Beware Lest Any Man Spoil You Col 2:8 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO
Before we get into the sermon Beware lest any man spoil you, it would be well for us to make sure we understand the things of which we are to beware and what can happen to us as a result of these things.
Spoil – to rob – to damage or injure in such a way as to make useless, valueless – to destroy.
Philosophy – Love of wisdom [Acts 17:18, 1 Cor 3:19-20] – “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain.” Socrates said, “One thing only I know, that I know nothing.” He neglected his wife and children to have sex with young men. He asked a friend to sacrifice a cock to Asclepius, the god of healing, as a way of thanking him for being delivered from the painful disease of life. He committed suicide by drinking hemlock. Aristotle said of him, “In death the noblest of all, and in life the wisest.” The damage from following philosophy is found in 1 Cor 6:9-10.
Vain Deceit – The old prophet deceived the young prophet [1 Ki 13:18] – “He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him.” The damage from following vain deceit can be death.
Tradition of Men – Mark 7 – “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” – “laid aside the commandment of God” – “rejected the commandment of God” – “made the word of God of none effect” – I saw the damage from following the tradition of men when I was in the Roman Catholic Church.
Rudiments of the world – these are the fundamental principles of the world system – 1 Jn 2:15-17 – contrast these principles with 1 Tim 6:10, Lk 12:15, Prov 16:18, and 2 Cor 5:7 – the damage from following the rudiments of the world is that you end up “sacrificing the eternal on the altar of the temporal,” as Bob Jones, Sr. used to say – see Mk 8:36.
The common foundation among men who use these four things to spoil you is that:
They despise God – What they tell you that they don’t like about God is generally true of the God they don’t like – so they use “wisdom” to get around the revelation of God [Rom 1:16-18; 1 Cor 1:21-25] – they use concepts and theories to explain him away – these theories are not conclusive; they are convenient – according to Prov 18:1-2, a man will separate himself [from God and God’s revelation] to discover his own heart – however, Jer 17:9-10 and Heb 4:12-13 tell you that he’ll never get a true assessment of himself without God. They don’t like the revelation of God and they don’t like his authority. They’ll say that God is a religious concept. Solomon’s conclusion after careful consideration and experience with all of this wisdom is found in Ecc 12:13-14.
They reject the truth – Like Pilate who said, “What is truth?” They look at the Bible and reject it – they say that the Bible was written by men – I have examined the apparent contradictions and “errors” and found them all to be without merit – the folks who “found” them stopped short of examining them and reconciling them – the problem is that the truth is revealed by God [Lk 10:21] and when a man is looking to prove it wrong, God conceals it [Prov 25:2] – so the man who is looking for problems comes up in error – he never wanted to know the truth in the first place – he had rejected it in his heart already.
Now that men know good and evil, they remove all connection of these to truth and blur any distinctions between them – they devil lied about the consequences of Eve’s disobedience – she could only see the good qualities of the tree – so, she ate – before rejecting the truth, she had no work, a loving husband, fellowship with God, free food and provision, she could walk naked and ashamed, she experienced nature to the fullest, she had no pain, no sorrow, no death, no taxes, no grief – after she ate, look what we have now – they call good evil and evil good – Eve used the wisdom of the greatest philosopher in the universe [he’s wiser than Daniel] to overthrow the revealed word of God [the truth] and damned the entire human race – Rom 1 says, “they changed the truth of God into a lie.”
They deify man – They want to worship something so men become their own gods – the devil said to Eve, “ye shall become as gods” – so they worship idols of men – in Lystra, when Paul and Barnabas healed an impotent man they said, “the gods are come down to us in the likeness of men” – when Herod delivered his speech, they said “it is the voice of a god, and not of a man” – in Gen 6, they worshipped the men of renown – eventually they are going to turn to the worship of the devil in a man [2 Thes 2, Rev 13] – they will take his mark and worship his image – in Rom 1, they worshipped and served the creature more than the creator.”
Thus, they spoil you – if you follow their wisdom, you will defile and sear your conscience – it happened to me – these things will rob you of life abundantly and life eternally – the fruit is Rom 1:28-31 and 2 Tim 3:1-5.
Conclusion: Jesus died to remedy all of this – the choice is yours whether you want to spend an eternity in hell which was prepared for the devil and his angels or whether you want to spend eternity in heaven which is for God and his children.