Heavenly Father, we pray for your blessing over this time. We ask that you would search our hearts and the things that we've gleaned and shared already would make a deeper impression in our hearts, Lord God, to understand your grace and the people that you have chosen to bring the gospel to us.

We pray for your blessing. We pray for soberness. Help us, Lord God, to be physically awake, to be able to listen and to digest the things that we have studied. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. So, we're looking at the last passage for the book of Colossians.

Next week is our overview study. So, I have questions on the bottom, which I'm going to review with you before I finish. So next week, just kind of, you know, just follow the directions and try to answer as much of these as you can on the bottom. But today we're going to be finishing up the book of Colossians.

It's probably weird that we're taking a whole Bible study that's just to study the last three verses or three, four verses just filled with names. But again, typically when we go through these names, we don't really dig too deep because you just think, well, just Paul's saying bye. But these names are on there for a purpose, right?

And so the reason why we're taking, you know, taking some time to go through these names by step by step is because we see what the early church was like when you see the testimonies of these people. And so these are things that typically that when you mention Titchicus or Archippus or Nymphus, you know, you mentioned that, that that doesn't even come up in Bible trivia, right?

Most people don't know these names, but they are people's names on the Bible for a reason. So today I broadly divided the section that we're looking at into two parts. And the two main parts is insight that we gained from this, what the early church was like. Okay. And then the second part is the writing and spreading of the New Testament letters.

Okay. Writing and spreading of the New Testament letters. So we get some insight through this last part of Colossae, what the early church was like. So the first thing, the church that he mentioned, the Laodicean church. Again, we want to jump into it more specifically, but Laodicea is one of the churches that are mentioned in the seven churches in the book of Revelation, right?

Well Colossae is the very next city right underneath that. So the closest city to Laodicea is Colossae. So Paul addresses the Laodicean brothers, but the Laodicean, if you remember, what was the Laodicean church known for? Lukewarmness. But what was the cause of the lukewarmness? Do you remember? Their riches, right?

Because they said, you say you are rich and I have become wealthy. And then, and then Jesus basically turns that around, but in actuality you're really poor and wretched. And he turns the table around and says, your self-reliance has actually made you dull to him. And then, so the indictment against them was lukewarmness.

So Laodicean church was considered a very wealthy church and Colossae was right underneath that, right? And Colossae also was a very prominent city. So again, the lot of activity was taking place right around that area. Do you remember? Right? What was the primary thing that was going on? What is that area called?

Something minor. Asia minor. Asia minor, okay? So in Asia minor, there was a lot of activity. There was a, what was the, one of the main things that was going on in this area that Paul, Apostle Paul was concerned about? What? Paul's teaching. Anything in particular? The Judaizers. The Judaizers were having a huge impact in this area.

And so Paul was very concerned about Laodicea, Galatia. In fact, when he writes Galatia, he says the same thing, to make sure that you spread this letter that everybody reads it. Okay? Nympha was probably a wealthy person. Okay, let me... Okay, I forgot one. The churches were usually a small in number and met in people's homes until the early third century, meaning they were house churches.

So even if they had big homes, they wouldn't have been able to fit hundreds of people. So most churches that Paul is referring to is probably house churches that may have fit, if it was big, maybe 20 people, right? And that would be considered a big house. Most average homes at that time probably only could fit about 10 to 15, right?

Kinda like the churches in India, if you go to the villages, they'll say, "We have three churches in this area," and they're probably only talking about 30 people, 10 in each home, right? And so when the churches are written, most of these letters are written to a very small group of people, right?

So again, it gives us insight into the early church. What happened in third century that brought about the building of buildings? Early third century. Anybody know what happens in third century? Constantine becomes the emperor, and then he supposedly becomes a Christian, and then he makes Christianity the state religion.

So all of a sudden, they enjoyed peace for the first time. So for 300 years, Christians couldn't get organized because they were constantly running for... From persecution, right? Part of the reason why there was this turnaround attitude toward Christian was because the persecution by a guy named, I think, Diocletian, okay, I'm butchering his name, but there was a guy who was before Constantine, the persecution was so intense that the non-Christians started to have sympathy for Christians.

And so it was right around that time, he said, "Man, we're really treating these people poorly." And then Constantine comes into power and actually rides this overwhelming sympathy toward Christians and says that he became a Christian and then allows freedom for Christianity. And that's when the churches get organized, that's when the Catholic Church, as we know it, first gets organized.

First church assembly happens at that time, and then the church buildings start going up. And then if you look at church history, where all the divisions and the problems actually start coming in is around third century. It's for the first time when they enjoyed peace, okay? So until then, most of the churches are meeting in people's homes in small, small numbers.

"Nympha," that he mentions here is probably a wealthy person because they were meeting at her or his home. People don't know if it was, it's a he or her, okay? Some of the translations are different. Though they were small in number, the churches seemed to have shared information and fellowship together early on.

So these letters were written, and again, these churches knew of each other, and there seems to have been interaction that was going on. In other words, they were not isolated. "Archippus," as another man mentioned, was called to fulfill his ministry and not to simply take the title. Church tradition says that Archippus became the Bishop of Laodicea and eventually became a martyr for his faith.

So again, these are just names that are mentioned at the end of the letter, but these were very prominent, significant people in the first century. So probably in the first and early second century, if you said Archippus, most of the people there probably would have known him. Like today, if we said John Piper, right?

And if you're in evangelical community, you would know his name. Archippus was probably one of those people that they would have universally known. The early church was not perfect. Almost every New Testament letter addresses some issues that they had in the church. What issue was mentioned in Colossae? He mentions it in chapter two.

Archippus' relationship with the Archippus was not perfect. We already mentioned one, the Judaizers. They had both problems, the Gnostics and the Judaizers. So it was twofold in this church. And so typically people say, "We need to have an early New Testament church," or people would oftentimes refer to Acts chapter two as the ideal church.

But if you look at the early church, almost every single church had problems. You can understand why. Even though the Holy Spirit was working and apostles were there, these are human beings. These are people who used to hate each other, all of a sudden gathering together and worshipping. So when the Holy Spirit wasn't prominent, in other words, if they were kind of lax or maybe spiritually not sober, their flesh would get in and then they would have problems.

And so that was one of the big problems in the early church. So if you read any letter in the New Testament, I can't think of a single letter that doesn't address some problem. So the fact that the early church was not perfect is universal. The early church was organized.

It wasn't just a bunch of people saying, "We're two or three gathered together, there am I in the midst." A lot of times you hear that in parachurches. Organizations are not necessary. Early church was very organized. Archipest was called to fulfill his ministry because he was called to that purpose.

There was elders, there were deacons, there were qualifications, there were sacraments, there were ways to deal with unruly people, how to deal with sin. The church was very organized. The Book of Corinthians talks about being orderly in the way that they were worshipping in the church. So the church gathered together, but it wasn't just free for all, did whatever they wanted.

It was a very organized church. This is the part that you probably may be a little bit more interested in. You should be interested in all of it, but this is hopefully a bit more interesting. The letters. How did we get the letters and how do we have confidence?

Again, we're not going to be able to get into the inerrancy and how we got the letters and all of it. But we get a glimpse of how the early church gathered the letters and how it was passed down throughout the years. The letters were written in small groups of people, but was immediately copied and circulated to other churches.

Paul says here that make sure that you get this and then you share this letter with other churches. So right off the bat, even though the letter was addressed to Colossae, there was an understanding that the content of this letter was meant to be applied universally. Does that make sense?

It wasn't just a personal letter to Colossae, only dealing with Colossae, right off the bat. It came to them authoritative, not only to Colossae, but to all the churches. Now why is this important? Because we have the letters. It was meant right off the bat for them to be receiving it from the apostles from God.

Though the letters were written to specific churches, the content was meant to be consumed universally. It was circulated to the churches and it was consumed universally. The Bible was not accessible to most people, so they were dependent on letters being read out loud at the churches. So again, if you go to India, many of the people are illiterate.

And so because of that, there's a lot of gatherings where there's a lot of singing and there's a lot of memorizing and a lot of teaching going on because they don't have Bibles for themselves. They can't read it for themselves. But on top of that, at this particular period of time, people did not have access to the scrolls themselves.

You'd have to be filthy rich or very high-powered person to have some kind of access to the scrolls. And when Paul says to Timothy to devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, it was literal. Literally stand and literally just read verse by verse. Because that was the only way that they were able to consume the Bible.

And that was true in the early church, in this church. Paul ends this letter by saying, "I signed this with my own hands to authenticate authority of this letter." And he says this in two other places. In 1 Corinthians and in 2 Thessalonians 3.17. Now why do you think he goes out of his way to authenticate this letter and these other two letters?

Anybody? What's going on in Corinthians and what's going on in 2 Thessalonians and what's going on in Colossae that Paul goes out of his way to authenticate that this is from him? When in Corinthians we know what's going on, right? The church is divided, people are questioning his apostleship, who is this guy?

And so it was utter chaos. So Paul, I can see why Paul would say, "I'm writing this with my own hand." So that they can see that it's coming to them authoritatively, the apostles writing it. Second Thessalonians, anybody know what's going on in 2 Thessalonians? False teachers are going out and saying that Jesus already came.

Remember he talks about the man of lawlessness? And so he gives a whole doctrine of that all these things have to happen before Jesus comes. So don't be rattled because some false teacher comes and tells you that the day of the Lord has come. It has not come. So Paul is addressing a very serious issue in the early church where false teaching was going around.

People were saying that they're apostles and then they're speaking for God. So Paul wanted to make sure, right? That what you're hearing is coming from me, it's my own hands. And again with Colossae because of the big issue going on in Asia Minor, right? False teachers have penetrated Ephesus to Laodicea, to Colossae, Galatia, and they were ruining the church.

So Paul had to make sure that they understood that this was coming to them authoritatively. So I want you guys to, let me do one more. It was imperative that the early church be able to distinguish what was and was not authentic. In the early church recognized immediately by the Holy Spirit that what Paul was writing was from God.

Peter himself says that in 1st 2nd Peter 3 15 to 16. Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation just as also our beloved brother Paul according to the wisdom given to him wrote to you as also in all his letters speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand which the untaught and unstable distort as they do all the rest of scriptures to their own destruction.

So Peter himself calls Paul's letters scripture, right? So you understand, Apostle Peter understood that Paul's letters were coming to them with authority. Now why is all this important? How do you know that the Bible that you have is God's word? We're spending all this time digging and studying the word of God, but can you defend why you believe that?

Again when you live in a bubble, you know, in the Christian community, like, well it says it and you're supposed to, it's important, but because we don't think, again if we're not careful, we don't think critically until you get out to the world and people begin to pluck holes in your thoughts, you don't really ask and think about it.

Like why do you believe this is God's word? What is a typical accusation that liberals or non-Christians throw against Christians about the Bible? Written by man? Didn't the church put it together in 380 some AD? Right? It was almost 300 some years after it was written, the church got it together.

So clearly it was written by man. How do you know 300 years later that this was what they had? Because they didn't authenticate it, the church didn't ordain it until more than 300 years later after it was written. I mean 300 years. How do you answer that? We see clearly from the scripture itself that from the moment that they received it, it wasn't just a normal letter.

We see it just in this text. They received it with authority, they shared it with other churches, and it was meant to be consumed universally. So what happened in the early church is when they got the letter, they most likely copied it. And they probably kept the letter and then they sent that copy to the other church.

When they read it, they probably sent it on to somebody else. And that's how these letters got circulated. And the accumulation of the 27 letters that we have in the New Testament are the 27 letters that was authenticated by the church as soon as they received it by the Holy Spirit.

Does that make sense? So it wasn't 300 years later. It was from the very get-go they had a collection of letters. And so we have a list of these, a whole collection, a list of these as early as 105 AD. So again, we're not going to go through the history of all of this, but we know that right off the bat, it wasn't 300 years later, they said, "Well, let's comb through these letters that we have and see which one we're going to accept and which ones we're not going to accept." So one of the main criterias that they used to determine which was and which was not a collection of this canon of the New Testament was, which are the ones that was ordained by the early church from the get-go?

And the 27 letters that we have in the New Testament were those. Does that make sense? We should turn the AC on. You guys look extra tired today. Okay, so the New Testament, again, I'm going to ask you guys for some of the review questions. For discussion questions, I'm going to go back to it later on.

Let's look at the review questions for next week. Can you look at it on the bottom? It's on the bottom. Review the overview outline of Colossians. So go back and take a look. Remember how the book of Colossians is outlined, the large outline? Chapter 1 and 2 are the indicatives, and then chapter 3 and 4 are the imperative.

This is who God is, what he has done, therefore you should do this. So within that outline, what are the details? So try to say, if I say, "Chapter 2 in Colossians, what is Paul arguing? Chapter 3 in Colossians, what is Paul arguing?" So try to get a large overview outline of the book of Colossians so that you don't go back and forget what we studied.

Number two, what are the major themes in each section? So in the indicatives, what was the primary thing that he brings up? And in the imperatives, what was the primary application? Remember the put off and the put on? What are we to put off and what are we to put on?

In the indicatives, what aspect of the gospel is emphasized in Colossians? So try to get some of that out of your overview. What verse? Okay, single verse, not a paragraph. What single verse captures a key thought in Colossians? If you are able, put it to memory if you can.

The reason why that helps is, years later when you say Colossians, you're not going to remember all of these details. I'm going to say Archipis and you're going to say, "I remember that name somewhere." And you're going to flip through and you're going to find it in Colossians, but you're not going to remember all the details.

You might remember the large outline, but if you have a key verse, that'll kind of trigger your memory to other things. Does that make sense? So even if you can't memorize it, if you know which verse they are, it'll help you to retain some of the stuff that you've already studied.

What interpretational tools did you glean from this study? Again, this is the hermeneutic stuff that we learned. Make sure that scripture interprets scripture. Make sure that you ask a lot of questions, observations, and what is something that you learned that maybe you didn't know how to practice before this study?

Review all your notes to answer the following questions. What new insight did you gain about God? What new insight did you gain about Jesus and the gospel? What new insight did you gain about yourself and what new application did you make through the study of this letter? So these are questions that you should probably be asking every study at the end, right?

Because the end goal is not simply to know, but through the book of Colossians, what did you learn about God? What did you learn about Jesus and the gospel? What did you learn about yourself in light of that? And what application did you make in light of all of that?

So if you miss that, all it'll become is adding knowledge to knowledge to knowledge, okay? Because you've missed the whole purpose of the study, okay? Studying the Bible ultimately is a pursuit of knowing God. And then finally, how faithful were you in doing your weekly exegesis on your own?

Not just coming to the Bible study and listening to the people. How well did you engage in it? How can you improve for the next study? Now, if you've never studied the Bible before, I would prefer you coming than not coming, right? Because you'll gain more from coming than not coming.

But if you really want to improve your walk with God and really be impacted by the things that you're studying, you have to get in front of the word by yourself. You have to. I mean, your understanding, motivation, focus, soberness is directly linked to how much time and how much effort you put in to staying sober, right?

So if you're in the habit of just being there, right, it will be reflected in your soberness. It will be reflected in your walk with God. And you always wonder, "How come I feel so distant from God?" And all your priorities tell you that this is not important. So if this is important, then you have to make it important in your time, okay?

So again, if that was not a regular habit of yours, I strongly, strongly encourage you next time when you sign up for Bible study, don't sign up to attend Bible study, but sign up to do Bible study, okay? So that's the question. Okay, let me jump to the discussion questions for today.

How confident are you that the 66 books of the Bible are the authoritative and inerrant word of God? Typically, if you ask somebody, right, you're having a discussion and you quote the Bible, and you can see in their eyes what kind of authority the Bible has, right? You can say it.

I mean, you can say the Bible is authority, it's the word of God, but the proof of the authority over their life is when the Bible is quoted, how do you react, right? When the Bible is quoted, oh, does that settle the argument? Or it's kind of like, "Well, I mean, I know the Bible says that," right?

Is it authoritative? Do you believe that this is God's word, right? Again, we talked about this before. People fantasize if God spoke to me audibly, I would take my faith a lot more seriously, right? If God would just speak to me, well, he's speaking through his word. And so if we ignore his word, we are ignoring his voice, right?

So how confident are you that this is God's word, right? And if you're not, why not, right? What are some hangups that you have? I remember my professor in seminary used to say that he used to have to take so much time from students who come from secular universities and took religion, religion course, and basically they took a whole year of being attacked about where the Bible came from, why you shouldn't rely on it, and then he had to go back and re-educate them because they were thrown prejudice and they couldn't defend it, right?

So much information that we're getting is completely off from prejudiced people who are trying to attack the Bible, right? So it's important for us to at least be confident. Why do you believe? What caused you to come to conclusion that this is God's word, right? Because until you come to that conclusion, everything that you're studying is just nice.

It's not a command. It's not coming from God, right? Because I kind of believe it, not believe it. So that's really where our struggle really needs to begin. If you're not confident about that, then even the Bible, whatever the Bible says, just doesn't have the same authority over your life, okay?

So that's the first question. Number two, if what you read in the scriptures contradict your sense of fairness or what makes sense, what is your usual way of dealing with those thoughts? Does your reason have the final say in what you accept as truth or does the Bible have the final say?

Okay? Do you understand the question? Does the end product of what you believe to be true, is it your sense of fairness? Do you judge the Bible to be fair or does the Bible judge us to be fair, right? What has the final authority? Three, how can you be sure that your interpretation is correct when there seems to be so many different opinions on any given text?

And I'm talking about within the church, right? What are some things God has given the church and to us individually to discern the right meaning of any given text? That's a common objection that I hear from people who don't study the Bible, right? That's a common objection. Well, how can I study the Bible when there's so many interpretations?

Well, did you ever study the Bible to see if all the interpretation seems reasonable? Right? Majority of the time when people make that objection is because they haven't studied it for themselves. If you study the Bible for yourself, you'll see majority of the opinions don't make sense. Right? Again, you may look at that and say, "Ah, you sound like, you know, like you got it all figured out." But one of the most interesting things that I found in studying the Bible is that no matter what denomination you are, if they study the Bible verse by verse, book by book, chapter by chapter, and no matter where they are, I almost always sit down and we have a great conversation.

There's almost a universal agreement on majority of what the Bible says. Right? If you actually read the Bible. Don't take my word for it. Do it for yourself. Right? Study the Bible for yourself and then test me. Read the Bible carefully, exegete it for yourself, and then listen to what I say.

See if what I say contradict what you see. Okay? That's the first step. Study the Bible for yourself. Don't say everybody has different opinions so we can't know it. You'll be surprised how much of that is smoke screen. Study the Bible for yourself and you'll be surprised how united we become.

There's almost a fear. There's this like satanic fear that was thrown on the church that if you take the Bible too seriously we're going to be divided. I find that exactly the opposite. We're divided because we don't know the Bible. The more we study the Bible, the more united we become.

Right? Because it is not simply what it says. The Holy Spirit guides us. Right? Again, don't take my word for it. Study it for yourself and then examine what I say. Right? To see if I'm going off. Okay? What are some other tools that God has given us in the church?

Right? To be able to interpret the Bible correctly. Fourthly, how often are you in the word of God? How does your frequent or infrequent interaction with God, God's word, affect your ability to discern truth? Okay? Discerning truth is not just about knowledge. Discerning truth is also about the condition of your heart.

Right? The truth is spiritually concerned. So if you're not spiritual, meaning that if your heart is not in the right place, you may know the knowledge, but your heart may lead you astray. Right? So if you're not regularly being judged, your thoughts and intentions are not being regularly judged by the word of God.

Right? Even your opinions, even your thoughts can be tainted. So the ability to discern truth is directly linked to studying the word of God and allowing the word of God to judge us. Okay? So if you think your pursuit of God is reflected in the way you pursue greater knowledge of God's word, can't explain.

Right? All right. So it's pretty explanatory. So if you can take some time with your small group as you discuss this, and again, next week, please, please, please come prepared for the overview study. So let me pray first and then I'll dismiss you to your group. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.

Father, help us, Lord God, to know that these are your words, Lord God, your very breath that you put in, that it comes to us with authority and that through it that we do not read the letters of Paul or for other men, but from you. Help us, Lord God, in our discussion to have greater insight, greater conviction, greater confidence, Lord God, to know that what we have is from you.

We thank you in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.