The Walk

Introduction

One of the benefits of living near Tampa and especially this time of year with the Florida College lectures is that we are privileged to have uh a good number of uh gospel preachers who come to the area and visit with us, and occasionally we ask some to preach for us. And such is the case today. Our guest speaker this morning is Brother Don Hooton, who is here with his wife Tracy and their three children, Joshua, Daniel, and Sarah. Brother Hooton works with the Woodlands Church of Christ in Shenandoah, Texas. He’s been there for some fourteen years since since 2001. He’s well known and respected uh across the country as a very capable and faithful evangelist. He’s worked with churches in Prescott, Arizona, Sydney, Australia, and in the Atlanta area as well.

He and Brother Harkwriter have an acquaintance and uh and a friendship that dates back, I understand, to nineteen eighty-two. So he’s a very capable preacher. We’re fortunate to have him with us today, and so it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Brother Don Hooton.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. If you would open up your New Testament to the book of Colossians, chapter two. We’ll be reading from there in just a minute. First I want to thank the elders here at South Bumby for the pleasure of being able to speak with you. My first experience actually with this congregation was back in nineteen, I think it was in nineteen eighty-six or eighty-seven, when I was a student at Florida College. Um I needed a place to be for Thanksgiving break. And uh the Heinley family invited me and three other of my uh co-Bible students from Florida College to come and be able to spend Thanksgiving at what I remember was called the Lake House, and not only to allow us that privilege of being with them, but to share thanksgiving with them.

So I have a very warm and beautiful memory of this good congregation. But really, our paths crossed because of the Harkriters and my uh love and admiration for both of them. And uh Robert, being a mentor of mine, has continued to help and to encourage me in the work that he helped start me out in terms of preaching the gospel, and I am grateful to them both. But I hope the passage of scripture that I prepared to speak with you this morning will be of encouragement to you. I’d like to read that now. Colossians chapter 2. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf. And for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

I say this in order that no one may delude you with persuasive argument. For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ. As you therefore have received Jesus Christ the Lord, so walk in him. Having been firmly rooted and now being built up in him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of this world, rather than according to Christ. For in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in him you have been made complete.

In him you have been made complete. I want you to notice that in this text that the apostle writes to the church of Colossae, probably in a context where the environment, and not really unfamiliar to us in the sense that Christians are facing difficulties and challenges associated not only with their personal lives, but the reality of recognizing that in the religious world that they lived in, like in the religious world we live in, there is a constant assault against biblical truth and the teaching that belongs rightly in Christ and in God. And so when we see these writings that the Holy Spirit inspired men like Paul to write, we should be impressed with this truth, that they are concerned with us believing the right things.

But I want you to notice that they’re interested in us walking in the right things. That it’s significant that, for instance, even John, in 1 John chapter 2 and verse 6, says, the one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked. And so Paul, in this very context in which we read in verse 6, he says, As you therefore have received Jesus Christ the Lord, so walk in him. There has to be a connect in our lives with the things that we believe and the things that we walk in. It is in fact a command stated in Scripture for every Christian. And so when Paul is writing here to the church at Colossae, elaborating a little bit about himself and the influences of his life, and then he says to us some important reasons why we should show our walk in faith, why we should accept the challenges that that walk will create, so that we can find our wholeness in him.

1. That Their Hearts May Be Encouraged

So notice first in verse 2. He says, I’ve been away from you, I’ve had a struggle. But he says, even though you have not, or some have not personally seen my face, I’ve done all of this that their hearts may be encouraged.

This interesting word encouraged is a little bit like the idea of building something. I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I’m not an engineer of any sort or fashion, but I loved blocks and I loved Legos, and I loved building Legos and wood in mud. My mom really liked that when it came time to clean up. But as a result, it was, I understand that concept of how things build and watching those kind of things grow. And if you, like you’re in your life, you may be the kind of person who loves to build things and see things grow, you understand this concept that building something is not something that happens immediately, but it must be something that is ongoing. And so when Paul describes his life as a Christian and an apostle, and how he wanted his life to affect them, he said, I want my walk to encourage you.

The suggestion of that Greek word is the idea of building up something. Building upon, step after step, block after block, the realities of our life. So when you as a Christian contemplate and wonder, really, is what I’m doing of any importance. You need to remember how much you are building upon. I remember a lady who watched me while my mother was a worker at Southwestern Bell. And one night I was at her house being babysat, and we were watching the movie Ten Commandments. Now, every time I tell everyone else younger than me about the Ten Commandments, they have no idea what I’m talking about. But there is one particular scene where something occurs that is surprisingly made by Hollywood, not biblical. But I remember I was around seven years old, and I was watching it, and as most seven-year-olds watching a movie generating these kind of seismic excitements that the book of Exodus describes.

With wide eyes and gaped mouth, I sat there and Lois Tiner said, That’s not what the Bible said happened.

And in that simple little moment, she put a block in the mud of my life so that I could build the right thing.

Not to show off our righteousness, not even to show how much we know, but to recognize that we are building in their mud the blocks of righteousness.

2. Having Been Knit Together in Love

That’s why we should show our walk. But notice what else he says in verse 2. Not that their hearts may be encouraged, but having been knit together in love. Having been knit together in love.

Everybody relaxed, she didn’t make me a dress. But going back to our stories of how she influenced me biblically, I asked her to make me a Joseph’s coat. So she took all the strips of her polyester that she had and put together a multicolored coat, which I still have to this day. It won’t look very good if I wore it. I’ve gotten just a wee bit bigger. But with great treasure, do I have that multicolored coat? Now, certainly, it probably isn’t anything like how Joseph felt. But I know with every piece she put together, she knitted it together for love. And so when you and I recognize our lives as Christians, do we not recognize that the reasons that we walk together is to knit together ourselves in love?

Very great lessons I’ve already heard this morning about avoiding clickishness in the church and recognizing how important it is to center our practice as Christians around living by the heart of what God wants us to understand his will is for us. Not just simply the externalities of that will, but understand what the heart and the motive is behind it. So when I recognize that Paul says to Timothy, in 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 5, he says, the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. That Paul said very clearly to the young evangelist Timothy that God has a goal in our preaching, and it isn’t just making sure that you wear the right clothes on a Sunday morning.

It isn’t just to make sure that you hold the tray correctly and you articulate the perfect wording of a prayer. But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart. And so the reason, Paul says that he walked like he walked was so that they would be encouraged and be knit together in love for one another. That’s why you should think about how you walk. It isn’t just really to make sure that the preachers don’t catch you there.

But because you are in the mud of other people’s lives, putting blocks of encouragement and knitting yourself together with them in love.

3. Full Assurance of Understanding: Christ Himself

Which is Christ Himself. It’s probably true that the church at Colossae was being influenced by the early forming of what historians would call Gnosticism. The idea and the beliefs that came from Greek influences among Christians that taught some kind of weird disconnect between the spirit and the flesh. A Gnostic would be very happy to argue that because your body has done something, you can say, well, my spirit hasn’t been involved. And that’s why John in his epistles will argue and tell us that how can we say that we love our brother when we do not love him in word and in deed? That what we say must manifest itself in what we do. So the connector to that Gnostic ideology is that they had a misguided idea about Christ Himself, too.

And I want you to notice that John says, sorry, that Paul says to the church at Colossae, I’ve done all these things that your hearts would be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding the true knowledge of God’s mystery, Christ Himself. That the Gnostics who would say that they had some kind of special knowing or gnosis, as the Greek would say. But he says, I’ve done all of these things so that you would find yourself complete. And so if Paul recognized that his walk as an apostle and as a Christian was to bring completeness to those Christians that he had influence on, then you and I need to recognize that very same truth.

That I am not all by myself. That the choices I make and the things that I engender in the world around me is all for the benefit of building up the body of Christ. You know that passage in Ephesians chapter 4. When he says in verse 13, until we all attain to the unity of the faith. There was this completeness that Paul said that God had dreamed for the church that we belong to to attain something. And he says, we must work until we attain that unity of the faith. And I want you to notice in verse 14 when he says, so as a result, we will no longer be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.

4. Good Discipline, Stability of Faith, Firmly Rooted

But speaking the truth in love, we grow up in all respects into him who is the head even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Don’t ever tell yourself you’re unimportant. Don’t ever say that the things that you’re doing are of no value. That every part that is supplying to the body everything God needs for it. You’re showing your walk. But I want you to notice something else Paul says. When we go back to the text, he says, beginning in verse 4, I say this in order that no one would delude you with persuasive argument.

For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline. Good discipline. One way for us to show our walk is to live our life out in this way that he describes as good discipline. But I want you to next to notice it is a portrayal of who we are. Why do I manifest good discipline? In fact, the word there is military in its origin. Before I decided to preach when I had met the Hark Riders in Nacodochis, Texas, I came to Nacodotchus in 1982 to be a band director. And I wanted to be a band director. You could talk to me all day long about what the newest rage was in show design. I would love to watch hours and reels and reels.

That was back then. Reals and reals. Of how bands marched. And I knew exactly what it meant for me to be in line. That people could look down the rank and the file of where I was in the block, that they could see exactly where everything needed to be. And in a sense, this is the word Paul uses. That we manifest that sense of discipline. Portraying what it is God has wanted us to be. You need to show your walk in this way of portraying this type of discipline.

But notice he says something else. For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith. And going back to that band analogy, there are many, many times that I would be standing at attention, and the drum major would come up to me and intentionally try to push me over. To make sure I had my feet solidly in the ground, to make sure I was controlling my body, and the drum major would try to push me over.

That what we are walking in manifests stableness. So that’s why he’ll say in verse 6, therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Live out what you have proclaimed is the source of your stability. Every one of us in this room probably has special interests.

Too much pizza, you may think I need to talk to Don about whatever. All of us have those special interests, and all of those kind of things are valid and useful as we think about them in our connection of our lives. But what the world should see and what we should see in each other is how we have found that faith in Christ makes us stable. Have you thought about that? There was a girl who taught at Stephen F. Austin named Karen. And when she would teach, she would teach whatever was assigned her by the college, but in her character, she would manifest Christianity. She would always dress modestly, which isn’t necessarily always an indicator, I mean, which is not always common, I should say, in the world out there.

And one girl who was an unbeliever who had come up from a very difficult home had this young lady for a teacher. And she would pay attention to how when a subject was brought up in the assigned reading, it would make Karen uncomfortable. And Karen would find ways to say, this is what the teacher, this is what the author wrote, etc., etc. But she would find ways to illustrate her distance from accepting what was in the material. And somewhere in the middle of the semester, after witnessing her contentment in being righteous and her satisfaction with manifesting it even on the external basis, this young lady came up to Karen and said, I want what you have. I want what you have.

When people look at me and when people look at you, is that what they’re going to say? Will they say, Well, I want what you have. I want band. Or I want carrot juice. Or I want money. What will people, when they look at you, come up and want to say to you, I want what you have. Will it be because you have proclaimed the walk that you live? Not proclaiming it merely in word, but proclaiming it indeed. If this is the way you have chosen to live your life, then live your life that way. So that you can show your walk to others around you. And then I want you to notice in verse 7, he says, having been firmly rooted and being built up in him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, overflow with gratitude.

So he continues on with this illustration of the things that will help us show our walk, and that is to live out what we have planted. Paul said that what God plants in us should bloom.

Parable of the soils, where, as illustrated actually in our Bible class this morning, how he talked about the word of God and being shared by a planter, a worker who goes out and plants the seed. And the response of that word is planted in four different soils, or as Jesus will tell us, their hearts. And we understand that parable. We do because Jesus explained it to the disciples. And he said that the good and honest heart is the one who brings forth fruit. So why should I walk? Paul says.

Recognize that the things that have been planted in my heart are the things that manifest themselves around. To all the seed, do they see me blooming? The word of God.

5. Three Challenges: Philosophy, Tradition, Elementary Principles

Notice he says in verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men and according to the elementary principles of the world. Three things, three challenges that we’re going to face. If we’re going to walk this walk, we’re going to face these challenges. And the first one, philosophy’s appeal. You might notice also in verse 4, earlier, he says, I say this to you that no one may delude you with persuasive argument. And so perhaps this is intentionally a reference to that Gnosticism to which I referred to earlier, where he was fearful that the church at Colossae was falling prey to the persuasive arguments of that higher way of thinking that was distancing itself from the revelation of inspired testimony that came from the apostles.

I’m not an old man, at least I don’t think I am. But I have witnessed, even with my own generation, this perception that I don’t need to listen to the inspired testimony of the apostles to get a greater understanding of God. I need to listen to this person or that person. And I don’t want to minimize the value of studying or listening to someone who is teaching you about the Bible, but the real question, are they teaching you about the Bible? The challenge is we should expect if we’re trying to walk the way God wants us to walk, is to be challenged by that appeal for philosophy. And he goes back to that military term where he uses it by describing it, don’t let someone take you captive.

Sort of like, I don’t know, you may have been this way. Let me tell you a little funny story. This is unplanned, unscripted. Uh-oh, I’m in trouble. But Friday morning, I had the opportunity to lead singing at the chapel at Florida College. And Buddy Payne, when he was making the concluding announcements, commented to the good brother who had made his lecture, who started about talking about how his aspirations when he came to Florida College was to be in the NBA. So he was going to play on the basketball team, which was just, he knew a segue to uh NBA prowess. And then he got benched when he came. He wasn’t even on the top five, he wasn’t even on the second five, he was 11th. And so when Buddy Payne got up at the conclusion, of course, the good brother also told him that, told us that he made an F in Buddy Payne’s class.

But Betty made some comment, a good comment about how much that brother has grown and how pleased he was and happy with him. And talking about how glad he was that he came to Florida College for basketball. And then he turned and looked at me, and my whole family laughed when he asked, Did you play basketball here? And I said, No. And then he turned and he says, Did you play intramural sports? And if y’all, I know y’all aren’t laughing because y’all don’t even know me. Uh, but I said, no. Because that’s just not, I don’t do that too well. I’m a little clumsy. Why am I saying all of that? Is to say this. What happens to us when we get captivated by the wrong things?

When a bunch of guys are playing basketball and a beautiful girl walks down the road. Your eyes turn away from what you’re intending to do. So, too, if we allow the appearance and the appearance of intelligence through philosophy, not suggesting that in high degree education is wrong. That’s not my point. Don’t let yourself become captivated. Greek culture took such great satisfaction in the thought of pursuing the cerebral thought that they never carried it down to the way the foot moved. And the way the gospel tells us is that the walk that we walk isn’t just about what goes around in our mind. It’s the way that it works itself out in our hands of service and in our feet. I do want you to notice the two other things he mentioned, challenged by tradition.

A great class that y’all had on that subject, so I’m not going to elaborate greatly, but to make this observation. That when men in Jesus’ own day would relevate or relegate their own tradition to the power and authority of the message of God, men have really got it messed up. When people have thought in their mind that the way that I think must be as good as the way God thinks, we’re in big trouble. And we as Christians need to recognize that when we’re walking the walk the way Jesus wants us to walk, he has not put us here to become authoritarians. He put us here to be servants. Tell me what the Bible says. Please don’t tell me what you think. Please don’t tell me what you hope.

Please don’t tell me all those things that we think about and say. Tell me what the Bible says. And if we will walk with that guidance, the challenge of tradition will become small. And then the last thing he says in verse 8 is he says, the elementary principles of the world. Beware of that. These hollow and deceptive tactics that the world has suggested through through persuasive arguments or philosophy, or through tradition that men make. Then we have nothing left in the world but these elementary principles to drive us in what we think might be the right thing. Even the Greek word translates rudiments to be from a word that suggests simple things. How simple is it for us to recognize that God made me.

6. Made Complete in Christ

Truthfully in life. But you soon discover that when you live your life the way God wants you to live your life, then you find this final reward complete in Christ.

In 2009, my mom died from bone cancer. And for roughly four or five years, she fought as long as she could give us time with her, and she kept her cup half full the whole time. But watching my mother’s body be ravaged by that cancer was very difficult. And when you know that expression, you know, once you lose your health, it’s hard to regain it. You may have said that, you may have felt that. Notice that Paul tells the church at Colossae that you can be whole again. Poisoned by sin are we all. Violated by transgressions are we all. But by the power of mercy, the joy of grace, through the blessing of the blood of the Savior, we’re made whole again. And when we start walking in the way God wants us to walk, then the challenges that we talked about will certainly be there.

But then we’re going to discover how blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sin is covered, to be made whole again. The reason Paul wanted the Colossus the Colossians to walk this way. Wasn’t just so that they would follow him, even though they should have as an apostle. But he knew that by walking in this way, the results would be exactly what was needed. To encourage them, to be, to knit them together in love so that they themselves would find a completeness in Christ and His teaching. They would learn how to manifest that walk so that people would see it, and then when the challenges would come upon them in their life, they would find their harbor of safety and the message of truth that God saves.

Conclusion

So this morning I want to encourage you to be stronger in your walk. Sorry about that. Thank you. To not lose your way. Take out your psalm book, please. If you use it, I know the song’s gonna prop up here in a second. And then refocus on my words, please.

The gospel of Jesus is for you. It isn’t just for me. It isn’t for the people who are nice here. It’s for the people who are mean here. You understand my point? That when God gave his son, he loved the world. He loved you. He loved me. And Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is intended to bring you salvation. How do you get that salvation? Well, Jesus did what he needed to do to make it possible. Going before God and offering his blood as the atoning sacrifice for all the world. Then sending the apostles to announce the good news of that message that any who would believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And so when those who heard that message in Acts 2 heard, not only had God made him both Lord and Christ, but when they asked, What shall we do?

Peter responded, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Very confident that the sentiment of this church is the sentiment of Scripture. And so this morning, if you need to become a Christian, don’t hesitate. Start your walk today. And if you’re a Christian and your walk has not been what it should be, I know the elders would want to pray with you. Because I’m certain that there is not one person in this room that God does not want to be in heaven. Nor would I want any one of you to miss being in heaven. So if you need to respond to the gospel, we plead with you to come. As together we stand, and as we sing.

Well what I was just showing