The city of
Colossae was probably the smallest and least “important” city that Paul wrote
to. Historically, Colossae was a
prosperous city, and famous (with other cities in the region) for its fabric dyes. But by Paul’s time, its glory as a city was
on the decline.
The city’s
religious environment was much like our own today. It was a time of religious mixing, with
people borrowing a little from this a little from that. There probably was a corruption of
Christianity with elements of mysticism, legalistic Judaism, and early
Gnosticism (generally speaking,
Gnosticism taught that salvation is achieved through special knowledge). This letter was written to combat
these problems within the Colossae society of which the church was located and this
letter is relevant to us here today.
Last week we
talked about the confident hope found in Jesus Christ and that it is through
Him we are reconciled with God. Today we
build on that confident assurance of being a part of God’s family. Paul did not plant the church of Colossae –
to my knowledge he had not ventured there – yet, he wrote a letter to them
concerning their faith. He had heard of
their love from Epaphras. Look at verse
8 with me this morning – Epaphras declared to Paul and his disciples the Spirit-filled
love of the people in the church of Colossae.
If Paul is mentioning this Spirit-filled love it means that this is an
uncommon type of love in the world, but this type of love is normal in the life
of these followers of Christ. People who
came into contact with these people saw a love that was not normal; it was a
love that was from God and was evident to those who interacted with them. God’s
love is given through the Holy Spirit; it is not received in any other way; it
is commenced at salvation; it is confirmed through sanctification. When we give
ourselves fully to God, we can know His love to its fullest extent and we need
to understand that through this love it is complete in glorification. When we realize that this Spirit-filled love
comes from God we then come to the realization that God’s love changes us; His
love enables us to love God supremely. We find this in our obedience to Him and
this love is natural – not contrived; this love enables us to love others fully,
even those who hurt us, even our enemies. This is a love we all need to strive
for, so people will see Jesus through the life we live.
Join me as we look at today’s text beginning with vs.
9 and going through vs. 14, following along with me on your bulletin insert. In
verse 9 we read together: 9 For
this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you,
and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom
and spiritual understanding. This is the second time in the first 9
verses that Paul has mentioned that he was praying for the church of
Colossae. As I said earlier Paul did not
plant this church nor had he even visited prior to writing this letter, but by his
message to the church of Colossae it shows an intimacy for fellow believers of
the Good News. He uses two phrases that
his prayers for the church were not just a passing “Lord please be with the
church of Colossae.” When we read in this first chapter that Paul was “praying
always for you,” and “we do not cease to pray for you,” this indicates a
continual prayer for these people Paul had never met personally, but had only heard
about from his dear friend Epaphras. But
just what was Paul praying for the people of Colossae? He was praying for them to be filled with the
knowledge of God’s will! That is the
same prayer I have as we gather here today; that all of us here this morning
will be filled with the knowledge of God’s will! It brings us to the question – How can we increase knowledge
of His will? First we must get
serious about our relationship with Jesus Christ – our relationship with Jesus
Christ must become important enough to us that we carve out time to spend with
Him without distraction; in other words we come to seek Him with all our heart,
all our soul, and all our might. We do this by spending time in prayer.
Not the “now I lay me down to sleep” or “God is great prayer,” which is okay,
but we need to spend intimate time going to the Throne of Grace bearing
ourselves in openness and allowing God see the real us, not the one we pretend
to be. Second, we increase our knowledge
of His will by reading and studying
the Word of God. We need to
spend time in focused study of His Word.
I think there is an epidemic that is staggering to me and that is the
number of people in the church today – I am speaking of the Universal Church –
that are biblically illiterate. I
remember when I was in seminary our first class for Old Testament went
something like this. Dr. Dean McBride
walked into our very first class, which was normally a time to go over the
syllabus for the course and then the professor would dismiss us to come back
for the second class prepared to jump into the course. However, the first thing that Dr. McBride did
when he and Dr. Carson Brisson walked into the room that morning was ask us to
take out a paper for a pop quiz. I
remember thinking; I was not in Kansas anymore because in our first class we
were getting a grade before we even knew the layout of the course. The first question we were asked was to name
the northern and southern kingdoms in the time of the Old Testament? The
majority got this question wrong – how many of us here today know the
answer. I am proud to say that I got the
question right only because I guessed right! O by the way Israel was the
northern kingdom and Judah was the southern kingdom and the grade did not count
although it scared all of us to no end. The
average seminarian that morning got 4 out of 10 correct. Because of people in churches today not
knowing the Word of God intimately I began to wonder why is there a trend to
walk away from the Bible and studying it.
I am hearing pastor after pastor say that attendance at their Bible
Studies within their church has dropped off significantly. A Gallup Poll taken way back in 2006
revealed the number of people who read the Bible at least occasionally had
dropped to 59 percent, down from 73 percent in the 1980s. George Gallup summarized it best when he
said, “We revere the Bible but we don’t read it.” So why aren’t people reading
the Bible? Tyndale House Publishers did
a survey to find the answer to this perplexing question. Their survey showed
that 64 percent of Americans said they did not read the Bible because they are
too busy. Eighty percent said the Bible is too confusing and hard to
understand. Of course these are not valid excuses for not reading the Bible.
The majority of Americans are busy but we tend to find time to do those things
that we enjoy or that we deem important. Bible reading is simply not a priority
to many people today. In order to gain
wisdom or knowledge we need to know the Bible and what it teaches,
incorporating it into our lives – it is almost as if the church has followed
the man’s example of not asking for directions when he is lost or refusing to
look at the directions on how to build something until it becomes a last
resort! We turn to reading and the
studying of the Word when we are in trouble or when we have nothing else to do.
Paul prays that the church of Colossae and us here today
that will receive spiritual
understanding and we need to understand how we receive this understanding
this morning. Guess what – it comes from
the same two traits I have explained concerning increasing our knowledge of
God’s will. Our receiving of spiritual
understanding comes from the Word
of God and Prayer. But it doesn’t stop there, Jesus said in John
chapter 14:26, "But the Helper, the Holy
Spirit, whom the Father will
send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance
all things that I said to you."
We also gain spiritual understanding from the Holy Spirit when we surrender to His guidance in
our life. Now this is important for us
to understand this morning – we need to come to a point of surrender and let me
say that is difficult because we have to get out of our own way or at least get
out of God’s way; we have to come to the point of saying to God it is all about
You and Your plan for my life and not what I desire or expect out of my
life. This is challenging because we
don’t want to be so exposed since making this type of commitment gives us a
feeling of defenselessness, but in reality it is a place of power – for when we
get to the point of giving our complete and total life to Jesus, we can finally
say what Jesus said to Paul, "My grace is
sufficient for you, for My strength
is made perfect in weakness." Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in
my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." It is in our surrender and admittance of our
need of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior that His strength works through us.
We will pick up the pace just a bit, let us read
verses 10 and 11 together: 10
that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful
in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11
strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience
and longsuffering with joy. Beginning
in verse 10 Paul begins to tell us about the fruits of gaining a knowledge
of God’s will and an increase in spiritual understanding. We need
this knowledge of His will and spiritual understanding so we will walk worthy of the Lord. Paul is praying that we
will live according to the same knowledge we have received, living it out in
our walk as a Christian. When we have a
true knowledge of God’s will our walk of faith will match what the Bible
teaches in how a follower of Jesus Christ should walk with Jesus Christ as his
or her Lord and Savior. We also need
this knowledge and understanding so we
will fully please Him. We come to the point where we want “to please
God in all respects” – not man – not family – we desire a complete,
whole-hearted pleasing of Him and this becomes our highest desire. We need this knowledge and understanding so we will be fruitful in every good work.
When we walk in total commitment to God He will give us opportunities to be
fruitful and instead of looking at how we can’t do something, we will see this
as an opportunity to glorify God. When
we are fruitful it glorifies God, not ourselves! We need this knowledge and wisdom so we will increase in our knowledge of God. Instead of making excuses or placing other
things in front of the Lord, we desire to spend more time in intimate prayer and
the reading of His Word, with the key word here being “intimate,” we will
desire and carve out a time of intimacy each day with the Lord. Finally by doing these things we can live
our life more for Him and we will be
strengthened with all might according to His glorious power. As we draw closer to God, He will draw closer
to us and we will become stronger in Him.
This whole section is about spending a more intimate time with our Lord
and Savior and let me tell you Satan will tell you that you don’t have time –
don’t let him deceive you with that argument.
Recently, in my own life I have chosen to focus on this intimate time
each day with the Lord and it has been difficult because Satan has tried to
make me feel guilty for taking time out of my day that I could be doing more
work for the church. It is pure
deception, but the Holy Spirit has begun to move my heart to an understanding
that if I spend my intimate time with God, the church matters will work
themselves out in God’s time and God’s way; not my own! As a pastor one time told me “WE SPEND TIME WITH THAT WHICH IS
IMPORTANT TO US!” We did a
project years ago before I was a pastor at my home church – we wrote down for a
week what we did in our free time – the time we were not at work. After a week, it was amazing how much time we
sat in front of the TV or were listening to music. Very little of our time was spent with the
Lord. I challenge you to make the time
you spend with the Lord an importance in your daily life!
Now let us read
verse 12 through 14 together: 12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be
partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has
delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom
of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. We come to
something that many of us here today don’t want to hear but it is the final
point I want to make today and that is – it is not us – IT IS
HIM! We give thanks to the Father! Why do we realize it is not about us – it is
about God and we desire to give thanks to the Father? Because
it is God who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance. God
did this, not us. I did nothing, He did
it all through Jesus Christ – I owe Him everything – I owe Him my life! Do we really understand that this
morning? I wish I could say yes, but I
am humbled by the thought of this point this morning, it is God who decided to
qualify us to spend eternity with Him; think about that – how awesome is
that! Because of God we have been delivered from the power of
darkness. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not
under law but under grace (Romans
6:14); But you,
brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief.
You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of
darkness (1 Thessalonians 5:4-5). As
we can see by these two Scripture passages we have been delivered from the
power of darkness – so we give thanks to the Father! It is through God who has conveyed (transferred) us into His
kingdom through Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus
we have redemption through His blood and it is in Jesus we have forgiveness of
sins. These three points
dovetail last week’s message which spoke to the theme of Jesus Christ being the
vehicle for our salvation and it is through His blood that our sins have been
forgiven and we have been redeemed and the good news is that we are transferred
into the family of God! What hope this good
news brings to us this morning!
My prayer as we come to a close is that God will give
you a passion to desire a more intimate relationship with Him. I can tell you spending more time with God
will be life changing and invigorating.
I cannot force you to make this commitment and guess what God will not
force you to make this commitment as well – it is your decision! Satan will do everything to trick you and
deceive you, but God just says “come to me all who
are heavy laden and I will give you rest!” My prayer is that you will come to Him and
find that rest!
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