For me, we are in a very interesting series about Gnosticism over the past couple weeks, and we'll be continuing it today, too. We're calling it blurred because it feels very easy for the gospel to become blurred in our own lives. Sometimes we think we really understand what the gospel is and what the gospel means, and then all of a sudden we look in the mirror after a while and we realize that we've been drifting a little bit. So, how does that compare to Gnosticism? Well, Gnosticism for me is a fascinating subject. Actually, as an undergrad, I was a religious studies major at a liberal arts university. So I actually got to take a class on Gnosticism as something I was interested in. I wanted to figure out what this group believed, why they were the way they were, what was significant about uncovering their library of lost gospels. I wanted to know it from the inside out. And then when I went to seminary, we kind of looked at Gnosticism a little bit different because we see how Gnosticism takes the familiar story of the gospel and then twists it a little bit into something separate. Even though it uses the same characters, the Gnostic myth takes on its own theology, its own meaning, and how we apply it to our lives can be very scary. So today I want us to think about how Gnostic ideas can still creep into our own lives and quietly distort the way we understand our faith. So we're gonna do this in two parts. One, I'm gonna explain what the heck Gnosticism is. I've already said it a thousand times. You're gonna hear me say it a thousand more times. And then uh we'll look at Colossians 1. If you ever encounter Gnostic ideas, I think Colossians 1 is a great place to start. And then we're gonna turn to the Gospel of Matthew to hear about what Jesus says about our faith and what happens when Gnostic ideas might creep into our lives. So let's kick it off by countering the Gnostic myth. Our first point. So what is Gnosticism? So Gnosticism comes, this root word gnosis. Gnosis means to know, it just means knowledge. You see it in Greek, uh, we see it in the New Testament Greek all the time. But this group was a fringe group of Christianity. They had a lot of diverse uh regions and practices, but they kind of held on to the idea that there was this secret knowledge about the universe. And if they could access that secret knowledge, that would free them from the constrictions of human existence. According to one of the Gnostic myths, there was this original very spiritual world. And then one of the creators turned away from that spiritual world, and that's how the physical world came to be. In that myth, Christ is not actually creator God. Christ is this emissary from like a more benevolent God. So there's a there's a significant theological difference between Christianity and Gnosticism. But the big premise was this: the material world, our flesh, our bodies were the source of evil. For Gnostics, if they could tap into this secret knowledge and they could shed the weakness, this material world, they could go back to the spiritual world. The body imprisoned your divinity. It was trapped inside this body. And so if you were able to be enlightened through these Gnostic secrets, then you could recall that lost spiritual world, that you could live to your fullest self. They would also feature this heavenly messenger who would deliver the secret knowledge to initiates, allowing them to rise to that fullness, that diviness. And so we really didn't know a whole lot about Gnosticism until the 1940s, when in an Egyptian cave we uncovered a library of Gnostic texts. This is, you probably heard about it in the 2000s, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. So it became very popular then. But what we also have is uh an older Christian theologian from the second century named Irenaeus. And we knew he talked about Gnosticism a lot and why it was a deviation from the original gospel. And that's really all we had for a while. But one of the places that Irenaeus always goes when he encounters Gnosticism, he goes to Colossians 1. And that's what I want to do today. I just want to start countering this Gnostic myth. Let's go to Colossians 1, 15 and see 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 the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything and was created and is supreme over all creation. So we're already kind of undoing that Gnostic myth. Christ existed from the beginning and created everything. Verse 16, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together. So already in this short three verses, we're undoing the Gnostic myth. Christ is eternal, Christ is creator, and Christ celebrates holding this material world together. Our physical world was part of God's design, not a deviation. Stephen talked about this last week. God breathed the breath of life into humanity. That is a good thing. God called creation good. We are part of God's design. We're not a deviation. We're about welcoming the kingdom of God here on earth. We're not about trying to flee all of this. We have been reconciled and redeemed. Let's continue with verse 18. Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, the supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is the first in everything for the fullness, for God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ. And through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross. So these few verses that we just read are actually a hymn. So in Paul's letter to the Colossians, he starts. And we kind of think about hymns the way we think about the Psalms. It's actually written the same way. It's indented a little bit. It's easy to memorize. Paul is meeting the community of the Colossians where they're at. It's kind of like if you've ever gone to a perhaps a Lutheran church or a Methodist church and they say the Apostles' Creed. This is one of the first creeds in the form of a hymn. This is what united the Colossians faith together. And in this, we have an ode to Christ and who we are in Christ. All things have peace. Heaven and earth are made whole in Christ's victorious work of reconciliation. And in this we find great peace and we find great rest. We also see that there's an aspect of Gnosticism in this hymn that goes, that becomes undone. And that is that the gospel isn't a secret. And that's what I really want to harp on today. Gnostic thinking made people believe that salvation was only for the spiritually elite. But you don't need to be special, smart, or in the know. The gospel is for anyone and everyone who is willing to receive it. So for the rest of our time today, I want to talk about how the Gnostic myth appears in our own lives, especially as it relates to secret knowledge or even spiritual elitism. So let's get into balancing knowledge, enlightenment, and faith. So back in seminary, uh I was always amused at watching some of the residential students. They're usually fresh out of undergrad and they go right into divinity school and they're ready to go become pastors and theologians and PhDs. And as me, I've started this journey as kind of a bit of a second career. So it's really funny to watch them kind of group together. You can see them in the class every time. They always want to talk to the professor, they really want to be wise, they want to kind of show off a little bit. And there was a particular group of guys that earned a nickname for themselves. We called them the Theobros. And the Theobros, if you had a class with the Theobros, you knew because you were never going to get to ask a question and you were never going to talk about the class material because they were going to be too busy trying to, you know, get a letter of recommendation from the professor. I don't know. But it was not a term of endearment. Theobros was not a term of endearment. Now, over the years, I've experienced my own thirst for knowledge. I have. And that's led me on quests for a secret way to interpret scripture or a secret way to encounter God, a special way to encounter God. But really, if I think about it, I want to do that because I want to encounter God in such a way that I feel a sense of authority over other people, especially when 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 from what Christ meant by coming here to reconcile all of creation. I wonder how many of you here today have heard the passage, come into me, all who are weary and heavy burden, and I will give you rest. This is actually the passage that I want us to finish our time out together looking at and see how Jesus undoes the Gnostic myth in the Gospel of Matthew. There is no secret knowledge. Jesus in this passage is going to remind us what the economy of salvation or who matters in the kingdom of God. So let's take a look. We'll hop over to Matthew chapter 11, and we'll start at verse 25, and we'll read for a little bit. It says this at that time Jesus prayed this prayer, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way. My father has entrusted everything to me. No one truly knows the Son except the Father, and no one truly knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 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 me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light. Now, at first glance, Jesus' words sound strangely Gnostic, right? Thank you, Lord, for hiding these things. That almost sounds like a secret. But Jesus is actually doing something dramatic here in the text. Jesus is turning faith upside down against the Pharisees, against the wise, against the clever. And so for a second, I want us to look at a point about Jesus bringing us rest in our humility, especially in the humility of our spirit. If you were here or perhaps watched online about the Pharisee and Me series that we just finished back in August, the Pharisees were these spiritually elite experts in the Jewish law. Yeah, those Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees. Essentially, they thought themselves to have a clear understanding of God, but especially they thought they had a clear understanding of God's will. And many of Jesus' disciples were anything but experts in the Jewish law. In fact, Jesus' disciples would have been considered sinners, breakers of the law by these religious experts. Especially think about, we're talking about the gospel of Matthew, think about Matthew, a tax collector, someone that the local community would have considered a traitor for selling out to the Roman government. However, it was disciples who were open to Jesus' revelation of God. And while these Pharisees, these theologians, these clever rejected Jesus' revelation, the disciples accepted it. And when it comes to matters of faith, we need to keep acknowledging how little we know that Jesus chose to meet us in our brokenness. Jesus did not meet us in our education. Jesus didn't meet us in our brilliance. And Jesus definitely did not meet us in our perfection. In Matthew 5, this is what Jesus refers to as the poverty of spirit. It's the poor in spirit that the kingdom of God belongs. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God. That's what the gospel is all about. And it is the awareness of our own poverty of spirit, mind, and heart that disposes us to re receive God's gift of God's Son. Jesus assures us here that when we receive the Lord out of our poverty, we will be enriched because we are brought into Jesus' own intimate relationship with the Father. Trusting in our own understanding will always lead us astray, especially when our knowledge leads us to judge other people. How many times do we hear Christians criticize one another for their theology and confuse it with their faith? Oh, you know, they really don't understand penal substitution or Christus Victor. Can they really be Christian? They don't understand how salvation works? Or, oh man, they don't understand what the end times is all about. Can they really be Christian? Or they don't understand church history. They don't know what Gnosticism is. Can they really be Christian? But knowledge in those areas doesn't reflect a poverty of spirit that Jesus speaks to in this passage, and it has no say in what it means to have childlike faith. Instead, this knowledge or pursuit of knowledge creates false wisdom. It clouds our judgment, it seeks mastery over the Spirit of God. The Gnostic myth is that the mystery of Jesus is hidden and must be discovered. But the truth revealed by Jesus here in this passage is that the gospel is for the weary and the burdened, the childlike. And so next, I want us to look at how evangelism in this sense is born out of relationship, not knowledge. Because another problem arises when we believe that the Gnostic myth, that knowledge is privileged, and then we start to feel too intimidated to share our faith that we call our own. How many times have we felt too afraid to share our own faith story because we are concerned about not having all the answers around Christianity? I mean, think about society right now. How do we even begin to share our faith and like parse through all the confusion and the chaos that we're experiencing as a faith and as a nation? So let's stop for a minute and think about our own faith stories. I think life and the moments of life that brought us here today included a series of crucial faith moments, or perhaps a singularly distinctive moment where your faith in Christ became whole. Now, was it because you sat down and read a systematic theology book, cover to cover, and at the end you're like, you know what, this makes sense. Thumbs up, I'm on board with Jesus. I don't think so. I bet if we really asked ourselves, we had a moment of faith because we were shown God's love. Whether that's because we felt the divine presence of the Holy Spirit meeting us, or perhaps we were shown the radiance of God's love by someone we hold dear. Someone who really showed us, Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy burden, I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light. And that's what we need to remember here as a missional community in Madison, Wisconsin. Being evangelistic does not mean having all the answers. It means showing God's love and sharing how Jesus met you in your brokenness with others. It means prioritizing relationship rather than knowledge, a relationship with Jesus first and foremost, and then relationship with others, relationship with your Christian community. My theology professor, at the start of every theology class, and I think we should do this more often, I think every time we get up here or we want to do a 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 the street, not from the balcony. And as soon as we allow the Gnostic myth to take root in our lives, we stick, we quickly start looking for the stairs to that balcony. We want to see how high we can climb, how many books we can offer, how many people we can influence. Rather than remembering the real impact is done loving our neighbor and tending the broken. Now, lastly, I do want to talk about one more topic where we conflate spiritual enlightenment with truth. Because the last part of the Gnostic myth I want to touch on is when we make that opposite assumption, not about knowledge, but where we promote feelings of spiritual enlightenment over truth. It's a balance. There's two sides to it. In other words, we assume that having some deep, private, mystical experience is the highest goal of faith. The kind of thinking that can pull us into the Gnostic trap because it suggests that there's this secret, hidden enlightenment that only a select few can attain, as if only certain people or certain experiences are actually experiencing God. It pops up in our lives in subtle ways. Perhaps we start relying more on our spiritual experiences than scripture, or we start relying more on our experiences than our Christian community. Perhaps we say to ourselves, if I just feel close to God and peaceful, that must mean I'm on the right track, no matter what my life actually looks like. And I think the biggest trap when we conflate spiritual enlightenment with truth is that we start to believe we no longer need to grow in Christ. We begin operating under the assumption that our spiritual experiences alone define who we are, so we don't have to actually put on Christ or live out 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't reflecting Christ-like love, Christ-like humility, and Christ-like obedience. Now, I do want to be clear: experiences of spiritual enlightenment can be real gifts. They can point us towards God, they can give us glimpses of God's presence, but they are not proof of ultimate truth. Because feelings fade, experiences come and go. All truth in the end must be discerned in the light of Christ and Scripture. So true enlightenment is not about chasing secret knowledge or simply becoming aware of the divine. It's about being transformed, transformed by the Holy Spirit into the likeness of Christ. What does that mean? It means learning to forgive when it's hard, to love when it costs a lot, to walk faithfully with God in both mountaintop moments and in your ordinary days. So as we conclude today, I want to revisit Colossians 1. I want to remind us of the gospel. A gospel that reconciled us to God and a gospel that has the power to change our lives. Colossians 1, verse 20 will look very familiar as we start there. It says this, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross. Here's the real impact. This includes you, who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. That is the gospel. We stand before God without a single fault, reconciled by Christ's love, Christ's sacrifice. The gospel is not an insider's club. It's not a puzzle that needs to be solved. Jesus didn't come for the academics, and Jesus didn't come for the enlightened. Jesus came for the weary, for the broken, the ones far off. The gospel is not hidden, the gospel is wide open. So maybe this week is the story is the week that you share your story with someone else, how God met you in your brokenness. Maybe it's the week that you put down a book and you realize that your faith has become more logical than it has personal. Maybe it means turning off the noise for a while and seeking God in prayer and in scripture instead of relying only on feelings or flashes of inspiration. But no matter where you are this week, may we rest in the words of Jesus. Come unto me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.