I have 1 mysql table called colors with rows id and name
1 - yellow
2 - black
3 - red
4 - green
5 - white
6 - bl
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_find-in-set
select id from tab where find_in_set(name, '$colors') > 0
NB: as per Dan's comment below, this query doesn't use indexes and will be slow on a large table. A query with IN is better:
select id from tab where name IN ('blue', 'red', 'white')