Message for Feb 26 2012 @ FBC Sunnyside, WA
A Whole New Way to Live
Colossians 1:1-12
I love missionary stories, stories of the gospel coming to people who had never heard of Jesus, how they hear the story with fresh eyes and ears. One of the most dramatic and joyful stories is that of the Mouk people in Papua New Guinea. Here’s a short clip of a film from New Tribes Missions about how they received the good news:
That reminds me of the words of Paul in the opening of his first letter to the Thessalonians 1:8-9:
8 The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, 9 for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God…
The church at Thessalonica was one with which Paul was intimately familiar. He was part of their beginning and he praised them for their faith and good deeds.
But, there’s another church, the church at Colossae, that Paul knew only second-hand. He’d never been there; the good news had been carried there by others.
He’s writing because there’s a dark cloud on the horizon of that church, one we’re going to explore in the weeks to come. That cloud has to do with the endless war between God’s simple way to life through faith in His Son, and mere religion. Biblical Christianity is not religious. It is a message of redemption that leads to renewal; it’s the message of Jesus—His bloody cross and His empty tomb—that leads to renewal: it means forgiveness, changed lives, sin’s power broken, and death’s power muzzled. That’s not a religion!
We will get to that, but this first week of the series on Colossians we’re looking at the opening of the letter, and here, after Paul’s greeting, Paul prays for the believers in Colossae, and in the process paints a picture of the changed life. When the message of Jesus comes storming into a life, it’s no summer shower; it’s a tornado that re-orders everything.
So let’s look at the first 12 verses of Colossians:
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
2 To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse: Grace and peace to you from God our Father.
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.
I want to make three simple observations from what Paul writes here, and they are a little out of order in the passage, but here we go…
1. All over the world, the good news is bearing fruit
2. The hope of the gospel plants love and faith in our lives
3. As the gospel matures in our lives, our whole lives are transformed
All over the world, the good news is bearing fruit
Look again at vs. 6b-8:
All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
The gospel of Jesus exploded out of Jerusalem. Most of the story of that explosion is not told in the Bible; people that we’ll only discover when we meet them in heaven drove most of that growth. One of them was that man Epaphras (v. 7), who told Paul about the church there. We know next to nothing about him, but God knows.
All over the world! People, never be shy about the gospel. We’re winning, you know! Of the 24,000 people groups, 16,000 have been reached. In 100 AD, there were 360 non-believers for every believer; today there are only 7! There are less than 8,000 people groups that are yet unreached, and in the last 60 years we’ve reached way more than that! We really are on the cusp of fulfilling the Great Commission. All over the world the gospel is bearing fruit and growing. Have confidence in the gospel!
The hope of the gospel plants love and faith in our lives
This world-advancing gospel doesn’t merely give us a new religion (who needs THAT?); it gives us HOPE that plants love and faith in our lives. Look at vs. 3-6a
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you.
The standard form of Paul’s letters follows the style of the time: X to Y, greetings. Then the writer would ask a blessing on the reader, usually in the form of asking a god to bless the reader. Paul takes the form, and fills the blessings with a record of his prayers for the Colossians.
The first thing that he mentions is his thanksgiving for the changed hope of the Colossians; the second is the change that’s come into their lives.
I want you to think about the lives of the people in Colossae before the gospel. The common people lived for generations believing that there were many gods, who had complete power over their lives and that these gods were mean, petty and egocentric. The idea that the gods or that God loves them was completely foreign to them. The idea that God would sacrifice on their behalf was one that would never occur to them. The idea that God would send His Son to give His life for them was beyond their comprehension.
They had an especially bleak concept of death. After death, the best you could hope for was a brief time as a “shade”, a kind of a ghost, drifting in a dreamlike state, a state far lower than this life.
But then, here comes the hope of Jesus! Love and life and forgiveness, and a hope of eternity with God, and a resurrection to life!
The hope of the good news produces, says Paul, love for the saints, and faith in Christ. Neighbors were turned into family, but more than family: forever family in Jesus Christ. This is real life!
The best illustration of this is the little letter that Paul sent along with Colossians—the letter to the man in whose home the church met: Philemon. Here, Philemon is urged to look at his slave Onesimus no longer simply as a slave but as a brother in Jesus (Philemon 1:16).
This is what the gospel does. But he dials it up even more in vs. 9-12. Remember, vs. 3-6a is backward looking, looking at how the gospel had already changed the Colossians; now they were people of hope, and love and faith; but never stop at what you get when you come to Jesus. It’s like those commercials: “But wait! There’s more!” To put it in kind of modern terms, the first part, vs. 3-8, has to do with our conversion, and the second part, vs. 9-12, with our discipleship.
As the gospel matures in our lives, our whole lives are transformed
Anyone see the movie Moneyball? It’s a true story, how Billy Beane, as General Manager of the Oakland Athletics needed to rebuild the team after the departure of star player Jason Giambi to the Yankees. The As didn’t have the money to hire stars, but while trying to arrange a trade with the Cleveland Indians, Billy Beane meets Peter Brand, a young Yale economics grad who’s gotten hooked on a concept called sabermetrics. Everything depends on getting on base. The OBP—the On Base Percentage—is the one most important stat. Not batting stance, or age, or stealing bases. Just get on base.
Billy Beane is sold on the idea, and comes back to Oakland to sell the idea to a very skeptical staff of managers and coaches. He tells them that the traditional measures don’t matter; all that matters is getting on base. At first, Oakland stumbles badly. People want Beane fired. The team’s manager, Art Howe, is openly contemptuous of Beane’s leadership. Sport talk radio is filled with angry fans. But slowly, things turn. Players—none of them stars, many deeply flawed, but good at getting on base—begin to gel as a team, and they start to win. The A’s go on to a 20 game winning streak, and make it to the first round of the American League playoffs.
When I saw that movie, I asked myself, what’s the OBP of our faith? What is the key measure? Maybe it’s the RTL: the radically transformed life. That’s the measure. That’s what Paul prays for in vs. 9-12:
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.
Back in vs. 6, Paul said, “All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing”; here he talks about our lives “bearing fruit in every good work.” What he’s praying for here is that the believers at Colossae would live out the fullness of what they’ve received as new people in Jesus Christ. Let’s break that down a little more.
What I see here is Paul praying that believers have an internal transformation that leads to an external change of behavior and attitude that overflows in joy.
You see the internal transformation in vs. 9:
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
When we come to Christ, the process of change does not stop. It’s not as if all God wants to do in our lives is to forgive us. He truly wants us to know kingdom life, life in the Spirit, now. “Spiritual wisdom” here is truly “wisdom that comes from the (Holy) Spirit.” In many ways, this verse is a prayer that the Colossians be filled with the Holy Spirit. And as He comes in His fullness, so comes a knowledge of God’s will as He guides us, and assures us, and blesses us.
I read that here in Sunnyside, when the irrigation canals were built, that that raised the water table so much that the streets became muddy, so in 1917 at the cost of $62,000, the streets were paved. Well, when the Spirit of God comes into a life, there will be an “above ground” effect. You see that in vs. 10-11a:
10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might…
Now, this I love with a passion. Live a life worthy. Live a life that shows Jesus. Live a life that is the gospel itself. Here’s how we please Him: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power to His glorious might.
What Paul envisions here in his prayer—and I believe that what we see here is the desire of God for all His people—is a people who showcase the love of God by their good deeds and their way of life. He sees the love of God cascading into lives and out in deeds that truly change the world.
Warren Weirsbe writes this on this passage:
“In my pastoral ministry, I have met people who have become intoxicated with ‘studying the deeper truths of the Bible.’ Usually they have been given a book or introduced to some teacher’s tapes. Before long, they get so smart they become dumb! The ‘deeper truths’ they discover only detour them from practical Christian living. Instead of getting burning hearts of devotion to Christ, they get big heads and start creating problems in their homes and churches. All Bible truths are practical, not theoretical. If we are growing in knowledge, we should also be growing in grace."
A quick time out: what fruit are you bearing that show God’s love to the world? If you had a moment when you drew a blank, can I suggest, will all the love and tenderness of Christ, that that is a crying need in your lives.
Sometimes people say, well, when I get it together, then I’ll do those things. Can I suggest that the doing of good deeds, the blessing of people who don’t know Jesus, that that is often an essential ingredient in getting your life together?
So, there is the internal transformation, the external deeds that showcase the love of God, and finally, a joyful overflow (11b-12):
…so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.
There is endurance without joy—but who needs that? The final outcome Paul sees here is that we become a people who are “joyfully giving thanks to the Father.” The Jesus faith is not a grim faith.
Whenever I see believers huddled in sad little circles, I know that the Spirit of God is being grieved and quenched. The natural state of followers of Jesus isn’t enjoying the world and enduring their faith, but enduring the world with patience and joyfully celebrating the presence of Jesus Christ in their lives.
In John 17:13 (NLT), Jesus prays to the Father,
Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I
was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy.
Jesus wants us to be filled with joy! Remember the Mouk people in Papua New Guinea? They had a riot of joy when the whole glory of the gospel came over them.
My prayer for you, for all of us, is the same as Paul’s for the Colossians: that this great hope explode into our lives as love and faith; and that we move forward, filled with the Spirit, bearing fruit in good deeds, with great endurance and patience, with joy, joy that life cannot snuff out, joy for all the blessings that are ours in Jesus.
Let’s pray.
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