"Faithful Saints" Colossians 1:1-8 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Good morning, Emmanuel.

Let me invite you to open your Bibles to the book of Colossians in chapter 1.

If you're using the Bible in the seat in front of you, this is page 983.

And for the next 12 weeks, as Jesse's on sabbatical, we begin a study of the book of Colossians on Sunday mornings.

And I have a few things to say about Colossians.

I think the best way is to begin by reading this book together.

We'll just read the first eight verses, our first text as we begin this study.

So as you find Colossians in chapter 1, would you please look down with me and follow as I read from God's Word?

Colossians chapter 1, beginning in verse 1.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.

Of this you have heard before in the Word of Truth the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does even among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God and truth.

Just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

This is the Word of God.

What does it mean to be a Christian?

That is a very familiar word to us, both for those of us who would identify as Christians and for just anybody in broader Western society.

That word Christian is a very familiar term.

It's also the kind of term that as researchers do surveys asking people what it means, there are about as many answers to the question, what does it mean, as there are people who answer the question.

The Apostle Paul, interestingly, never actually uses the word Christian.

That's a word that in fact does come from the Bible.

It's used in the book of Acts by others to identify those who follow the way of Jesus.

Paul himself never actually uses the term.

And yet, Paul very clearly defines for us what it means to be a Christian.

And in the book of Colossians, he distills the meaning of that word down to one other word.

Paul could honestly answer the question: what does it mean to be the Christian with this word?

Christ.

To be a Christian means that your life is identified with Jesus Christ.

To be a Christian for Paul means that, as he's going to say in the rest of this letter, you have been filled with all the fullness of God in Christ.

He's going to say in Colossians in chapter 3, to be a Christian means that you have died to your old life, you have died with Christ, been resurrected with Christ, and now Colossians 3:4, your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Colossians 3:4

Paul is eager to tell us that the meaning of that word Christian is a spiritual reality.

To say that you're a Christian is to say that there is a mystical, spiritual, real, ontological union between your life and the life of the divine Son.

You have been caught up in the Trinitarian life for all of eternity, the Father, beaming love to his son.

And now you, a creature in his image, have been caught up into that because God has identified you in his son.

When he looks at you, he doesn't see you, he sees Christ.

And the letter to the Colossians is a letter about Christ.

The theme of this letter is a letter about the supremacy and the sufficiency of Christ.

But not just a Christ who is outside of you.

A Christ who he says in chapter 1, verse 27, is a Christ who is in you.

So to say that this letter is about Christ is also to say it's a letter about who you are.

Because if you say that you're a Christian, then Paul would say your life is identified with Christ.

And if you ask, okay, so how is this going to help me practically?

Paul would retort, Well, you only ever have one problem in your life.

You only ever have one problem, and that is you need more of Christ.

You need to know more of who Christ is.

You need to be filled with more of the reality of who Christ is.

You need the truth of Christ to dwell in you more richly, and that will change and transform every part of your practical life.

So what we get in the letter of Colossians is a book about Christ, which is another way of saying it's a book about you if you are in Christ.

And all of that is kind of distilled for us in this opening introduction.

So this morning, as we read the introduction, I want to study it under this heading, What is a Christian?

And Paul, in the course of this introduction, unfolds that for us with two questions that we could ask as we study Colossians verses 1 through 8.

The first one is, Who are we?

And Paul answers that question in the introduction, in the first two little verses.

So let's look at those together.

Look down at your Bibles at verse 1, where Paul says, identifying himself, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.

So the letter is authored by Paul, who, of course, we know was described to us in the book of Acts as a very religious Jew, a devout man, a man who, in fact, had a tremendous standing in the Jewish community, a man who was a Pharisee, a leader of others, a man who, at the outset of the church, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and the coming of the Spirit to fill the believers and the spreading of the gospel, Paul began to persecute the church until the book of Acts tells us he met the resurrected Christ who appeared to him, transformed him, redeemed him.

He was born again and became a Christian, one whose life was identified with Christ.

And in particular, Paul received a specific ministry, that of apostleship.

Now, the apostles were a group of individuals who represented Christ and who, Ephesians 2.22 says, the apostles and prophets found formed the foundation of the church, and every successive layer is built upon it.

Now, just in passing, as we go through this, I wonder if you were able to identify three markers of what makes a person an apostle.

Capital A, representative of Jesus Christ, foundation of the church.

Very briefly, we could simply say that in the New Testament, apostles are, one, those who have seen the resurrected Christ, 1 Corinthians 9.

Number two, personally appointed by Jesus in Luke 6.

And number three, verified their apostleship through genuine public miracles, 2 Corinthians and chapter 12.

That's who Paul is.

And so it's natural for us to read this letter and hear Paul saying that he's an apostle of Jesus Christ and think that he's boasting about his office.

And he's telling us something about who he is.

And yet, if you think for a moment about the nature of this word apostle, you'll see that's not exactly what Paul's doing.

The word apostle is kind of a funny word.

It's a very religious word, isn't it?

It doesn't really get used anywhere else in society, and that's for a specific reason.

It's a transliteration of a Greek word, apostolos.

And that literally just means a sent one.

An apostle is a representative, a representative messenger who is sent out to represent to someone and their message.

And what defines an apostle is nothing in the apostle.

The apostle's personality, intelligence are entirely irrelevant.

The only thing that matters is that the apostle represents the one who he repres represents the one who sent him.

The only thing that matters is that you can see through the apostle and have an encounter through the apostle with the one that sent him.

So, in other words, for Paul to identify himself of all the things that he could have laid out as his bona fieties, his intelligence, and his family history and his education and his accomplishments, to say that he is an apostle is to say, look through me, I don't matter.

Christ matters.

Paul begins to identify himself and answer the question, Who am I?

by saying, I don't matter, Christ matters.

What matters is that you have an authentic encounter with Christ.

He defines me.

Then he moves on and he identifies his companion, Timothy, at the end of verse 1.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother.

And Timothy is not an apostle, not doesn't have that office, and yet he shares in the ministry of Paul.

And why does he share in the ministry of Paul?

He says, because he's a brother.

So you notice right away that he also identifies his companion as one who is defined by his relationship with God.

Timothy is not defined by his ability or his accomplishments.

He's defined as a brother.

That is, he is a son of the living God and a brother to all of those who belong to God.

And as a brother, as a partaker in the divine nature, a child of God, he partakes in the ministry of God.

So the first two characters that we meet in this letter, Paul and Timothy, are defined not by anything in themselves, but by their relationship to God.

And that theme is going to continue through the rest of the letter, and we see that even in verse 2, where he begins to greet us.

He greets the saints in Colossae, and through them he greets the saints that in successive successive generations would read this letter, even ourselves.

In verse 2, he writes to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.

But before we deal with those little terms saints and faithful brothers, let me just say a word about Colossae to help orient our minds as to where this letter was originally sent and to see some points of contact between the context of the original recipients and ourselves.

The city of Colossae lies in the highlands of central modern-day Turkey, and it lay very close to a major trade route that went from the Greek world, starting in the major city of Ephesus, all the way over to the Euphrates, connecting to the Persian Empire and the East World beyond it.

So Colossae lies on the crossroads between Western and Eastern cultures.

And over time, Colossae had been a major industrial center.

Centuries before, major Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, had mentioned Colossae as a major city where Xerxes, on his invasions of Greece, would have stopped over.

Over the course of time, Colossae had begun to wane in significance, and it was no longer the most important city in the region.

Now those cities were Laodicea and Hieropolis, which are mentioned in this letter, in fact, in chapter four, but Colossae still would have shared some of the same cultural makeup.

That is, it's a city at the crossroads of two different cultures.

It's a blending of East and West in terms of religion and culture and ideology and what defines a human being.

The Colossians were people where Jews and Gentiles and all of the different Gentile cultures would have mixed together.

In the course of time, they were occupied by Persian and Roman and Greek empires.

So this is a city that is very accustomed to assimilation in terms of their thinking and their practices and their religion.

And somehow a church had come to be planted in the city.

And exactly how we don't know, but we can kind of deduce certain things from the text of Scripture.

So if you just walk through some of the facts in the book of Acts, you'll notice that beginning in Acts in chapter 2, as Peter preaches the first sermon after Pentecost, there are Jews from all over the world assembled to celebrate the major feast.

And Acts chapter 2, verse 10 says that there are Jews from Phrygia and Asia, which are the regions in Turkey where Colossae resides exists.

Acts 2:10

So it's possible that there are Jews from Colossae, or at least the surrounding regions, who hear Peter's message about the resurrection of the Jewish Messiah and go back to Colossae and surrounding regions to spread that message.

That's possible.

Again, in Acts in chapter 13, the Apostle Paul begins his first missionary trip and he makes it as far as Pisidian Antioch, which is less than 200 miles away from Colossae.

And we read a little verse at the end of that trip that the word of the Lord was spreading through the whole region.

So perhaps that would include Colossae.

Then we get to Paul's third missionary trip, and he makes it all the way past Colossae to Ephesus, and he spends two years there pastoring the church and teaching hours a day.

And Acts in chapter 19, verse 10 says that in that time all the residents of Asia, that's the provincial region where Colossae is, all those residents heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

So it seems like a pretty sound conclusion to say that through Paul's ministry, the word of God was not only being proclaimed in the individual cities where Paul resided, but the message of the gospel is transforming the lives of individuals.

And this is a very transient environment where there's trade and there's commerce going back and forth between different cities and different regions.

And Colossae resides in the heart of all of that travel and commerce, that people who heard the word of the Lord would have gone through Colossae or back to Colossae, and that's probably the way that the gospel got there.

In fact, we could even zone in a little bit further and say, it seems that the specific church planter in Colossae is named for us in this letter.

If you look down at verse 7 of your text, verse 7, Paul says that you learned the gospel from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant.

He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

And so it seems like a good conclusion that Epaphras, either directly from Paul or someone associated with Paul, heard the gospel, came to believe in Jesus Christ, went to Colossae and began telling people in Colossae about Christ.

And as that church is growing and people are trying to mature in their faith in Christ, they're encountering challenges.

Epaphras then goes back to Paul to ask for his advice, and Paul takes up his pen and as a spiritual grandfather of sorts, writes this letter to the church in Colossae to root them more firmly in Christ.

In particular, you can see some of the things that Paul is writing for.

Just as you look through chapter 2, look at chapter 2 and verse 4.

Paul says, I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.

And then flip over to chapter 2 and verse 8, and Paul says in verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

A sound conclusion from the available data seems to be that this church in Colossae, living in this multicultural environment where there are all these various influences, has done what they've always done.

They're beginning to assimilate some of those other beliefs into their understanding of God and the world and their ethics and their lives.

And Paul is writing to them to correct that, to ground them more firmly in Christ.

The book of Colossians expands for us a view of Christ who is far more glorious than you've begun to imagine.

And teaches us that all of your spiritual needs are provided for and satisfied in Christ.

You only ever have one problem: you need more of Christ.

More of Christ.

And as you look at Paul's greeting, even to the Colossians, you see that he anchors their identity very firmly in this Christ, who he will spend the rest of the letter unfolding before them.

Look again at verse 2.

He writes, To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.

Those two little words, saints and brothers, are terms that it's worth just defining very briefly.

The word saints is a word that's uh liable to all kinds of confusion, isn't it?

How do you use the word saint in kind of everyday conversation?

If you encounter somebody who is really well behaved, you might say that's a very saintly person.

And so it kind of comes across to us as an ethical term.

But that's not the way that Paul is using that term.

The word that's translated saint is the word for holy.

So he could call them the holy ones.

So let's ask the question: what does it mean to be holy?

It means to be set apart.

It's not primarily an ethical term, it's a designation about reality.

So let's use this as an illustration.

In the Old Testament, there's a temple, it's a holy temple, and inside of the holy temple are holy furniture.

There's a holy table upon which there's a showbread and the menorah.

Now, what makes that table a holy table?

Is it well behaved?

Maybe you're like me, and it seems like your dinner table is always dirty.

Bad table, bad behaved.

Why can't you be like the table in the temple, so holy?

That's not what holy means in this instance.

Holy is not talking about the ethical behavior of the table, it's talking about the designation of the table as set apart to belong to God and to be used exclusively for the service of God.

That's what the term means.

Now take that and apply it to the Colossians or to yourselves.

What does it mean for Paul to identify you as a saint?

It doesn't mean, wow, you're so ethically behaved.

It means God has set you apart to belong to Him and be used exclusively for His service.

It's a designation about your reality.

Who are you?

If you are in Christ, you're a saint.

You've been set apart through the death and resurrection of Christ, you've been cleansed of your sins, set apart from the world, called out to belong to God.

When the Father looks at you, he looks at you as identified in his son.

He purchased you at the price of the blood of his only begotten son, so that your entire life belongs to him.

Past, present, and future belongs to him, and your entire life has been designated for the service of God.

What is a Christian?

Who am I?

I'm defined by Christ.

First as a saint, and then Paul continues on to say he's also designating them as faithful brothers.

Now, of course, we've already seen that brother is a relational term.

So we're defined not in terms of our behavior, but in terms of who we're related to.

We're related to God through our new birth and through our adoption as sons of God.

And so we're also related to everyone else who belongs to God.

But there's one other thing I want to mention as we move on here, is we notice that Timothy, who is kind of prestigious, isn't he?

Timothy's the kind of kid who anybody who grows up in Sunday school, every little kid knows about Timothy.

He's given the label brother, and so a partaker in the life of God, a partner in the ministry of Christ, and these Colossians, who some of them have been Christians for five minutes, they're also, from the moment that they are identified with Christ, identified as brothers, fully incorporated into the family and the ministry of Christ.

And notice also that he calls them brothers, and some of our translations are at pains to tell us that that is an inclusive designation that would include women as well.

Amen and amen.

And yet I want to say very firmly, there's no sisters in the Lord.

God doesn't have any daughters.

And now this is a point of the sermon when everybody's head looks up and goes, What?

What?

So I want to, now that I have your attention, explain what I mean by this.

I didn't hit my head on the way in, so far as I remember.

But this reality is important.

God does not have any daughters.

What do I mean by that?

In the ancient Near Eastern world, a daughter would not be an inheritor.

Even if a daughter was the firstborn in the family chronologically, she would not be the inheritor of the father's estate.

That would go to the firstborn son.

And so in the Bible, consistently, every Christian is identified as a son of God.

Because God looks at you and doesn't look at you as, well, I'm going to pass the inheritance on to somebody else.

He looks at you and sees you as fully incorporated into the life of his only begotten son and so counts you as a partaker of the fullness of his inheritance, exactly as Paul's going to explain to us in verses 9 and following.

He's at pains to make sure that you know that no matter who you are or where you've been or what you've done, when Christ redeems you, he brings you into the fullness of the Father's estate.

God has no daughters in the sense that there are no second-class children of the living God.

Every single one of his children is a firstborn son.

What a good reality.

When you ask, what does it mean to be a Christian?

It means that you are fully incorporated into the life of God.

You are identified with Christ.

What matters is not who you are.

What matters is not what you do.

What matters is that you are related to Christ.

Machines are really excited about this too.

So let's move on to the rest of the verse in verse 2.

Paul gives these two little labels and then he brings them together with this little prepositional phrase at the end of verse 2.

He writes to saints and faithful brothers.

Yes, you live in Colossae, but your faith, saints, and faithful brothers in Christ.

What does that mean to be in Christ?

It is one of Paul's favorite little phrases.

He uses it over and over and over, and you could say this is the thread that weaves the New Testament together.

What does it mean to be a Christian?

Which is what I began to talk about this morning.

It means that the most defining reality in your life is that you are identified with Christ.

Paul's going to go on in the rest of this letter to flesh this out a little bit more.

In Colossians and chapter 2, he's going to say that you're filled with the fullness of the divine life in Christ.

In Colossians and chapter 3, he's going to tell us that we've been buried with Christ and resurrected, and our lives are hidden with Christ in God.

The fundamental reality of a Christian is that you are defined by your relationship with God, which is you're placed in Christ.

How do you relate to God?

I mean, if somebody asks you that, you're a Christian, so how do you relate to God?

Do you feel comfortable saying, I relate to God the same way Christ relates to God?

That can sound almost blasphemous, but there's a sense in which that's very true.

God's favor upon Christ is upon you because you're in Christ.

God's love upon Christ is upon you because you're in Christ.

God's inheritance, which belongs to Christ, belongs to you because you're in Christ.

All of God's kingdom belongs to Christ, and now it belongs to you because you're in Christ.

The way that you relate to God is not through your works or ceremonies, but through Christ.

Christ who has fully purchased you through his death and resurrection, has brought you all the way to the Father so that you're as close to the Father as Christ is.

You relate to him directly because Christ relates to him directly, and you are in Christ.

The fundamental reality of your life is, use whatever adjective you want, a real union, a spiritual union, a mystical union, an ontological union.

It's more real than anything in your life, is your life is buried with, hidden with, raised with Christ.

So that all that is in Christ is given to you.

The rest of the letter of Colossians is really just an explanation of what in the world that means and what that's going to mean for your practical life.

Paul wants in the book of Colossians to help us to see that Jesus is bigger than you've ever even begun to imagine.

And the rest of your life is this great journey, getting to learn more and more and more of what's already yours in Christ.

So who are we?

We're identified as in Christ.

And the second thing that Paul shows us in this little letter, in this introduction, is what we are.

So let's ask the second question: what are we?

And there are four things that Paul's going to show us in this Thanksgiving prayer.

Notice verse 3, all the way through verse 24, are a large prayer.

Paul is praying for the Colossians.

Verses 3 through 8, which we'll look at the rest of this morning, are a thanksgiving, and verses 9 through 24 are an intercession.

Paul's telling the Colossians what he's praying to God on their behalf.

Notice, look down at verse 3, and the first thing we see, look at verse 3.

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you.

The very first thing that characterizes Paul is thanksgiving.

That's a reality in all of Paul's letters.

Book of Romans, first thing he does is he says, First of all, I give thanks for you.

Corinthians, I'm always giving thanks for you.

Ephesians, I never cease thanking God for you.

Philippians, every time I think of you, I thank God for you.

Thessalonians, I thank God for each and every one of you.

And here, always thanking God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you.

It is a pattern of Paul's life.

He's been so shocked, but God would count him in Christ, and shocked that he gets to belong to Christ and all of the other people that belong to Christ.

The characteristic disposition of his life is thanksgiving.

And he wants us to learn to live that way too.

Notice, if you flip over a page, if you want a thesis verse for Colossians and chapter 2, if you want to know what is Colossians about, Colossians chapter 2, verses 6 and 7 is the thesis verse of this whole book.

Colossians 2:6

And in this thesis, Colossians chapter 2, verse 6, Paul says, As you receive Christ the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught.

Colossians 2:6

That's what he wants.

He wants for you to grow deeper and deeper roots into Christ.

And when that happens, your entire life will be abounding in thanksgiving.

Or when he gets to the end of his ethical instructions in chapter 3 and verse 15 and following, he says, as the word of Christ is dwelling in you richly, everything that you do, word or deed, will all be in thanks to God the Father.

The more you're gripped by this reality of who Christ is, and I get to belong to him, the dominant reality in your life will be one of thanksgiving.

Which, in a sense, really is just to say one of satisfaction and joy, isn't it?

We have four kids and they are wonderful.

A reality that we have discovered is that it's rare to sit down at the dinner table and for all of the kids to like what we're eating.

We have like three go-to meals.

Outside of that, there's always somebody who doesn't like what they're eating.

And then the question becomes in that dinner, will they be able to have an attitude of thanks or not?

And you can guess which attitude produces a happy kid.

And to say thanksgiving is not just like a trite religious word.

To say abounding in thanksgiving really is synonymous with deep joy, with happiness, with satisfaction.

A thankful person is a satisfied, joyful person.

And Paul is saying the more we understand who Christ is, who we are in him, the more our hearts will be filled with thanks, with joy, with satisfaction that we belong to him.

Now, in the rest of this prayer, he goes through four specific things that he's giving thanks for.

So I want to trace those out for us.

If you look down at verse four, the first reality Paul thanks God for is faith.

So look at verse four.

We heard of your faith in Christ Jesus.

And it's worth noting that every time Paul talks about faith, he talks about faith in something, doesn't he?

Faith isn't inherently a virtue for Paul.

What matters is the object of faith, and the object is Christ.

So why is faith valuable?

For Paul, faith is valuable because faith is the instrument that unites you to Christ.

Not works, not behavior, not even sincerity, but leaning on, resting on, entrusting yourself not to yourself, but to Christ, unites you to Christ and grants you identity with him and the fullness of all that is in him.

Now notice in verse 3, he said he's thanking God, and then the first thing he does is he says, I'm thanking God for your faith in Christ.

Which is another way of saying, How is it that you got here?

How is it that you have all that you have, that you're identified with Christ?

Is it because of you?

Smart Colossians.

Really clever Colossians.

Rather, Paul says, the reason that you have this faith in Christ that unites you to him is from God.

And so it's worth giving thanks not to you for your cleverness, but to God for his grace to grant you faith.

This is a consistent teaching of the scriptures.

Ephesians chapter 2, faith is the gift of God.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

It's the gift that God gives when he opens your eyes to behold these realities that my sin's real, and God sees me, and I cannot hide it, and Christ stands there ready to redeem me, and you entrust your whole self to him.

And Paul is thankful to God that he's done that for himself and for you, and he's encouraging us, remember that the gift that the faith that you have is a gift from God, and as you do, it will create thanks in your heart.

The second thing he thanks the Lord for is love.

Look at the end of verse 4.

Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints, which is another way of saying faith produces love, love for all the saints.

We could ask, aren't Christians supposed to love everybody?

And of course the answer is yes.

Second Great Commandment, love your neighbors yourself.

Jesus defines that not as restricted to the body of believers, but to everybody.

But there is a particular love reserved for those who also belong to God.

This is a thread in the New Testament.

Galatians chapter 6, for instance, that we have love for everyone, especially for those of the household of faith.

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

Even on an earthy level.

If you have a spouse, you might love everybody and lots of people, but you have a special love reserved for your spouse.

So a believer, when you come to be incorporated into Christ, you have a special love that is directed at everyone else who belongs to Christ.

What's the nature of that love?

Jesus tells us John 13, 34, just as I have loved you, love one another.

That defines what our love is to look like.

It is to be a love of action and affection.

And it's necessary that they be both.

Action, because Christ laid down his life on our behalf, and so we lay down our lives for our brothers.

But not action without affection.

Because the way that Christ loves us is not a begrudging, I guess I made a covenant with God before the foundation of the world, so I'll die for you.

But man, once I get you into heaven, go over there.

I don't want to hear another word from you.

Rather, the way that Christ loves us is he showers us with grace and affection.

He delights in his people.

The Psalms are replete with this chorus that God delights in his people.

And so, a Christian, the more we are shaped into the image of Christ, the more we likewise will look at those who belong to Christ and have affection for them.

This stems from the faith that we have, which is a gift of God that produces this love that's comprehensive, consisting of action and affection.

And all of this Paul traces back to our hope.

The third thing he's thankful for in verse 5.

Look at verse 5.

Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.

Now, there are obviously many things we could say about hope.

It's a theme throughout the scriptures.

But let's just ask a couple questions.

What is the hope that he's talking about that generates this transformed life?

You see this hope, you're thinking about it, you're confident about it, and the more you're confident about it and you understand it, it changes your actions.

Is it that we're gonna be in the kingdom of God?

Yes.

Is it that there's gonna be a day when we'll be freed from the burdens and the trials of life?

Yes.

Is it that there's gonna be a day when we'll be free of sin, and all of those whom we love will be freed of sin?

Yes.

But when Paul brings up hope again in this letter in chapter three, he zeros in on a particular reality.

He says in Colossians chapter 3, verse 1, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where your hope is.

Colossians 3:1

That's where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

At the heart of our hope, according to Paul, is Christ.

This one who is your identity, who is your life, who is your all.

You're going to see him face to face.

The veil's gonna be lifted, there'll be no more blinders, there'll be no more limitations, and you will see the fullness of his glory.

The Psalm 16 that we read in our service today, the fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, where at his right hand, in his presence, when you see Christ face to face, everlasting joy.

That hope, Paul says, is transforming the Colossians' lives.

There's a story told that as the Brooklyn Bridge was being constructed years ago, the construction workers were made to work in really perilous conditions, and so dozens of them fell and plunged to their deaths.

So the whole project was paused so that a giant safety net could be constructed, and injuries and deaths plummeted as a result of the building of this net.

But interestingly, a nice side effect was achieved.

Production skyrocketed because of the hope that the workers had that they were secured.

There's just this basic reality.

The more your hope is secure, the more it's gonna change your life.

So that old tr trope that people trot out sometimes, you're so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good.

Well, if that's true of you, your mind's on the wrong heaven.

Because if your mind is on Christ, it's going to change your life and make you a person of love.

A person whose faith is generating love.

And all of this, the last thing that Paul is thankful for, is coming from the what source?

Look at verse 5.

Of this you heard before in the word of truth, the gospel.

So this is Paul's last thanksgiving, is the gospel, which verse 6 has come to you, as indeed in the whole world is bearing fruit.

But I just want to focus in on this little phrase.

Right in the middle of verse 6, he says, the gospel, this message that's just transforming people's lives, and it's marching through languages and cultures, and it's guarding to cover the earth, and God is redeeming a people for himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

In the middle of verse 6, he says, and it's even come to you.

He uses this interesting little phrase in the Greek, and he does this a number of times in Colossians.

He does it again in verse 21, talking about the redemption of Christ in verse 21.

He says, And even you have now been redeemed.

And what Paul is conveying is this sense of shock.

Me?

God's redeemed me?

God has hunted me down?

God has made sure the gospel got to me.

God has elected me.

God's redeemed me, He's given me faith, He's opened my eyes, I get to belong to Christ.

That's the attitude that Paul says will shape you into a person who's confident in your hope, who is filled with thanksgiving, who's characterized by love, whose faith is fixed on Christ.

The shock and awe that I get to belong to Christ.

Do you remember what it was like the first time God opened your eyes and you saw that God is holy?

And you saw that He sees your sin, and there was no more sliding it under the rug, there was no more justifying your sin, there was no more excusing it, there was no more brushing it aside, it was there.

And you knew it.

Do you remember the first time you saw Christ sufficient and able to cleanse you of all sins, past, present, and future, ready to receive you, ready to bring you into the presence of God?

Do you remember the first time you cast all of your hopes on Christ?

Do you remember the first time you lifted up your head and you said, God my Father, do you remember what that was like?

What Paul is teaching us in the book of Colossians is that that was just the beginning.

There's more and more and more and more and more and more and more of this Christ who redeemed you to discover.

You know, when a parent brings a new child home from the hospital, I think many of us have a very similar experience.

You bring your kid home, you wrap them up, you swaddle them, put them in that little baby burrito, you lay them in their bassinet or lay them on your bed.

And I think a lot of parents just kind of stand there as their kid's sleeping and they just kind of glow over them.

That kid has no idea that they have parents who love them, who will sacrifice for them.

Hopefully, as the kid grows, their understanding of the reality of this parent who loves them and sacrificed for them will grow.

But that's a very dim comparison, isn't it?

Our parental love is so pale in comparison to the affection and the sacrifice of our God and Father and our Savior Jesus Christ who's redeemed us.

And Christian life is an endless discovery of more and more and more of the glories of the God who's redeemed you.

If you're a Christian, you belong to Christ.

And your whole life gets to be characterized by thanksgiving as you discover more of Christ.

Let's pray together.

Father, we do ask you that you would open our eyes more to the glory of Christ.

We ask that you would, by your grace and your kindness, minister to our hearts in such a way that we would behold more of our hope and inheritance and power more of Christ.

We ask that you would firmly root us in the truths of Scripture so that we would be firmly rooted to your Son.

And we ask that you would fill us with thanksgiving.

It would just make sense.

A logical and coherent, reasonable response to the greatness of our Savior.

And we pray this in his name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.