Beliefs Buffet with Pastor Ben Carruthers

Faith rarely gets attacked head-on. More often, it gets diluted. We keep Jesus on the plate, but we start piling on extras that feel practical, modern, and safe: success, comfort, status, control, and the need to be affirmed. That’s the “beliefs buffet,” and it’s exactly what Paul is pushing back on in Colossians. I walk through why the core of this letter is so bracing and so freeing: underneath it all is Christ, and the thesis is Jesus plus nothing.

We also get painfully honest about why we love “plus” thinking. Our culture is built on options, and we assume more choices will bring more joy, even when our own lives prove the opposite. From legalism that turns grace into a checklist, to ascetic shortcuts that promise holiness, to modern forms of idolatry that ask for our ultimate trust, the pressure is the same: don’t abandon Jesus, just add something else that quietly becomes the real foundation.

Along the way, I share a story about the illusion of control and what happens when plans collapse. Then we use a simple picture of slow drift to show how small compromises can fill the jar over time until we can’t tell what’s actually shaping us. Paul’s answer is not complicated but it is demanding: the mystery of God is Jesus, and in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That’s not a slogan. It’s a return to forgiveness, new life, and a faith that can stand firm.

If this hit a nerve, listen through and ask yourself one question: what’s your “plus”? Subscribe for more conversations through Colossians, share this with a friend who feels pulled in a dozen directions, and leave a review with what you’re trying to release so you can stay rooted in Christ.

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Transcript

Casual Dad And Series Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Again, my name is Ben. I'm an associate pastor here. It's great to be with you this morning. Ryan's off today, celebrating uh his oldest Logan is graduating from college. So that's a big celebration there. So he's off today. But yeah, so it's good to be here with you. I have to tell you, before we get started, before we get into this, this morning I woke up and was getting ready to go. And uh my son Arlo, he wants to come early, so he's getting ready to go. And I come walking out feeling ready for the morning. I have jeans on, a nice t-shirt, and a Cabela's vest. And he looks at me and he says, Are you wearing that? I said, Yeah, I'm wearing that. And he's like, You look like a casual dad. What does that even mean? I am a casual dad. I don't even know. So there you go. There it is. That all happened this morning. Feeling good about myself. So good to be here with you. This morning, we are cruising with our Colossians series. I'm gonna put that in the baptismal bowl. I don't know if that's blasphemy or not, but that's where it's gonna go. Um it's called Underneath It All. It's underneath it all. And what we mean by that, and what you're gonna hear, and what you have heard every week, you're gonna hear today, you're probably gonna hear in the coming weeks as we wrap this thing up, is that underneath it all, underneath everything, is Christ. This whole book, this whole book written to this church in Kolos, its thesis statement would be it's Jesus plus nothing. This whole book is a reminder that it's all about Jesus in our life. And this morning the sermon title is called Beliefs Buffet. The Beliefs Buffet, because what is really happening here, and I think it's true today, we'll talk about this, but is that these this church in Kolos is being pressured not to abandon their faith completely, not to say, I want nothing to do with Jesus anymore, not to abandon it altogether, but rather to go to the belief buffet instead of just saying it's just about Jesus, they're encouraged to say it's Jesus and a little bit of this. It's Jesus and a little bit of this. And we all love buffets, right? I mean, look at that. Okay, I'll use I statements. I love a buffet. That looks incredible, okay? We love buffets because it gives us choice and it gives us options. And the church in Colos is not struggling with complete abandonment of their faith, but rather this rather temptation and pressure to go ahead and keep Jesus as a part of your life, but also try some of this faith. Also try some of this belief, try some of this. It's a beliefs buffet that is going on here. And as humans, this is hard because we love options and we have so many of them all the time. Just look at your phone right now of all the apps that you have. Go home and turn on your TV. Look at all the streaming options you have, right? We think that these streaming options and all of these options that we have in every area of our life will bring us joy and bring us happiness because we have the choice. And this interesting article in Psychology Today, it came out a couple years ago, has actually talked about the reverse effect is that we have too many options, and it's actually taking away our joy, and it's taking away our happiness. Point in fact, right here, how many of us have had a long day? You put the kids to bed and you're sitting in your favorite chair or lying in bed with your husband or wife, and you're gonna watch a movie, right? So you turn the streaming channels on, you're like, what do you want to watch? And you're cruising through one app or one streaming service, nothing there, go to another streaming service. Two hours later, you don't watch a thing, you just go to bed. Happens all the time, or you just decide on watching up Seinfeld. That's fine too. Also a great choice. But it takes, we have too much. But we think if we have options, it'll bring us joy, it'll bring us peace, it'll bring us comfort. And there's actually studies shown that in young people who are being raised in this culture, the uh the idea of option or having choice is no longer a privilege, it's just the norm. They are they deserve options. They're being raised in it. And they're being flooded by it. Just because we have all these choices and options doesn't mean joy, doesn't mean peace, doesn't mean happiness. And that is what is going on in this part of the letter to the church in Kolos. Paul is reminding them hey, stay true to your faith, stay rooted in your faith, and we'll talk a little bit more about how they're doing that, and avoid the belief's buffet. Because it's all about Jesus. Underneath all of it, it's about Christ. And I think as we dive into this portion of the letter, we're gonna see that we have a lot in common with this church from 2,000 years ago. So as we dive into it, will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord God, we give you thanks and praise for this morning. We do thank you for all the new members who are joining this ministry, your ministry here. And Lord, we thank you for what that means to the body here and how it's going to change. And it's very relevant because what we're reading today in this letter that you wrote to the church in Kolos is a changing church. It's a church dealing with temptations, a church dealing with the fact that the world says it's not just about Jesus. It's Jesus and this, it's Jesus and this. And this small church from 2,000 years ago is the same troubles that we're having today. So, Lord, as we dive into this passage, help us to see that. Help us to be open and honest with our lives and our faith in you and speak truth in our lives this morning. It's in your name we pray. Amen. So I think it's important to understand a little bit of the context about what's going on here and why it's important that this is in the Bible and the people involved, the time, all that kind of stuff. So this is a letter written from Paul. Paul's in prison in Rome at this time, and he writes this letter to the church in Kolos. Now it's interesting. So he writes this about year 55 AD. So it's about 20 years after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So relatively pretty short time. And he writes this letter to a church in Kolos that he's never been to, which I think is fascinating. He's never been to this church, he's never been to this group of believers. A matter of fact, a friend of his named Ephiphas, fun name to say. Ephaphas, if you're looking for a kid's name, try that one out. Ephiphas, he met, Paul met him on his third missionary journey to Ephesus. He met this guy, became friends, and he lived in Kolos. So Ephaphas went back to Kolos to start this church. So Paul is writing this letter, never meeting this group of believers from a prison in Rome, which is incredible because, unlike a lot of his other letters, that often sound like, guys, what are you doing? Church in Corinth, what are you doing? You're giving into these temptations, you're you're falling away from what you believe. That seems to be a common thread as you read Paul's letters, but here he doesn't start that way. Matter of fact, it's the opposite of this church of just a few dozen people, we believe, and mostly Gentile believers, which is also incredibly fascinating because these are people who maybe knew the Jewish law or at least saw the rituals, but that's not their faith. These were people who maybe worshiped the Greek pagan gods or had no faith at all. And this small group of people came together to start this church. Just a small group, 20 people, and not a church like this. When we think of church, we think of this, or maybe in the ancient ancient times, something different, like a synagogue where you'd all walk in and sit in a circle and someone would read the scroll, read the word. This small church is 20 people, maybe, of Gentile believers, fresh out of the rapper Christians. And they're meeting in someone's house, and they're gathering to talk about what it means to be a Christian, about what it means to follow and be a disciple of Jesus, fresh out of the rapper. And Paul says this about this church. In Colossians 2, 5, he says this. Now, unlike other letters, he read, he starts this one saying, You guys are doing great. You guys are dealing with this temptation left and right, trying to be pulled in to the beliefs buffet, but you're standing firm. A matter of fact, this word firmness is a Greek word. Uh, it's called steroma. Everyone says steroma, which actually is found in military literature. It's like a fortress, an immovable mountain, making one immovable. This is the language that Paul is using to describe the faith of these brand new believers who meet in a house to figure out what it looks like to follow Jesus. And he keeps going on. He says, This is how you're able to do that. He says this, you do this because you have received Christ Jesus the Lord. Continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. This isn't rocket science. We know that the stronger root you have, the stronger foundation, the stronger your faith's going to be. And this small group of believers are living this way. We know this, right? We go back to our childhood days, the three little pigs, right? The three little pig fairy tale. We know that it's you build one pig built his house out of straw, one pig built his house out of there. We go, sticks. And of course, the one built his house out of this. Looks like these guys, right? We've all seen the cartoon, the Disney cartoon. We know it. First of all, I'd like to draw your attention to the upper right hand corner. That's a Disney movie, man. That's incredible. Watched this the other day with my kids, and I was like, fast forward, this is horrible. It's a simple child's book. It's a simple child's movie. But it's so true about our faith. If you're rooted in his word, if you're rooted in faith in God, then you're strong. Paul uses this military language to describe this small church of new believers as a strong-built fortress. And then he goes on to say there's things that are gonna get you. There are things that are gonna try to pull you away from being that strong, rooted foundation. The belief's buffet, the world's gonna tell you, go ahead and keep Jesus, but add a bit of this, add a bit of this. There are three main things that this church dealt with. And actually, Pastor Ryan talked about the very first week we dove into the Colossians series. Three pressures that this church dealt with. The first was Jewish legalism. Jewish legalism. So this is a group of Jewish believers, probably Jewish Christians as well. So people who knew the law and lived by the law, but also knew the story of Jesus and followed him. And so this group of people pressured this new church to make sure that they follow the letter of the law. Make sure that they're eating the right kind of foods and not eating the wrong kind of foods. Circumcision was a big part of this as well. Make sure to do that. You have to follow the old ways. You see, yes, it's Jesus, we love Jesus, but you also have to do these things. And then you're in the club. Can you imagine what that was like for this young, out-of-the-rapper church to see this group of people strong in their faith, dedicated to God, and also following Jesus, now telling you, who's new to the faith, that yeah, Jesus is great, but you gotta do these things too. How confusing would that be when Paul's message to us and to the church is that it's Jesus plus nothing. But here's this group of believers that say, no, it's Jesus plus these things. That's the first temptation or pressure that they were dealing with. The next is asceticism, which is just severe treatment of the body with a promise to some false holiness somewhere. So that you deprive your body of certain foods and water and things that you need to survive in hopes that it'll bring you to some kind of place of holiness. This was another temptation and pressure being thrown at this young church. And the third one was just other gods, Greek gods, false gods. And all of it, again, it comes back to the beliefs of faith. They're not saying abandon your faith in Jesus. They're saying keep Jesus. Jesus is great, he's a great guy, we like him. But make sure to add these things in. You need these things. You need to make sure you follow the letter of the law. You need to make sure that you deprive your body of what it needs so you can reach this place of holiness. Worship Jesus, but also worship Zeus. Worship this false God. You can do both. That's the pressure, the temptation that they are being pulled in in this small young church. And this morning, Central, I will tell you, I see us in this. I see us. A relatively smaller group of believers who gather each week trying to figure this thing out. Not saying we have all the answers, saying we're on this journey together and we're trying to figure this thing out. And along the way, the world is telling you, that's you, the world is telling you, and the world is telling me that Jesus isn't enough. That you have to have all of this other stuff in your life to be happy, to find joy. You have to have all this other stuff or things and or success in your life, and that's when you've reached it. That's when you've come to the place where you want to be. This church, thousands of years ago, looks like the church today. The temptations might look different, but we still deal with the beliefs buffet. We still deal with the Jesus plus. So, what's your plus? When you think about your life, when you think about, man, my it's all about Jesus and what does that mean? Well, I look at my life and I'm like, yeah, Jesus is a part of it, but boy, if this was taken away from my life, I don't know what I'd do. My life is really built into the success of my career and that having that corner office, and I love that, and I love Jesus too. Can I have both? Yeah, of course you can. But it's when that corner office and that success starts to overtake Jesus' influence in your life. I like stuff. I like having all the toys. Is that a bad thing? No, it's not a bad thing, but it becomes a bad thing when your self-worth is wrapped into those things. It becomes a bad thing when your faith is based on those things. Stuff, success, relationships, Jesus plus what? What is your thing? And sometimes the truth of the matter is it's not something external, but the plus piece is internal. In the same psychology today uh article that talked about options and how we need options, it talked about why we love them so much. And it comes down to control. Because if we have options, we have the control. We're controlling our own life, we control what we do, we control our time. For how many of us in the room today is that our plus? Is it the control that we have in our lives? It was funny. This morning we came in and staff was here nice and early and 7:30, something like that, and I hop on my computer and the internet's down. We have no internet. And so we're like, cancel church, man. Internet, nothing, we that's it. Life stops and we don't have internet. I couldn't print out my sermon, we couldn't do the sermon slides, we don't know if we could stream. It was chaos. We were running around here chicken with our heads cut off, we don't know what to do. Luckily, we had an awesome team that got it going this morning. But it was a great reminder that we're not in control of any of this. And if we think we are, and we put our life in our own hands, we're looking at an empty life. And I truly believe this. It's this plus. This false idea of control that leads people to completely rebel against God. Because they don't get it. They don't understand. I had the perfect plan laid out. And why didn't it happen? A while ago, well, after we had our first son, Arlo, my wife and I decide we want uh more kids. And so we got pregnant. I didn't, she did, but together we got pregnant. Um, and uh it was a little bit through the pregnancy, and we were watching, it was Sunday night. We were watching football, Patriots Eagles games, I remember. Uh, and she just said, I'm not feeling well, she's gonna go to the bedroom. So she goes to the bedroom and lays down, and about 10 or 15 minutes later, she comes back out and she says, I think we need to go to the hospital. So we hop in the car and we go to the hospital, and it's kind of a blur. I remember a lot of people entering the room, a lot of people exiting the room, a lot of commotion. Uh, and eventually the doctor came in and said, You lost the baby. And I remember thinking, I don't get it. See, my plan was to be a dad again. I want to be a dad. I love being a dad. It's one of my favorite things in life, and and gosh dang it, I'm a good dad, and so why don't I deserve another kid? What is going on here? And I was in control of nothing. I couldn't control what happened to my child. I couldn't do anything to help my wife. I was lost. And I was angry, and I didn't get it. And it's those moments where we think we have control over our life. And when life falls apart. If we don't have Christ, what do we have? It's Jesus plus. That's the danger in our life, and it really is, and we don't see it coming. Right? We don't see it coming. There's a science experiment out there. I know a guy, and he taught me this, but I want to show you. So you take just a glass of water or a jar of water, and you put a little food coloring in it. You take a paper towel and you drape it over a blank cup or vase, and you just let it sit there. And at first, this is only about you know an hour into it or so, you don't see any change. You see the blue go through the paper towel, but pretty much it's just the same thing. It's two different things there. One's filled, one's empty. That's what it looks like over the first couple hours. But then after about five hours, it looks like this. A little bit more noticeable, not a big deal. It's just a little bit more water. Look at all the empty space, it's fine. After ten hours, it looks like this. And after a day or two, or a week or two, or a month or two, or a year, you can't even tell them apart anymore. This is how the belief spafet works. It gets you thinking that just a little bit of this is gonna be just fine. Because I still have Jesus in my life. But that thing just consumes you and consumes you, and then you're like, well, that's out. I still have Jesus in my life, so everything is good, but now this looks pretty good. So you start to consume that and consume that, and that runs out. You're like, I still have Jesus, and it's okay, so now this looks even better. And we don't see it coming. Because it's slow until all of a sudden it falls apart. This is the danger and the temptation that the Church of Kolos is dealing with. This is the temptation that we're dealing with today, and it's powerful and it's great. So powerful that when Jesus taught us to pray in our Lord's Prayer that we say every week here, he teaches us about this. He says, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Some translations say, deliver us from the evil one. Do not lead us into temptation. Help us to beat this temptation, help us to stay away from the thoughts and the beliefs that the world say that Jesus plus is the way to go. There's a great passage from 2 Timothy, and I love this. I talk about it a lot. Paul wrote this to a young preacher in Ephesus, and he says this for the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. This is the world we live in. If I don't like what you're saying, I'm gonna go down to the church down the street that does. If I don't like what the Bible has to say, I'm gonna go find a different religion that does. If I come to church and I hear something that goes against my life or what I'm doing, but I really enjoy it, I'm leaving. Because someone out there will tell me what I want to hear. Someone out there will say what I'm doing in my life is okay. And I find it ironic because when Paul wrote this to Timothy, I think the time that he's talking about was right then. Because I don't think nothing's changed in the world. It was the same then, it's the same now. Okay, this is all really depressing. So what do we do? What do we do with all this? This is the cool part. What did the church in Kolos do? Paul writes to them, the strong church rooted and grounded in the word of God, a strong fortress, an immovable mountain. He writes to them and he tells them why they're having success and why they need to be aware of what's going on, but how they're able to resist it. He tells them, and he told us this morning in Colossians 5 or Colossians 2, verses 5 something that's in there. This is what it says. He is about to tell us the mystery of God. When this was read earlier, when this scripture was read before the message started, we should have been on pins and needles to be like, what? Paul's gonna tell us the mystery of God? People go a lifetime and they search the cosmos and they read this and read that. People go to seminary for hundreds of years to figure out the mystery of God, and here it is. Paul's gonna tell us. Man, this has got to be a whole chapter dedicated to this, right? Because this has got to be huge. The mystery of God has got to be massive. And this is what he says It's Jesus. You wanna know the mystery of God? The creator of everything? Just look at Jesus. It's that easy, it's that simple in thought, in theory. But it doesn't say, if you want to know the mystery of God, look at Jesus, but also look at that faith right there. If you want to know the mystery of God, know Jesus, but make sure you succeed in everything you do. It's just simply, namely, Jesus, in whom are hidden all the treasures and wisdom and knowledge. The great mystery of God, of who he is, it's Jesus. If you want to know what God does in his free time, look at Jesus. If you want to know how God loves people, look at Jesus. If you want to know how God treats people, look at Jesus. If you want to know how God loves you, look at Jesus. And as much as we love options, we love mystery. We love mystery, right? One of the most or the biggest like top-selling things right now are these things. These blind boxes, these mystery boxes. Raise your hand if you just know what I'm talking about with these things. Okay, some of you do, some of you don't. That's okay. I'll explain. These are mystery boxes, and they're all over. And you buy these things and they got options inside, but you don't know what you're buying. You have no idea what you're buying. And you're gonna go and you're gonna pay 10 bucks and you're gonna hope that you really get this one. And you're gonna open it up and you're not, and then you go to the store and buy five more, right? This is how people watch on Instagram, on Facebook, and all the other things out there. They will spend hours watching people open boxes. That's how much people desire this mystery of what's in there. What is what could it possibly be? Thousands of dollars being spent on this. And Paul is telling us the mystery of God is Jesus. Guys, the mystery of God is good news for us. Because when it's all about Jesus, it's all about forgiveness of sin. It's all about looking at that jar of water and being like, Yeah, man, holy moly, I have lived a little bit of this, a little bit of this, and my jar is now completely full of different colors. The mystery of God is the good news of Jesus that says, you're forgiven. That new life, resurrection life, is for you. So, people of Central, Jesus is enough. Do you believe it? Do you live it? I want to leave you with this quote from Augustine. It says, God is always trying to give you good things. But our hands are too full to receive them. Amen.