefined
enlightenment can be real gifts.
They can point us towards God,they can give us glimpses of
God's presence, but they are notproof of ultimate truth.
Because feelings fade,experiences come and go.
All truth in the end must bediscerned in the light of Christ
and Scripture.
(19:13):
So true enlightenment is notabout chasing secret knowledge
or simply becoming aware of thedivine.
It's about being transformed,transformed by the Holy Spirit
into the likeness of Christ.
What does that mean?
It means learning to forgivewhen it's hard, to love when it
costs a lot, to walk faithfullywith God in both mountaintop
(19:35):
moments and in your ordinarydays.
So as we conclude today, I wantto revisit Colossians 1.
I want to remind us of thegospel.
A gospel that reconciled us toGod and a gospel that has the
power to change our lives.
Colossians 1, verse 20 will lookvery familiar as we start there.
(19:57):
It says this, and through himGod reconciled everything to
himself.
He made peace with everything inheaven and on earth by means of
Christ's blood on the cross.
Here's the real impact.
This includes you, who were oncefar away from God.
You were his enemies, separatedfrom him by your evil thoughts
(20:17):
and actions.
Yet now he has reconciled you tohimself through the death of
Christ in his physical body.
As a result, he has brought youinto his own presence, and you
are holy and blameless as youstand before him without a
single fault.
That is the gospel.
We stand before God without asingle fault, reconciled by
(20:41):
Christ's love, Christ'ssacrifice.
The gospel is not an insider'sclub.
It's not a puzzle that needs tobe solved.
Jesus didn't come for theacademics, and Jesus didn't come
for the enlightened.
Jesus came for the weary, forthe broken, the ones far off.
The gospel is not hidden, thegospel is wide open.
(21:03):
So maybe this week is the storyis the week that you share your
story with someone else, how Godmet you in your brokenness.
Maybe it's the week that you putdown a book and you realize that
your faith has become morelogical than it has personal.
Maybe it means turning off thenoise for a while and seeking
God in prayer and in scriptureinstead of relying only on
(21:26):
feelings or flashes ofinspiration.
But no matter where you are thisweek, may we rest in the words
of Jesus.
Come unto me, all of you who areweary and carry heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.
For my yoke is easy to bear, andthe burden I give you is light.
For me, we are in a very interesting series about
Gnosticism over the past coupleweeks, and we'll be continuing
it today, too.
We're calling it blurred becauseit feels very easy for the
gospel to become blurred in ourown lives.
Sometimes we think we reallyunderstand what the gospel is
and what the gospel means, andthen all of a sudden we look in
(00:22):
the mirror after a while and werealize that we've been drifting
a little bit.
So, how does that compare toGnosticism?
Well, Gnosticism for me is afascinating subject.
Actually, as an undergrad, I wasa religious studies major at a
liberal arts university.
So I actually got to take aclass on Gnosticism as something
I was interested in.
I wanted to figure out what thisgroup believed, why they were
(00:45):
the way they were, what wassignificant about uncovering
their library of lost gospels.
I wanted to know it from theinside out.
And then when I went toseminary, we kind of looked at
Gnosticism a little bitdifferent because we see how
Gnosticism takes the familiarstory of the gospel and then
twists it a little bit intosomething separate.
(01:05):
Even though it uses the samecharacters, the Gnostic myth
takes on its own theology, itsown meaning, and how we apply it
to our lives can be very scary.
So today I want us to thinkabout how Gnostic ideas can
still creep into our own livesand quietly distort the way we
understand our faith.
(01:25):
So we're gonna do this in twoparts.
One, I'm gonna explain what theheck Gnosticism is.
I've already said it a thousandtimes.
You're gonna hear me say it athousand more times.
And then uh we'll look atColossians 1.
If you ever encounter Gnosticideas, I think Colossians 1 is a
great place to start.
And then we're gonna turn to theGospel of Matthew to hear about
what Jesus says about our faithand what happens when Gnostic
(01:48):
ideas might creep into ourlives.
So let's kick it off bycountering the Gnostic myth.
Our first point.
So what is Gnosticism?
So Gnosticism comes, this rootword gnosis.
Gnosis means to know, it justmeans knowledge.
You see it in Greek, uh, we seeit in the New Testament Greek
(02:08):
all the time.
But this group was a fringegroup of Christianity.
They had a lot of diverse uhregions and practices, but they
kind of held on to the idea thatthere was this secret knowledge
about the universe.
And if they could access thatsecret knowledge, that would
free them from the constrictionsof human existence.
(02:30):
According to one of the Gnosticmyths, there was this original
very spiritual world.
And then one of the creatorsturned away from that spiritual
world, and that's how thephysical world came to be.
In that myth, Christ is notactually creator God.
Christ is this emissary fromlike a more benevolent God.
So there's a there's asignificant theological
(02:52):
difference between Christianityand Gnosticism.
But the big premise was this: the material world, our flesh, (02:55):
undefined
our bodies were the source ofevil.
For Gnostics, if they could tapinto this secret knowledge and
they could shed the weakness,this material world, they could
go back to the spiritual world.
The body imprisoned yourdivinity.
(03:16):
It was trapped inside this body.
And so if you were able to beenlightened through these
Gnostic secrets, then you couldrecall that lost spiritual
world, that you could live toyour fullest self.
They would also feature thisheavenly messenger who would
deliver the secret knowledge toinitiates, allowing them to rise
(03:36):
to that fullness, that diviness.
And so we really didn't know awhole lot about Gnosticism until
the 1940s, when in an Egyptiancave we uncovered a library of
Gnostic texts.
This is, you probably heardabout it in the 2000s, the
Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel ofJudas, the Gospel of Mary
Magdalene.
So it became very popular then.
(03:59):
But what we also have is uh anolder Christian theologian from
the second century namedIrenaeus.
And we knew he talked aboutGnosticism a lot and why it was
a deviation from the originalgospel.
And that's really all we had fora while.
But one of the places thatIrenaeus always goes when he
encounters Gnosticism, he goesto Colossians 1.
(04:21):
And that's what I want to dotoday.
I just want to start counteringthis Gnostic myth.
Let's go to Colossians 1, 15 andsee for ourselves what is the
gospel that we believe.
So we'll look at Colossians 1,we'll start in verse 15.
It says this Christ is thevisible image of the invisible
God.
He existed before anything andwas created and is supreme over
(04:43):
all creation.
So we're already kind of undoingthat Gnostic myth.
Christ existed from thebeginning and created
everything.
Verse 16, for through him Godcreated everything in the
heavenly realms and on earth.
(05:07):
Everything was created throughhim and for him.
He existed before anything else,and he holds all creation
together.
So already in this short threeverses, we're undoing the
Gnostic myth.
Christ is eternal, Christ iscreator, and Christ celebrates
(05:27):
holding this material worldtogether.
Our physical world was part ofGod's design, not a deviation.
Stephen talked about this lastweek.
God breathed the breath of lifeinto humanity.
That is a good thing.
God called creation good.
We are part of God's design.
We're not a deviation.
(05:47):
We're about welcoming thekingdom of God here on earth.
We're not about trying to fleeall of this.
We have been reconciled andredeemed.
Let's continue with verse 18.
Christ is also the head of thechurch, which is his body.
He is the beginning, the supremeover all who rise from the dead.
So he is the first in everythingfor the fullness, for God in all
his fullness was pleased to livein Christ.
(06:10):
And through him God reconciledeverything to himself.
He made peace with everything inheaven and on earth by means of
Christ's blood on the cross.
So these few verses that we justread are actually a hymn.
So in Paul's letter to theColossians, he starts.
(06:31):
And we kind of think about hymnsthe way we think about the
Psalms.
It's actually written the sameway.
It's indented a little bit.
It's easy to memorize.
Paul is meeting the community ofthe Colossians where they're at.
It's kind of like if you've evergone to a perhaps a Lutheran
church or a Methodist church andthey say the Apostles' Creed.
This is one of the first creedsin the form of a hymn.
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This is what united theColossians faith together.
And in this, we have an ode toChrist and who we are in Christ.
All things have peace.
Heaven and earth are made wholein Christ's victorious work of
reconciliation.
And in this we find great peaceand we find great rest.
We also see that there's anaspect of Gnosticism in this
(07:15):
hymn that goes, that becomesundone.
And that is that the gospelisn't a secret.
And that's what I really want toharp on today.
Gnostic thinking made peoplebelieve that salvation was only
for the spiritually elite.
But you don't need to bespecial, smart, or in the know.
The gospel is for anyone andeveryone who is willing to
(07:36):
receive it.
So for the rest of our timetoday, I want to talk about how
the Gnostic myth appears in ourown lives, especially as it
relates to secret knowledge oreven spiritual elitism.
So let's get into balancingknowledge, enlightenment, and
faith.
So back in seminary, uh I wasalways amused at watching some
(08:00):
of the residential students.
They're usually fresh out ofundergrad and they go right into
divinity school and they'reready to go become pastors and
theologians and PhDs.
And as me, I've started thisjourney as kind of a bit of a
second career.
So it's really funny to watchthem kind of group together.
You can see them in the classevery time.
They always want to talk to theprofessor, they really want to
(08:21):
be wise, they want to kind ofshow off a little bit.
And there was a particular groupof guys that earned a nickname
for themselves.
We called them the Theobros.
And the Theobros, if you had aclass with the Theobros, you
knew because you were nevergoing to get to ask a question
and you were never going to talkabout the class material because
they were going to be too busytrying to, you know, get a
(08:44):
letter of recommendation fromthe professor.
I don't know.
But it was not a term ofendearment.
Theobros was not a term ofendearment.
Now, over the years, I'veexperienced my own thirst for
knowledge.
I have.
And that's led me on quests fora secret way to interpret
scripture or a secret way toencounter God, a special way to
(09:05):
encounter God.
But really, if I think about it,I want to do that because I want
to encounter God in such a waythat I feel a sense of authority
over other people, especiallywhen I'm on a hunt for something
special, something unique,something that makes me feel
smarter or better.
But that's not the gospel.
And it couldn't be further fromwhat Christ meant by coming here
(09:28):
to reconcile all of creation.
I wonder how many of you heretoday have heard the passage,
come into me, all who are wearyand heavy burden, and I will
give you rest.
This is actually the passagethat I want us to finish our
time out together looking at andsee how Jesus undoes the Gnostic
myth in the Gospel of Matthew.
There is no secret knowledge.
(09:50):
Jesus in this passage is goingto remind us what the economy of
salvation or who matters in thekingdom of God.
So let's take a look.
We'll hop over to Matthewchapter 11, and we'll start at
verse 25, and we'll read for alittle bit.
It says this at that time Jesusprayed this prayer, O Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, thankyou for hiding these things from
(10:13):
those who think themselves wiseand clever, and for revealing
them to the childlike.
Yes, Father, it pleased you todo it this way.
My father has entrustedeverything to me.
No one truly knows the Sonexcept the Father, and no one
truly knows the Father exceptthe Son, and those to whom the
Son chooses to reveal him.
(10:36):
Then Jesus said, Here it is,come to me, all of you who are
weary and carry heavy burdens,and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, let meteach you, because I am humble
and gentle at heart, and youwill find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy to bear, andthe burden I give you is light.
(11:00):
Now, at first glance, Jesus'words sound strangely Gnostic,
right?
Thank you, Lord, for hidingthese things.
That almost sounds like asecret.
But Jesus is actually doingsomething dramatic here in the
text.
Jesus is turning faith upsidedown against the Pharisees,
against the wise, against theclever.
(11:20):
And so for a second, I want usto look at a point about Jesus
bringing us rest in ourhumility, especially in the
humility of our spirit.
If you were here or perhapswatched online about the
Pharisee and Me series that wejust finished back in August,
the Pharisees were thesespiritually elite experts in the
(11:40):
Jewish law.
Yeah, those Pharisees, thescribes, the Sadducees.
Essentially, they thoughtthemselves to have a clear
understanding of God, butespecially they thought they had
a clear understanding of God'swill.
And many of Jesus' discipleswere anything but experts in the
Jewish law.
In fact, Jesus' disciples wouldhave been considered sinners,
(12:01):
breakers of the law by thesereligious experts.
Especially think about, we'retalking about the gospel of
Matthew, think about Matthew, atax collector, someone that the
local community would haveconsidered a traitor for selling
out to the Roman government.
However, it was disciples whowere open to Jesus' revelation
of God.
And while these Pharisees, thesetheologians, these clever
(12:22):
rejected Jesus' revelation, thedisciples accepted it.
And when it comes to matters offaith, we need to keep
acknowledging how little we knowthat Jesus chose to meet us in
our brokenness.
Jesus did not meet us in oureducation.
Jesus didn't meet us in ourbrilliance.
And Jesus definitely did notmeet us in our perfection.
(12:46):
In Matthew 5, this is what Jesusrefers to as the poverty of
spirit.
It's the poor in spirit that thekingdom of God belongs.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,for they shall inherit the
kingdom of God.
That's what the gospel is allabout.
And it is the awareness of ourown poverty of spirit, mind, and
heart that disposes us to rereceive God's gift of God's Son.
(13:11):
Jesus assures us here that whenwe receive the Lord out of our
poverty, we will be enrichedbecause we are brought into
Jesus' own intimate relationshipwith the Father.
Trusting in our ownunderstanding will always lead
us astray, especially when ourknowledge leads us to judge
other people.
(13:31):
How many times do we hearChristians criticize one another
for their theology and confuseit with their faith?
Oh, you know, they really don'tunderstand penal substitution or
Christus Victor.
Can they really be Christian?
They don't understand howsalvation works?
Or, oh man, they don'tunderstand what the end times is
(13:53):
all about.
Can they really be Christian?
Or they don't understand churchhistory.
They don't know what Gnosticismis.
Can they really be Christian?
But knowledge in those areasdoesn't reflect a poverty of
spirit that Jesus speaks to inthis passage, and it has no say
in what it means to havechildlike faith.
(14:14):
Instead, this knowledge orpursuit of knowledge creates
false wisdom.
It clouds our judgment, it seeksmastery over the Spirit of God.
The Gnostic myth is that themystery of Jesus is hidden and
must be discovered.
But the truth revealed by Jesushere in this passage is that the
gospel is for the weary and theburdened, the childlike.
(14:38):
And so next, I want us to lookat how evangelism in this sense
is born out of relationship, notknowledge.
Because another problem ariseswhen we believe that the Gnostic
myth, that knowledge isprivileged, and then we start to
feel too intimidated to shareour faith that we call our own.
How many times have we felt tooafraid to share our own faith
(14:59):
story because we are concernedabout not having all the answers
around Christianity?
I mean, think about societyright now.
How do we even begin to shareour faith and like parse through
all the confusion and the chaosthat we're experiencing as a
faith and as a nation?
So let's stop for a minute andthink about our own faith
stories.
(15:20):
I think life and the moments oflife that brought us here today
included a series of crucialfaith moments, or perhaps a
singularly distinctive momentwhere your faith in Christ
became whole.
Now, was it because you sat downand read a systematic theology
book, cover to cover, and at theend you're like, you know what,
this makes sense.
(15:40):
Thumbs up, I'm on board withJesus.
I don't think so.
I bet if we really askedourselves, we had a moment of
faith because we were shownGod's love.
Whether that's because we feltthe divine presence of the Holy
Spirit meeting us, or perhaps wewere shown the radiance of God's
(16:03):
love by someone we hold dear.
Someone who really showed us,Come unto me, all you who are
weary and heavy burden, I willgive you rest, for my yoke is
easy to bear, and the burden Igive you is light.
And that's what we need toremember here as a missional
community in Madison, Wisconsin.
Being evangelistic does not meanhaving all the answers.
(16:23):
It means showing God's love andsharing how Jesus met you in
your brokenness with others.
It means prioritizingrelationship rather than
knowledge, a relationship withJesus first and foremost, and
then relationship with others,relationship with your Christian
community.
My theology professor, at thestart of every theology class,
and I think we should do thismore often, I think every time
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we get up here or we want to doa small group or anything, we
should say this quote.
He would always start by saying,theology is done from the
street, not from the balcony.
Theology is done from thestreet, not from the balcony.
And as soon as we allow theGnostic myth to take root in our
lives, we stick, we quicklystart looking for the stairs to
(17:08):
that balcony.
We want to see how high we canclimb, how many books we can
offer, how many people we caninfluence.
Rather than remembering the realimpact is done loving our
neighbor and tending the broken.
Now, lastly, I do want to talkabout one more topic where we
conflate spiritual enlightenmentwith truth.
(17:30):
Because the last part of theGnostic myth I want to touch on
is when we make that oppositeassumption, not about knowledge,
but where we promote feelings ofspiritual enlightenment over
truth.
It's a balance.
There's two sides to it.
In other words, we assume thathaving some deep, private,
mystical experience is thehighest goal of faith.
The kind of thinking that canpull us into the Gnostic trap
(17:53):
because it suggests that there'sthis secret, hidden
enlightenment that only a selectfew can attain, as if only
certain people or certainexperiences are actually
experiencing God.
It pops up in our lives insubtle ways.
Perhaps we start relying more onour spiritual experiences than
scripture, or we start relyingmore on our experiences than our
Christian community.
(18:15):
Perhaps we say to ourselves, ifI just feel close to God and
peaceful, that must mean I'm onthe right track, no matter what
my life actually looks like.
And I think the biggest trapwhen we conflate spiritual
enlightenment with truth is thatwe start to believe we no longer
need to grow in Christ.
We begin operating under theassumption that our spiritual
experiences alone define who weare, so we don't have to
(18:37):
actually put on Christ or liveout the gospel in our daily
lives.
We convince ourselves that,well, I am who I am, and that's
enough.
Even if our lives aren'treflecting Christ-like love,
Christ-like humility, andChrist-like obedience.
Now, I do want to be clear: experiences of spiritual (18:52):
undefined
enlightenment can be real gifts.
They can point us towards God,they can give us glimpses of
God's presence, but they are notproof of ultimate truth.
Because feelings fade,experiences come and go.
All truth in the end must bediscerned in the light of Christ
and Scripture.
(19:13):
So true enlightenment is notabout chasing secret knowledge
or simply becoming aware of thedivine.
It's about being transformed,transformed by the Holy Spirit
into the likeness of Christ.
What does that mean?
It means learning to forgivewhen it's hard, to love when it
costs a lot, to walk faithfullywith God in both mountaintop
(19:35):
moments and in your ordinarydays.
So as we conclude today, I wantto revisit Colossians 1.
I want to remind us of thegospel.
A gospel that reconciled us toGod and a gospel that has the
power to change our lives.
Colossians 1, verse 20 will lookvery familiar as we start there.
(19:57):
It says this, and through himGod reconciled everything to
himself.
He made peace with everything inheaven and on earth by means of
Christ's blood on the cross.
Here's the real impact.
This includes you, who were oncefar away from God.
You were his enemies, separatedfrom him by your evil thoughts
(20:17):
and actions.
Yet now he has reconciled you tohimself through the death of
Christ in his physical body.
As a result, he has brought youinto his own presence, and you
are holy and blameless as youstand before him without a
single fault.
That is the gospel.
We stand before God without asingle fault, reconciled by
(20:41):
Christ's love, Christ'ssacrifice.
The gospel is not an insider'sclub.
It's not a puzzle that needs tobe solved.
Jesus didn't come for theacademics, and Jesus didn't come
for the enlightened.
Jesus came for the weary, forthe broken, the ones far off.
The gospel is not hidden, thegospel is wide open.
(21:03):
So maybe this week is the storyis the week that you share your
story with someone else, how Godmet you in your brokenness.
Maybe it's the week that you putdown a book and you realize that
your faith has become morelogical than it has personal.
Maybe it means turning off thenoise for a while and seeking
God in prayer and in scriptureinstead of relying only on
(21:26):
feelings or flashes ofinspiration.
But no matter where you are thisweek, may we rest in the words
of Jesus.
Come unto me, all of you who areweary and carry heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.
For my yoke is easy to bear, andthe burden I give you is light.
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