The gospel is for everyone!!  Chris Brannon continues in our Unrivaled series by talking about the fundamentals of Christianity.  Fundamentals are the most important building blocks of any successful venture and it is no different with our faith.  What is the gospel?  It centers on the person of Jesus Christ.  It is Christ who died and rose again.  The gospel is the Word of Truth and it came from God, so it can be trusted.  It is the message of God’s grace and is for everyone!

Faith, hope and love are the fundamentals of Christianity.  These three essentials are intricately combined and are inseparable in the life of the believer.  Faith is how we come to Him, the starting point.  It comes through hearing the Word of God and the more you hear it, the more assured you are in your faith.  Love is the greatest of all.  Christian love is characterized by these traits:  a sense of family, seeing one another as God has created them, a desire for the good and fullness of each other, a genuine delight from being with one another, overlooking our faults and infirmities and it’s a love without barriers.  Hope fuels the faith and love.  The hope we have in our future stems from our hope in Christ and empowers us to love.

Chris leaves us with these questions to ask ourselves:  Why do we spend our time praying, coming to church, denying our flesh and pursuing relationship with Christ?  Why do we sacrifice our resources, our money and our treasures for the cause of Chris and the kingdom of God?  Why do we give our time to endeavors that don’t personally benefit us – helping those stuck in destructive lifestyles, teaching children, blessing the hurting?  Is it not because we believe in things unseen?

The major theme of the book of Colossians is the total sufficiency and preeminence of Christ.  Chris Brannon starts out a new sermon series, Unrivaled.  We will be going through the book of Colossians to study the supremacy of Christ.  He starts out by helping us to understand the book of Colossians a little better.  It is a letter from Paul to the church of Colossae.

The city of Colossae was a city in the midst of a cultural and religious mixing bowl.  It was located in a Roman province and was characterized by the paganistic values and beliefs of its day.  Yet, the city itself, also had a large Jewish population.  Sometimes these cultures blended together in some strange ways.  Paul didn’t start the church, but it was influenced by him, through his work at Ephesus.  It was an outgrowth of the Word of God being preached in Ephesus and the believers there living out the life of the gospel.

A combination of Eastern mysticism, Jewish legalism and Gnosticism threatened the church at Colossae.  Gnosticism is based on two false premises.  The first is that it espouses a dualism regarding spirit and matter.  Gnostics assert that all matter is inherently evil and spirit is good.  Secondly, they claim to possess an elevated knowledge, a “higher truth” known only to a certain few.

For Paul, the solution to the Colossians was simple:  believers need to be taught to have complete confidence in the fact that, as far as God is concerned, they’re already made “perfect” in His eyes, through their relationship with Christ.  We also need to be gripped by the truth of our complete sufficiency in the Savior:  that He is everything we need; and having Him, we need nothing else.