sort of do an audible mid-afternoon
so I have asked you all over the last few months to be reading
the letter to the Colossians letter to the Colossians and
some of you sisters have been sharing your thoughts on that
but none of the brothers have been sharing their thoughts at
all on the on the little chat group but either way uh... the conversations have started
now why are we doing this let me let me give you sort of uh... some of you may know that let
me just sort of explain what we hope to accomplish we believe
that the word of god is divinely we believe it is actually the
word of god not words about god We believe that everything that
is written in the scripture comes from the mind and the mouth of
God through the hands and the personalities of His writers,
the prophets and the apostles. We believe that God, according
to His word, we hold true to what the word itself says, is
that God reveals Himself only and always through scripture. and that He at this present time,
even though He reveals Himself perfectly through His Son, only
does so through the written scripture. We also believe what the Bible
says concerning itself and that the scripture is living and breathing,
sharper than any two-edged sword. It is active, it cuts bone, it
cuts marrow, it cuts spirit, it cuts consciousness, it cuts
the mind. It prunes, it does everything. We believe that the
scripture teaches, we believe what the scripture teaches concerning
the word of God going out. That when there are people who
hear the word of God and they don't wanna hear it, they don't
believe it, it's because God has sent it for that purpose.
And it never returns to him worthless or void, but it always does that
which he has intended for it to do. We also believe what Paul
says concerning the scripture in that both the testaments,
both the old and the new writings of scripture constitute the fullness
of the word of God and all of them for the believers, for the
pastor, shepherds, and teachers, for parents who are teaching
their children, all of Scripture is breathed out by God and is
useful and profitable, yielding a result for success in life
and ministry, for the knowledge of God, for salvation, etc. And we say all these things and
we even come under the wind of the wings of our reformers who
fought a good fight of faith in history and there's some that
you know about and there's many that we don't know about but
they stood against the status quo of what most people would
consider the church who had a false gospel of works much like Israel
and they fought the good fight to continue to proclaim what
the scripture says concerning salvation justification by faith
alone in the person and the work of Christ for whom he intended
it for to be that the love of God is manifested in the person
of Christ for a particular people and so on and so forth. We believe
that and we believe that the Word of God is sufficient but
in our culture where we've come in my lifetime and in a little
over two decades of professional ministry, whatever that means,
I have seen a degradation of the authority of Scripture, but
worse, a degradation of the sufficiency of Scripture. We can even say,
we believe in the authority, the inerrancy of the Word of
God, but if the Word of God in our hearts and minds and in our
practice is not sufficient for the work God's called us to,
and the life God's called us to, and the hope God's called
us to, then it's worthless. So the word of God is sufficient
and what the Lord is going to teach us is something that he
taught me in spite of me many, many, many years ago in the midst
of what the world would call a successful ministry that I
would call a just by the grace of God he didn't burn me alive.
And as we read the Bible, not the study Bible, not the commentaries,
Not the sermons or the written articles or any of the exegetical
writings. As we just read the scripture,
God teaches us. He teaches us about Himself.
He teaches us about us. He teaches us about His promises
and His covenants. He teaches us about His power
and His love. He teaches us all sorts of things,
but we are so far removed from reading the Word of God that
we have lost sight of how the Word of God is sufficient. In
the last decade alone, I have seen more and more people write
more and more books concerning how the Bible can be used in
life, in a general sense, more than I have the teaching of the
Bible in itself. And it's not going to change. But the good thing is, is that
God will not let his word die. It will remain in the end and
forever. It'll be the only thing left.
And for God's people, we who are truly filled with God, we
are, who found, who are found in God, we will hold fast to
the sufficiency and the efficacy and the authority of scripture.
We know that therein, in the simple learning of its teaching,
that God supernaturally works. in our hearts and minds. He supernaturally
works in doctrine, things that we know about him that he teaches
through the writing of the apostles. We know that he works divinely
in our hearts and minds to help us in temptation, to undergird
our faith, to strengthen us in times of weakness, to remind
us of his mercy and kindness at every step of the way, and
to empower us to shut our mouths and keep our eyes on the prize
for which we're running. And that's why I've been asking
you over the last two months to read Colossians. It does take,
at the pace that I'm speaking now, 13 minutes to read it without
dramatic pause. And so for a slow reader, it
would take 26 minutes. But I've never heard a few people
speak that slowly. If you can't read, don't have
time to read, you can listen. You can listen for a few minutes
in the car, you can listen. I encourage you, hear the word
of God, read the word of God, or listen to the word of God.
Whatever it takes to get, if you can only read 10 verses a
day, read 10 verses a day. If you can read the whole letter,
read it. Now after several months, I ask you all to begin to collaborate. What is it that God has shown
you and taught you? And you'll find it interesting.
Me and Ben had a conversation earlier and he said, I wish we
could go and God could just erase or we had some mechanism by which
we could erase all the errors that we've ever believed so that
we could come with a virgin mind to the scripture. Imagine how
that would be like. The brand new mind, a brand new
eyes, brand new ears that we didn't have to weed through all
the fodder that we've had for, you know, for 40 plus years to
deal with. or more, or less. And we would
just see it for what it is, and by the grace and the mercy of
God, we would just receive it, especially in the letters of
the apostles and the admonishment of the church, and the correction,
the discipline of the church, we would see it and would not
conflate the gospel and the work of redemption with the instructions
to God's people who are born again. It would be awesome. Well,
beloved, the more you read it, the clearer that will become.
The more time you spend in the Bible, not with a study Bible,
not with a commentary, the clearer it will become. And we can do
so much more with just the scripture than we could ever do with years
of education. And I say that as someone who
has 12 years of education. 12 years of academics. My time in the Word has been
far more fruitful than any of that. As a matter of fact, it
has robbed me of many seasons of life. What? Academics has
robbed me of many seasons of life in which I did not read
the Bible. I just used it as a tool to study
what I was looking for. And so as we approach Colossians,
I thought that what a fitting thing to do tonight is just sort
of talk about a little bit, get into the scripture and let you
see what I have seen, what some of you may have seen. Now, I
don't share a lot of what my daily routine looks like to many
people or what my study habits look like. And I get those questions,
you know, pastor, what's your study schedule? What's your schedule?
What's your routine? What kind of resources do you
use? So I'm gonna expose some of that to you today. I have
three Bibles that I primarily read from. I have one that is
at home that is always there at my desk, and I pull it out
and I read it when I'm opening the scripture. It has no notes
in it, it has no footnotes in it. Then I have my preaching
Bible, which is this one that has the largest print of the
three that I use, and I'm wearing out the pages just using it on
Sunday, Wednesday, Tuesday. And then I have a small Bible
that stays with me in my bag or either in the console of my
truck and it's with me everywhere I go in person because I cannot,
for the love of all things holy, use a phone and follow the Bible. I can find 15 passages before
with my fingers in this pages before I can pull up one with
a phone. I just can't do it. You got a magnifying glass? The
smaller, yeah, the smaller they get. I just cannot, I cannot
use digital Bibles. Now, all that being said, those
are my tools for my study. That's it. And a book, a pencil
with a notebook in it, with paper in it, and those are the tools
of my study. And I read the Word, and I study the Word, and I write
out the thoughts concerning the Word, and at the rare occasion,
like in Romans 9, I wanna make sure there's some grammatical
things that I get right, or Romans 5. I'll go to some Greek tools
or I'll pull out a Greek New Testament. But for the most part,
I will not look at a commentary. I will not look at an exegetical
commentary, a historical commentary, an expositional commentary. Because
if I do that, all I'm really doing is reading a technical
sermon of someone else's study. And when I do that, I'm really
not spending time with the Lord, and He's not teaching me anything.
I'm learning what someone else believes about what the Bible
may be saying there, and if I take it at face value, I am not so
sure that they're right. For those of you who know some
of the doctrinal things that we've come to find ourselves
fussing about, friends, I don't believe it's healthy for teachers
of the Scripture to spend time in other people's thoughts. I
don't believe that the historical record of theological things
are the authority of those things. I believe God himself is the
authority of his own revelation and I believe that his word will
teach a child just like it teaches a PhD. And if God calls you to study
further, great. Do not usurp his glory or his
power or his promises through any other means because the only
means through which he'll give the grace to understand him is
the scripture. That's it. Nothing else. And I say this
to my own children who have always historically looked at me, especially
when they get about the age of 12, and they're like, Daddy,
you're dumb. You don't know what you're talking about. I can't
read the Bible. But when the Lord pricks their heart to produce
in them a desire to eat the word of God, they always come out
on the other side going, wow, never thought I'd learn anything
there. That is why it is, and I'm going to use strong language
here, sinful to abridge the teaching to children in such a way that
dumbs down the truth therein. It is wicked to reduce the assembly
to just cognitive adults. It is evil to divide the household
with the command of God when he says to assemble with the
saints by bringing children and youth away from the preaching
of God's Word. And any congregation who does
that on a Sunday morning will be held accountable by God for
that practice. There we go. So let the fire
begin. Because then they'll wonder,
oh, my children have a lot of trivia, but they don't love the
Bible. Because they've never heard it.
They've never heard it. The letter to the Colossians.
Now I don't want to give a lot of background stuff because I
don't want to sit here and be guilty of what I'm complaining
about. Let's just talk about it for a minute. What is it that
sort of strikes you first and foremost when you read a biblical
letter? I pray that the introduction would strike you. I pray that
it would pause you to go, wow, look there, look who's writing
this letter and look how he identifies his audience. Paul, an apostle
of Christ Jesus, by the will of God in Timothy, our brother,
to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace
to you and peace from God our Father. Now, if I were to exposit
that, and I were going to take, that would be sermon number one,
55 minutes to an hour, dealing with the introduction to this,
because there are doctrinal, powerful doctrinal truths found
in that. They're not didactic, in other
words, they're not being taught there, but they are surely undergirding
the words. What are they? First and foremost,
that Paul is the author of this letter. He's the author of this
letter. It doesn't matter who wrote it.
It doesn't matter if I say, hey, take a note and I tell you what
to write and you write it down and I sign my name to it. I wrote
the letter. Whoever, whatever monkey pushes
the buttons and makes the ink come to the page is irrelevant.
Whose words are they? Ultimately the word of God, but
it's Paul. Paul. And some of the letters
he penned with his own hand and some scribes assisted with and
others, you know the drill. Here, Paul wrote this letter. So Paul had business with the
Church of Colossae. He had intimacy with the Church
of Colossae. He had concern with the Church
of Colossae. I want you to think of this when
you read a letter. A letter's not written like we
get today. We get letters in the mail all the time. They're
junk mail, right? You get this signed letter. How many congressmen
send you letters? And you get letters from the
White House. And you get letters from this. And you get letters
from the senator. You get letters from your representatives. And they're always signed with
this blue ink, or this black ink, or this red ink, and it's
always just this form letter. And every now and then, I'll
get an error in that, it'll say, your name here, dear your name
here, or something, you know, and you're like, yeah, real personal.
Real personal. Or we'll get a letter in the
mail and we'll open it up and it'll have handwriting on the envelope.
And you open it up, there's a sticky note in there and it's got handwriting
on it. And it's got a handwritten letter with a cut out from a
magazine. I'm like, what is this? I thought
you'd be interested in reading this. Give me a call. I'm going,
who is this? No name, no return letter. And
then you realize it's just really good printing. I thought this
was my grandmother sending me something in the mail. She'd mail a whole newspaper
to me if she thought it was relevant to what I wanted to see. Pay
$43 to mail it to California, you know. But we get a letter, it's personal. If it's really a letter to us,
it's addressed to us, and someone sent it, so therefore they had
business with us. They have concern for us. There's
a reason why they need to communicate with us in writing. And I've
received a lot of real letters in my lifetime. I've got several
boxes full of letters. Why do I save them? I don't know.
Glutton for punishment. Because most of them are not
nice. I'd say 90% of them, 9 out of
10 letters that I've received in the last two decades have
been ugly. Ugly. Cards. Passive-aggressive? I'm going to tell you. Here's
a nice Hallmark card. We love you. Praying for you.
May the glory of the Lord shine upon your face. You know, pretty
dove on the front of it. You open it up, there's a handwritten
letter. We're praying for you, Pastor. I think you need to listen and
blah, blah, blah, and you did blah, blah, blah, and you did this, blah,
blah, blah, and you said this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's all
from the teaching. It's never from any personal conversation.
It's all from the teaching. And I keep those. I think they keep
me humble. Paul cared for this church, so he wrote them. What
kind of time did it take for him to write this letter? What
kind of time did it take for him to get into the mood to sit
down and pen something like this? What was going through his mind?
And I'll tell you what it is. It was gratitude to the Lord,
see. Verse three would tell you that. He and Timothy and their concern
for the Christians at Colossae, they wanted to communicate with
them. And beloved, I don't care how
great technology moves us down the road of efficiency, it doesn't
make communication any better if it's not true communication.
and complete thoughts without interruption. This message, this
message, that message, this message, that message, this message, that.
I don't think that way. My brain doesn't work that way.
It cannot function that way. No one's brain really functions
that way. It's psychotic. And that's why
nobody knows what anybody's trying to say. Letters and articles
and books and narratives and prose. That's how God created
language, not bits and pieces. So there is no such thing as
intimate conversation in bits and pieces. I don't care. I've
never had intimate conversations in bits and pieces. Ever. And I get so many bits and so
many pieces. You may have said something to
me that I think you said. I don't know. It's the last avatar
that pops into my mind is what I think. It's not communicative. So until I can get to the desk
and paste it into a piece of paper, paste it into an email,
or paste it into a document processor where I can look at it and write
and respond, you better tell them what you'll get from me.
I might answer a question you've never asked. I might engage in
a way you've never considered. I might even be rude. And you're
like, why are you being rude? Oh, I thought you was somebody
else. That's not Paul's problem. That's not the problem of the
body. Paul is writing to these Christians. How much time have
we ever spent being concerned with our brothers and sisters
in the faith? I mean, just the very fact that these letters exist
should give us Paul's. The very fact that this is how
they communicated. And beloved, this is how people
communicate today in true intimacy. And they listened to everything
he had to say. And if they needed to speak back to him, they would
write him back. I think it's why the teaching
of scripture through oratory has been the practice for 2,000
years. Because if I got interrupted every 30 seconds, then where
would the communication be? It might be fruitful, it might
be fun, and there's a time and a place for that, but could you
imagine? And I've preached in congregations
like that as a guest preacher before. In the middle of whatever
was coming out of my mind, somebody goes, hey, what about such and
such? And I'm going, oh, what? Oh well, ADD on, logic off. All right, open up your chess
boards and let's just play a quick game. Paul, he wrote this letter,
and then we see him identify himself as an apostle of Christ
Jesus by the will of God. Big important Greek word there,
apostolos, just like it's spelled in English. Apostle, without
the OS at the end. It's an apostle, a witness sent
by the living Lord. Someone who has seen Christ in
the flesh. It should remind us of who Paul is and what he's
done. Paul did not decide to be an apostle, beloved. He did
not get the decision. He did not get the opportunity
to choose Jesus. He chose unbelief and God wrecked
his life. Paul was not an apostle, he hated
the apostles, but now Christ found him, met him, and this
is why Paul uses the language he does down in verse 12, 13, and 14. That God
is the actor upon him to make him an apostle by the will of
God. It's by the will of God. See how slowly these things unfold. And now the things that I'm saying
could unfold in your mind in just a few seconds. This is how
I approach the scripture. This is what I do. And then as
I'm familiar with other areas of the Bible, I think, where
else has Paul defended his apostleship? Everywhere. He had to defend it in Corinth.
He had to defend it in Galatia. He had it offended that he was
sent by God the Son himself because those people who were infiltrating
these churches were doing harm and usurping him as an authoritative
figure in the doctrines of Christ. So that means this letter in
itself is sent by Christ. This letter is just as authoritative
as anything Jesus ever said because it is the words of Jesus. I had
that question last week and I answered it Sunday night in Theology on
Call. People say, what are your thoughts about the red letter
movement? It's heresy. It's garbage. Just because it's
a quotation of Jesus doesn't make it more authoritative than
the words before and after it. Because the very people who are
saying that that's what Jesus said are the ones who wrote the
rest of it. So it's just absurd. Christ sent Paul, Paul sent the
letter, Jesus wrote to the church of Colossae. He wrote to them
and he wrote it for us. Let me see. And he's not alone. And there's a partnership here
that we know a lot about, but yet not much at all. And that's
the partnership, the relationship that Paul had with a young man
named Timothy. And we just need to think for
a minute. Timothy wasn't an apostle. Timothy
wasn't even hardly a man, and yet Paul entrusted him as
the one who would replace him in the teaching of the churches
of Ephesus. Timothy entrusted this young man, and he had to
warn him many times over, do you think about the letters to
Timothy? Two of Paul's letters are written to this boy, and
this boy is with him. And there are many times that
we see in Paul's writing to Timothy, who is our brother, our brother. This is not my assistant. This
is not my mentor, my mentee. This is not my protege. This
is not my elder in training. This is not my minister, my ministry
intern. This is my brother and he's not
just mine, he's ours. He's ours. So what I'm doing for you, Timothy's
involved in. He's your brother and I'm your
brother. We are one in the same. Agents of Christ. Though he's
not an apostle, if I send him to you, it's as if I've come
to you. And he writes to the saints.
To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. This is
who the letter is to. This is the audience of every
apostolic writing of the New Testament. That means when I
say there's not one jot or tittle written to a lost person in the
Bible, I'm being serious. Paul never wrote a sentence to
an unbeliever his entire life. Neither did John, neither did
Peter, neither did James, neither did Luke, Matthew, Jude, none
of them. Not one. Not one word did they
ever write to a lost person in the whole history of the apostolic
ministry. And that sets the tone for what's
written inside every letter. And if that's the truth, then
who are these people? Interestingly enough, it's a
similar greeting that he gives to all the churches. And when
you think about the devilish church of Corinth, what does
Paul say to them? Paul, called by the will of God
to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, and our brother, Sosthenes, to the church of God that is
in Corinth. And I love how Paul does for
the Corinthians. He overemphasizes their place before the Father.
To those sanctified Holy, set apart in Jesus Christ. It means
the same thing. It's the same word. Those holy
in Jesus Christ, called to be saints together with all those
in every place, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,
both their Lord and ours. Now there is no argument that
when Paul talks about the saints of Corinth, he makes it clear
that they are indeed saints. And that there's not one person
he wrote that letter to that wasn't bought and paid for by
the Lord Jesus. Whose blood did not justify them
at every drop. And every breath of judgment
that God poured out on his son was to satisfy his wrath for
them and woe how they live. what they tolerated, how they
argued, how they debated, how they just let their culture inundate
them with all sorts of impurities and so on and so forth. And the
same thing is true to the other problematic church, the first
letter that Paul ever wrote to the churches of Galatia. Many, many, many, many in the
region. And Paul is writing to these
faithful brothers and sisters in Christ at Colossae. And then he greets them the same
way he leaves them. Grace to you and peace from God
our Father. It's important. That's the tone. That's the purpose. That's the
intention. That's the reason he can write
to them. This is the power that runs in
the veins of Paul that gives him the ability to write with
affection, no matter if it's to the church of Thessalonica,
who had a wonderful testimony, or the church of Corinth, who
had no testimony. This is how we should read the
Bible. And you know what's crazy? You don't have to go that far
with it. But are these things in your mind? Are these things
there? And even though Paul wrote the
letter, he's speaking on behalf of all those with him. That we
are in unity here. That's something that's absent
in the true assembly of the saints that believe the free and sovereign
grace of Jesus Christ. We sometimes lose sight that
we're all together. We're together. We agree together
in the gospel. We agree together in discipline.
We agree together in strife. We agree together in joy. We
agree together in mourning. We agree together when we're
well, and we agree together when we're sick. We are all one body,
and we are working to the same end, to the praise of the glorious
grace of our Father in Christ Jesus, who bought us and paid
for us and set us right before Him through the body and the
blood of His Son. the God-man, through whom we
have grace, through whom we have peace, through whom we have been
adopted, ergo, we have a Father who is in heaven. See all that? It's right there. It's right
there. And it should just, it should
swell us with awe, it should swell us with joy, that even
though Paul, I mean, he was He was not just thinking of himself,
by himself. He and those with him were concerned
for the Church of Colossae. And look at the attitude. Look
at the attitude. This is what amazes me. Everything Paul has
just said in that one sentence is expounded upon in the next
11 verses. Just expound it upon him. We
always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when
we pray for you. So he said, what's happening?
We are praying for you and we are thankful that our Father,
and we give thanks to our Father, who is the Father of the Lord
Jesus Christ also, when we pray for you. And we always are thankful
since we heard of your faith in Jesus Christ. So see, there
are the saints. This is the moniker of true salvation. They have faith in Jesus Christ
alone. They know that they have been
saved by grace and they have been granted peace with God because
of his eternal love for them, effectually purposed and presented
in the person of Jesus. Since we heard of your faith
in Jesus Christ, And also since we've heard of the love that
you have for all the saints. For all the saints. And as a
pastor shepherd, I could spend too much time in this. And I
do my personal worship. I do. I think, oh, the day that
I would love to see all the true saints of Christ be known for
their love for one another. And in that love for each other,
they are actually, in essence, in a practical way, loving Christ. And how is it that they can love
because? You see, it just flows this way because of the hope
laid up for you in heaven. Did Paul say there was a hope
for them on earth? Did Paul say that their love for one another
was their hope? Did Paul say the fact that you have a great
testimony of good works was your hope? No! He said your hope is
laid up for you in heaven. The treasure of the kingdom of
God, the riches of His glory, is all found in Jesus Christ,
our Lord, whose Father is our Father, who gives us grace and
peace. And this hope is yours, and it
is secure. Don't the words of Peter ring
true there? The power of God, his divine
power, is all we need for life and for godliness in 1 Peter
chapter 1. And Peter there is writing to
converted Jews. Jews have been born of Christ. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy, has caused
us to be born again to a living hope, hope that's laid in heaven,
Paul says to Colossae, Peter says to the churches, to the
Jews in Dyspersia, Cappadocia, Galatia, Bithynia, all these
places. according to his great mercies cause us to be born again
to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable undefiled
and unfading kept in heaven for you who you who by God's power
are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed
in the last time in this now you rejoice though for a little
while you may suffer trials and be beat up and be killed and
all this other kind of stuff And it goes on and on and on. Why
did I go to 1 Peter? Because when I see the words
of Paul here, I hear the words of Peter there. How? Because I read it. How many times
have I read 1 Peter? Thousands. That almost echoed
when I said that. Thousands. Thousands, I'm not
kidding, thousands and thousands of times I have read 1 Peter,
especially chapter 1. It is one of my go-to places
in the midst of the darkest hours of my life when my mind couldn't
distinguish between truth and lie. When I didn't know if I
was living or dying, the Bible, the doctrine of Peter, of Christ,
and my hope laid up in heaven for me was the only thing that
saved my heart and my mind and my own life. That's it. Colossians, no different. And
this is how you prepare a sermon. This is how you prepare worship.
This is how you prepare a study. This is how you prepare a what?
A devotional. Just sit down and let your mind
go in the Word. You know, I haven't quoted one
theologian, I haven't given one anecdote, I have not said one
thing in the sense of application, and I've not given any personal
stories or illustrations that would undergird anything that
Paul has stated thus far in this letter, yet it is absolutely,
purely powerful. Because it is all about Christ.
And whether I'm preaching here or 1 Samuel, or Exodus, or Hebrews, or wherever
it might be that I'm preaching, it's all the same. And if we
continue to walk in the Word of God in this way, we will see
the power of God manifested in a way that we've never understood
and comprehended because we can't grasp it with our little finite
minds. It is a divine working. Let's
continue in the time we have left. This hope that's laid up
in heaven for you. You see how many sermons we've
got now? We've got like four sermons already. There's just four sermons already
for me. I'm going to talk about this hope. I'm going to talk
about this grace. I'm going to talk about this hearing of the
gospel that I just sort of overlooked right there. How they came to
know this truth and had such assurance is because they heard
it. How was it heard? Romans 10. Someone went. And
why did they go? Because they loved the elect
of God. That's why they went. of this you heard before in the
word of truth, that is the good news which has come to you as
indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing
as it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood
the grace of God in truth just as you learned it from Epaphras,
our beloved fellow servant. He's a faithful minister of Christ
on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
So now, that's, I mean, it's just, there's so much here. You
mean, Paul wasn't the one that keeps reminding them all this
stuff? Listen to what I said to you, listen to what Epaphras
said this. Trust the reliable men who can teach others also.
Beloved, we've got a famine in the United States of America
when it comes to the true doctrine of Christ. There's a church on
every corner. But there's no true Christ in
the church. We have people that are longing,
willing, and desperate to be in fellowship with each other.
Beloved, we need to prepare ourselves to go. We don't need a building to be
a church. We just need a big enough place to gather. And if
we can't find a big enough place to gather when the time comes,
then it is not God's will for it to be that way. We don't put
the cart before the horse. The building has nothing to do with
the call of God. The stuff. I mean, it doesn't
matter. It's beneficial. And by the mercy
of God, our teaching from this pulpit is impacting people across
the world. But God can take it away tomorrow.
So this is not the answer. It's not the answer. The answer
is, why aren't we praying for God to send us into the famine
land? You see? Let's pray that. Pray
that with me. Pray that not only for us as
we travel. If we're traveling and we're
near some siblings who are desperate, can we just not go spend a day
with them? Can we not send some brothers who are preparing to
shepherd the flocks and maybe let them go every few months
and just intimately teach Who said that a church can't
exist unless it's every Sunday? I'm just thinking out loud. It's
what I think about. It's all I'm thinking about right
now when I read this intimacy here is how much of a beautiful
thing it is for us to have what we have as a family. And how
desperate so many people are to have it. So many people are desperate.
This gospel indeed is in the whole world and it's bearing
fruit and increasing. As it has also does among you
since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in
truth. You see, the gospel is confined
or or reduced, if I can say it in the right manner, to the grace
of God. Salvation is reduced in its simplest
form. The simplest, the simple gospel
is all about simple grace. Don't forget those four words. Well, is all about. So six, seven,
five, six, seven words. The simple gospel is all about
simple grace because you're going to hear a lot of that in the
months to come, especially when we get into Galatians. What else? We could keep on going
and keep on going, but with the time we have left, I want to
just continue to read. He, verse. Verse seven, just
as you learn it from Epaphras, our beloved faithful servant,
fellow servant, he's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf.
He's a minister of who? Of Paul or Timothy? No, of Christ. He's a faithful minister of Christ
on your behalf, for His own glory, for His own ministry, for His
own page views, for His own pulpit, for His own seats, for His own
pocket. No, for you, for your behalf. And has made known to us your
love in the Spirit. And so, from the day we heard,
we have not ceased to pray for you, asking God the Father that
you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to
him by faith, and I'm going to add that in there because it's
understood, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing
in the knowledge of God, therefore being strengthened with all power. What kind of power? The power
of our flesh. The power of our academics, the power of our polemics,
the power of what? The power of His glorious might. Whose power? God's power. Of
His glorious might. For what? Why do we need power?
For all endurance. You gotta stand firm in the midst
of all this. The wind's blowing against where you're trying to
go. You just stand there and lean into it. That's what endurance
means. With all patience. I mean, stand
where you are by the power of God and don't complain about
it. Look forward to the point that God has in this endurance. Endurance by definition connotes
what? Suffering, trial, problems. I don't have to endure the pleasure
of someone giving me a million dollars or fixing me free food.
I'm like, oh gosh, it's so agonizing. Thank you for all the gifts.
No, we endure that which hurts us. which is hard for us. We
do it with patience and we do it with joy. I don't have joy. What did Peter just say? We have
joy in the doctrine of Christ. We have joy in knowing the truth
of Christ. We have joy because we're being
strengthened in the knowledge of God with all the saints. We got saints who love us and
we love them and they're praying for us and we're praying for
them and we're hoping in Christ together. and all this joy, the
result of it is giving thanks to the Father and here is the
nuts and bolts of this joy and this gratitude and this power
and this endurance and this knowledge and all of it. This is what Paul
will use with every bit of the practical instruction he gives
this church who's being inundated by Gnosticism, by the way, and
false teaching and stress and everything else. This is the
power. Give me thanks to the Father,
the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance
of the saints in light with the full knowledge of God, the full
revelation of Jesus Christ, the fullness of the glory of God
face to face in Christ, the finished work of God. Let there be light
and there was light and the light has come into the world and he
has saved his people from their sins. And this is how he did
it. Here's the actor and here's all
the verbs. He has delivered us. From what? From the domain of
darkness. God has delivered us and He's transferred us. Who
transferred us? Did we walk over there? Did we
bang on the door? Did we open it for Him banging? No. Just
like Paul, who was an apostle by the will of God, he is also
a saint by the will of God, he is also a brother by the will
of God, he is also redeemed by the will of God, and he had nothing
to do with it, nothing to do with it. It's a false gospel
to tell somebody they've got to do something with the offer
that God's offering them. He has delivered us, he's from
the domain of darkness, transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved
Son, Messiah, Christ. King. And it is in Christ where we
have redemption, in whom we have redemption. And it is in Christ
that redemption is fully understood as the forgiveness of our sins.
We are justified in Christ alone by grace. We are saved by grace. It is the kindness and the mercy
of God who from the imagery of From creation to Abram and beyond,
all the imagery, these people who are not my people, I will
make them my people and I will be their God. And then he goes in to verse
15, down through verse 20, and he just illustrates who Christ
is. And then he closes that out. and reminds them that Christ
reconciled us in his flesh, through his blood, making peace with
God. And that's how you read this,
beloved. That's how you study. That's how you prepare to know. You know what's crazy? I could go through this again
tomorrow night with you and it would be somewhat the same, but
it would be completely different. Because I may emphasize something
else that I didn't emphasize today because the Spirit of God
may show me or point me, not reveal to me, but point me to
something a little bit differently. Not that it's different in meaning
or teaching, but I may really deal with faithful minister.
I may really deal with the forgiveness of sins, whatever it is, let
the Lord's Word do its work. And I say let as in an admonition,
an exhortation, not you must let God do what He needs to do.
No, He's going to do what He needs to do and He's going to
do it and nothing can stop Him. So I pray that you're just encouraged
to stay in the scripture, to stay in that. Maybe we should
just take the next few weeks and just do the first 14 verses
and just read them over and over and over again and just learn
from one another. But here's the ultimate outcome.
Not only are you encouraged and you grow, but when you're together,
even if it's just for a few minutes, look at what we could talk about
right now if we just sort of sat together and talked about
this, this text. What could we do? I remember
the first Bible study I ever went to when I was 18 years old
in music school. And I was one of like 60 people
sitting in a circle, and the coolest guy I've ever seen in
my life, 25, he's probably a graduate student or something. post-grad,
maybe he's a PhD, I don't know, maybe he was just a young guy,
an older guy that just loved hanging around with teenagers.
But he got up there and he opened the Bible and he starts talking
about this passage of scripture and he's telling me all these
things and he's sharing it all and he said, now what does all
this mean to you all? And I'm going, well it means
what it says in the book. Yes. Teaching us about who God
is and how he operates with his people and how everything that
he does ultimately results in Christ being our Redeemer. And
man, all of a sudden the hands started going up and people were
saying all sorts of stuff and I'm thinking, man, I have lost
my mind. And for a few months I felt like I was just the dumbest
Christian in the world. And I probably was, but it didn't
matter. These people weren't any smarter than I was. So when I say we can sit around
and talk about what this says, and because of what it says,
what difference it makes for us. Not what it means to us,
because it only means what it says. There's a big difference.
And that's what I want to see, church, because in the end of
it all, first of the year and through the winter months, I
think that you're going to all be able to testify of the power
of God's Word to teach you. and to carry you, and most importantly,
without any instructions, without any type of outline or form or
tool, you're going to learn that reading the Bible, for all it's
worth, is really just reading the Bible. And when you get into
that habit, your Sunday mornings, you're going to come in here
thinking, I didn't learn a thing, but I was so excited to see the
pastors walk through this text. Nothing new came to me, but man,
I love sharing the walk together. And that's what it's all about.
The walk and the word together. Let's pray. Father, we are so
thankful for this letter. Lord, if we could just go, it
makes me just want to fire into it, just go straight into this
teaching, but Lord, for the sake of our intimacy. And for your
purposes in the scripture, I'm looking forward to how we can
all share the faith. Father, I pray for many who can't
be with us all the time because of work and school and illness. There's so many of us, Lord,
that are just that are displaced sometimes. But Father, you know,
our hearts is to all be together. I pray that you would make things
happen in such a way that we would have the margin in our
life to be with each other in scripture. Father, I pray for
our orphaned siblings across this nation, across the world,
who cannot find a people to be the assembly of Christ, cannot
find shepherds who are proclaiming the truth of Christ. Lord, you have promised. You
have promised us. that even though we suffer, we
will have peace. And so for through whatever means
and the means that you presently have or we rest in patience,
knowing that you're sovereignly, you will sovereignly work these
things out. But father, I do also pray that if it be your
will and that your will be done, that if it is possible, we could
be instrumental in helping people find fellowship plants in their
living rooms. so that they might be fulfilled
in that relational way. Father, I pray for our intimacy. I pray, Lord, that you would
keep us from temptation and that you would help us to be humble.
You would grant our hearts and minds sorrow over our sin and
joy in the same breath, knowing that it is paid in Christ in
full. Jesus paid it all. Nothing else I owe. Nothing. He paid it all. And in that,
Father, we rejoice. And in His name we pray.