Colossians 4:2-18 – The All Sufficient Jesus

Welcome.

My name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church.

If you're new or visiting with us, you're particularly welcome as we conclude our series in the book of Colossians.

We've been in it for some eight weeks or so and conclude just in time for our church weekend away next weekend.

So there'll be no services here because most of us will be away.

More information on that later.

But why don't I pray for us as we consider God's word.

Father, still our hearts now we pray to focus on the things of you.

May your word be at work amongst us to make us into a community which glorifies Jesus that loves one another and commands him to a watching world.

We ask it for his great name's sake.

Amen.

Creating uh any sort of meaningful community is hard.

It takes time, it takes effort.

It's difficult, and yet we crave it.

We long for it.

We need it.

We all want to feel known and loved.

To be known and not loved is terrifying, isn't it?

To be loved but not known is sentimental at best.

Developing a community like that takes time.

It takes effort, it takes each member of that community committing to a kind of vulnerability with one another.

The alternative is that we can fake it, and we can fake it reasonably easily.

Social clubs and societies can look a little bit like a community, shared interest, a gathered group, but there isn't always any sort of deep affection.

We can gather on Sunday and fake it.

A simple shared interest in Jesus.

Churches can often be treated a little bit like the cinema.

You go in, you watch the show, you leave.

Or a restaurant.

You go in, you can swim and you leave.

Jesus has something far more beautiful, far more meaningful, far more significant in view for those of us who are trusting in him.

You see, Christians, we're a missionary people.

We aren't a community for community's sake, we're a community with a purpose.

All of the love that we express towards one another, all of the support that we ought to offer one another, all of the care that we should give one another is all done in the context of Jesus' command to be the light of the world, to be that city on a hill.

And so all of our loving of one another, all of our caring for and supporting of one another is designed to intensify that light so that it breaks into dark corners of our world.

Paul's concluding this short letter to this church in Colossae, this church that incidentally he'd never met, he'd never visited them, he didn't plant it, but he heard of them and he loved them.

He's concluding this letter to this young church, and after all that he has said, these are his final words.

After all that he has covered about the supreme and eternal nature of Jesus, about his finished work on the cross that makes the church, after talking about how we are all united to that same Jesus, filled in him, lacking nothing in him, after he has written about the defeat of Satan and our enemies, and the removal of shame from our lives, and written of the superiority of the Christian worldview over and against every other philosophy and tradition.

Here's how he ends.

He ends with a glimpse of how a Christian community should do life together.

Both in what he commands and in what he models as he talks about the people who are with him, how he speaks of them.

And so, as we consider what it means for us, a city church, to be a community together on mission, what sort of community should we be?

First, the Christian community pursues a higher goal together.

The Christian community pursues a higher goal together.

The call of Christianity is the call fundamentally to be part of something that isn't all about you.

It's the call to be part of something that is bigger than any individual one of us.

It's the call to be part of the kingdom that is breaking into our world through the spreading of the gospel.

It is to be a band of brothers and sisters who fight side by side for some greater good.

No, no, no, the greatest good.

And that's Paul's concern here all the way through this passage.

Even look at verse 3.

Verse 3, he asked the Colossian Christians to pray for him, but what does he ask?

He doesn't say, pray for me, that I would qualify for early release from prison.

No, no, he doesn't pray that he would be released, he prays rather, verse 3, that God may open a door to uh for the word, may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ.

That is his way in Colossians of talking about the gospel, that gospel that is for both Jew and Gentile.

He wants to see the gospel go out.

He wants to see the word of God go out.

Because Paul understands, and we need to understand also, that it's the word of God that makes the church.

It's the gospel that creates the church.

Paul didn't create it.

I don't create city church, nor do the other leaders.

The gospel made city church, the gospel makes the church.

You think about it, that's reasonable.

The gospel goes out, you hear it, an individual person responds in faith over here, another individual person responds in faith here, another individual person responds in faith here.

You've got all these individual believers in Jesus.

What's the most natural thing for them to do?

To get together, to encourage one another, to stir one another up to love and good deeds.

The gospel makes the church, and Paul understands that.

So he says, You want to pray for anything?

Pray that the gospel will go out because it's bigger than me, Paul says.

It's bigger than you.

Not just verse 3.

There is throughout this passage this view of something bigger than themselves.

Tichicus or Tychicus is explicitly described as a fellow servant, a fellow laborer in this bigger mission.

Epaphras in verse 12 is wrestling, struggling in prayer, but to what end?

Not for himself, but for the Colossian Christians that they might be mature in the faith.

Verse 16, Paul instructs the believers in Colossey not just to read the letter that he sent and keep it to themselves, but to make sure that it goes out.

To Laodicea, that's the next time over.

If you're in Turkey, you might go and visit the Lycus Valley.

That's where all of these churches were.

Colossae, Laodicea, Smyrna, Pergamum.

They're all in that similar geographic area.

And he's like, make sure that they all read this as well.

Because it's bigger than you, Colossian church.

It needs to go out to everyone.

So he invites them to be part of something bigger than themselves.

This is why, this is why the human heart enjoys being part of a team.

To be part of something that is bigger than you as an individual.

It's why we collaborate on projects at work or in school because together we are pursuing a goal that is greater than any one of us.

And when we do that, joys are sweetened because they're experienced together.

The griefs and discouragements are less crushing because they're endured together.

The call of the gospel to be a missionary people, a community on mission for the cause of Christ is the greatest cause that we can be engaged in that calls us out of ourselves.

It's bigger than each one of us, and none of us can do it alone.

It would be completely foreign to the mind of a first century Christian for someone to say, I love Jesus, but I just don't really like the church.

I love Jesus, but I have a real problem with Christians.

I like just to worship Jesus on my own.

Lone wolf Christians are vulnerable Christians.

A coal does not continue to blaze white hot when it is taken out of the fire.

We're engaged in this great cause together.

Secondly, the Christian community is a community that is devoted to prayer.

Verse 2 begins with those two words, continue steadfastly, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it.

That phrase continue steadfastly is the one word be devoted.

Be devoted to prayer.

In the same way that we might say that you were devoted to a sports team.

Don't understand what that really means, but I understand that people follow sports.

Vickers is devoted to Liverpool.

Right?

Which means that he's invested in their success.

He desires to follow their success.

He keeps up with the information.

I'm pushing up to the very edge of my ability to do a sporting analogy, but you get the idea.

Or you might say that a husband was devoted to his wife, or a wife was devoted to, passionately desirous of their good, devoted to.

And Paul's saying that that sort of hard attitude should be to your prayer life.

And it's modeled for us again in verse 12 with the uh with Epaphras, who's wrestling in prayer, struggling on behalf of the Colossian Christians.

Why?

Why be devoted to prayer?

Because you can think, well, that's just one, you know.

You should be devoted to prayer because that's what Christians do.

Um, you know, you've got to leave here.

Great, uh, good sermon.

Uh what's the application?

Well, read your Bible and pray more.

Uh no, let's think about it.

Why shouldn't you be devoted to prayer?

Why would that be a good thing to devote yourself to more?

Well, they give you a couple of reasons.

Well, the first is that when you are devoted to prayer, one of the things that you are recognizing is your reliance on someone outside of you.

I love being self-reliant.

I don't like asking for help.

I don't like it.

Because I don't want anybody to know that I have limitations.

Because I have so deceived myself that you can't see them.

I'm just gonna hide them, right?

Devoting yourself to prayer is an act of creaturely dependence on God's strength.

It's a humble acknowledgement that He is the one who sustains your life, empowers your ministry.

It's good for your soul.

Another reason why it would be good to devote yourself to prayer is because our God delights to answer prayer.

James 4.

James says, You do not have because you did not ask.

Well, have you asked him?

God delights to answer prayer.

Your Heavenly Father loves to answer prayers that are that are prayed in accordance with his will for your life.

Would you not ask him?

Because then Paul says, being watchful in it.

And so there is an expectant dynamic that the Christian should be devoted to prayer, praying to God, and then expecting to see an answer.

Be watchful in it.

Have you had that experience in your Christian life where you look back and you say, gosh, I see how God answered that prayer?

He didn't answer it in the way that I thought he would, but he answered that.

Be watchful in it.

Devoting ourselves to prayer is also good because it reminds us of who we are as Christians.

You see, the Christian the Christian is not like Oliver Twist.

Oliver Twist, the the young orphan in the orphan house in the in the Dickens novel of the same name, who comes after eating his meager bull to the schoolmaster, Mr.

Bumble, and says, please, sir, may I have some more?

You are not orphans who have been given a meager portion.

Devoting yourself to prayer is a reminder that you are a child of God.

It's a reminder that you can come to your father and pray to him in this sort of way.

What a privilege that is.

In a royal palace.

Imagine Buckingham Palace or some such place in a royal palace.

In the middle of the night, when the whole palace is asleep.

Who is the only person that can wake up the king and say, Can I have a drink of water?

It's the child of the king.

The child of the king is the only one who can wake up the monarch and say, Can I have water?

Would you give me this?

Prayerful dependence is an acknowledgement that in the gospel Jesus has made you a child of the king.

Would you not be devoted to prayer?

You are not coming to Mr.

Bumble.

You are coming as a child playing in the robes of your father.

Would you not devote yourself to prayer?

Another reason why it's good to devote yourself to prayer is because it helps you love one another.

Believe it or not, and this may come as a galloping shock to many of you, sometimes Christians don't get on.

Sometimes Christians sin one sin against one another.

Sometimes we disagree.

Sometimes we even raise our voices.

It is very hard to continue to hate somebody at church if you are praying for them.

It is very hard to feel bitter towards them.

If you are asking that God would form more of Christ in them, it is good for your heart.

It's also good for your heart to be devoted to prayer because it keeps you grateful.

We watch for uh God's answer of prayer.

I'm back in verse two again, and we are watchful with thanksgiving.

There is there are few things more off-putting than somebody who is just deeply, deeply ungrateful.

Who's lost all sight of the things that they could be thankful for.

The Christian is to be a grateful person to somebody who comes to their God with thanksgiving because they have seen how it is that they he has acted you pray out of a desire to grow in thankfulness.

At City, uh uh you know, recently, basically since September or so, we have started having more regular whole church prayer gatherings, which is not something that we did for various reasons up until this point.

Normally the prayer meeting is uh is the least well-attended meeting in the church calendar.

Perhaps you're visiting from a church that's a little bit like that.

I'm deeply encouraged by you, brothers and sisters, by your desire to meet, to pray.

That over half the church would come and cry out to God for one another and for our city.

I'm encouraged by that.

And you should be too.

Perhaps there are other ways in which you can personally find to pray for people.

Pray for your brothers and sisters here in the context of our community groups.

We'll be meeting to pray for one another.

Perhaps that will be something that you prioritize this week.

The Christian community is devoted to prayer.

Third, the Christian community is intimate.

I take this not particularly from a verse, but from the tone of the passage as a whole, particularly at verses 7 to 18, with the the love with which Paul speaks of the people who are part of his community, his apostolic band.

That there is a great intimacy and affection between them.

And I use that word intimate quite deliberately because I really feel like we need to recapture it.

Because when we think of intimate, uh in our minds these days, we think of sex.

And that's a new innovation.

That is not what the word intimate means.

It's something that has kind of been uh absorbed into that word in the last kind of 30 to 50 years.

And it's unhelpful because each of us longs for intimacy, but when we say that we long for intimacy, we don't just mean that we long for sex.

It's that we long for a fuller sense of knowing and being known.

We long to be cared for and to care for.

That is the tone of these verses.

It is intimate.

Look at how Paul describes his band of brothers.

Uh Tychicus is described as a beloved brother, and so is Anesimus, which is striking because of the next point in that Tychicus was a freedman and Anesimus was a slave, and they're both described in the same way as beloved.

Aristarchus, Mark, Justus are all described as being those who give comfort to Paul.

Do you sense the warmth of the relationships that there are here?

This is no mere project that they're all engaged in.

There's a great deal of affection between these people.

Yes, the gospel makes us missionary people, but our mission is sustained and enriched by our love for one another.

And connected with that is my Fourth point that because we love one another, the Christian community sets aside barriers and overcomes difficulties.

There were labels in the ancient world.

Paul's already mentioned them.

The big dividing label in the ancient world, but it was between Jew and Gentile or Jew and Greek.

They were hostile to one another.

They did not like one another.

The barbarian and the Roman, the slave and the free.

And we take labels to ourselves.

You know you've taken a label to yourself.

If you ever answer a question or make a comment, beginning with the line, well, as a well, as a psychologist, or as a gay person, as a, that's you're saying, here's the label that I'm operating out of.

Here's the tribe that I'm identifying with.

But Paul has already said in chapter 3, verse 11, perhaps you'd cast your eye back over to it, that in the Christian community there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all in all.

That the old tribalisms of the ancient world, the old tribalisms of our world, are broken down in Christ because of the gospel.

That every identity marker that we would take to ourselves because Christ relativizes them.

It's not that he makes them irrelevant, but he does relativize them.

And Paul, in these final greetings, displays the unity here.

Let me show you.

Because, first of all, he names three Jews, Aristarchus, Mark, and Justus.

How do we know that they're Jews?

Because he says that they are the only ones of the circumcision.

That is, they were Jewish.

They're part of his apostolic band, they're part of his community.

And then he names at least three Gentiles, Epaphras, Luke, and Demas.

And we know that they're Gentiles.

Well, we know that Epaphras is Gentile because he's from Colossae, which is in Turkey.

And we know from other reasons that Luke and Demas are Gentiles.

So you see, Jews and Gentiles all engaged in the same mission, breaking down those barriers.

But it's not just the ethnic barriers that the gospel breaks down, it is also socio and economic barriers.

They've got a little bit of Latin there.

Socioeconomic barriers.

Because who he describes here are both free men and slaves or former slaves, all working together.

Anesimus was a slave, and yet he is called a faithful brother, the same as Tychicus.

Luke, the beloved physician who wrote the Gospel of Luke, was most likely a slave.

Because in the first century, doctors were slaves, by and large.

And if you're a doctor in the house, you know by your shifts what it is like to work slave hours, probably.

In the first century, if you were a poor freed person, you didn't have the money to train as a doctor.

And if you were a rich freed person, you didn't have the inclination to get your hands dirty.

And so if you were the master of a house, what you did is you you find the particularly intelligent slave and you paid to train him as a doctor.

And that's who Luke was.

Doesn't that shed new light on the gospel of Luke and why Luke is so concerned?

To show us in his gospel how it is that the gospel is for the outsider, for the people on the margin, for the people who are poor.

The gospel breaks down those sorts of social, tribal, economic boundaries.

A truly missionary community will that is built on the gospel, will agr embrace brothers and sisters across these lines, across lines of ethnicity, race, class, status.

We give thanks for the ways that that is expressed among us and recognize that there is still work to be done, and we ask for God's grace to do more.

But we also see here by inference in verse 10 that the Christian community overcomes disagreement.

See, verse 10 talks about Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you, and Mark, now that's interesting, Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, because if you were to read the book of Acts and Acts chapter 15, one of the things that you would see there is that Mark and Barnabas and Paul all had a bit of a falling out.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

They had a disagreement.

And it wasn't a little disagreement, it was such that they actually parted company.

They no longer wanted to be in one another's presence.

And Mark and Barnabas went one way, and Paul and Titus went another.

There was division.

There was wrong.

Here's another shocker for you.

Christians will sin against one another.

We will hurt one another.

We will speak out of turn.

We will speak more harshly than perhaps we should have.

We will not act as the way we ought.

But by the time we get to the end of Colossians, it is clear that Paul and Mark have reconciled.

Because Mark is described as one who gives comfort to Paul.

What this is so necessary in our world, isn't it?

Isn't this so necessary in a world where nobody gives an inch?

Nobody apologizes.

We all do fake apologies.

I'm sorry if.

I'm sorry if you were so offended.

I'm sorry if you were so thin-skinned.

You know, all these fake apologies.

Nobody has the humility to say, do you know what?

I shouldn't have spoken like that.

I shouldn't have acted like that.

Would you forgive me?

It is clear by inference that that is the kind of conversation that happened.

They overcame these difficulties.

You take these two points together, the intimacy of the Christian community and the overcoming nature of the Christian community, overcoming division and difficulty and ethnicity and all of those barriers.

You take those two things together, and surely you must conclude that this is exactly what our world needs.

Our world has an epidemic of loneliness.

And the Christian community, as described here, is the only antidote.

No other society works like this, is diverse like this, forgives like this, reconciles like this.

And it is a result of everyone in the community realizing that they are in need of forgiveness themselves, and that they are united to Jesus by faith.

That they lack nothing in him.

And because we are united to Jesus, we don't need to stand in judgment over others.

Because we're all joined to the same Savior.

Because we're united to Jesus, we have the assurance that we need in order to be honest and vulnerable.

Because we're united to the one who has taken away our shame.

We can forgive and absorb heart even at cost to ourselves, because we are united to the one who himself endured injustice for the sake of those he loves.

The Christian community seeks to commend itself to outsiders.

And here I'm back in verses five and six.

Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time.

Let your speech always be gracious, season with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Francis Schaeffer was a Christian thinker in the middle of the 20th century, and he said that the Christian community, we all, the Christian community was the final apologetic.

What he meant by that was that the Christian community was the way that we showed our non-Christian friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, that the gospel was true.

Because when you are interacting with somebody who does not know Jesus, you can teach them all the beliefs of Christianity, who Jesus is, how it's centered on his work on the cross for us, the truthfulness of his resurrection, and how that changes people.

But then they quite rightly want to say, well, prove it.

How do I know that that's true?

And in our life together, we commend the truthfulness of the gospel.

Your life is being watched.

Don't mean that to sound stalker-ish.

I don't know if anybody uh has ever been involved in amateur dramatics or has ever been on uh on stage.

Uh but even you think about it, you watch the TV program.

Uh why are the extras in the background?

Why do they have to be as engaged as the principals in the foreground?

Why can't they why can't the extras on a stage or in a TV program just be like, just like that, checking their watch, picking their nose?

Like, well, why do they need to be engaged?

Because at any given point, someone's eyes are on you, even if you're an extra.

At any given point, someone is looking at you.

So walk in wisdom to outsiders.

Recognizing that is part of what it means to be wise.

Not so that you can put on a front, not so that you can put up a mask, because people can smell a fake a mile away.

No, it's wise because it recognizes that how we act either commends or denigrates what we say we believe.

People don't just want to know that Christianity is true.

Christianity is true.

I believe it in my bones that it's true.

That Jesus was raised bodily from the dead in history, that that actually happened, that it's true.

And in our evangelical constituency, what we can do is beat people with the it's true! Just believe it, it's true.

People need to see that it's good.

People need to see that it's beautiful, that it works, that it makes by what I mean by it works, it makes sense of the world, it makes sense of who they are in it.

It actually changes people.

And in all of our life together, every action should scream that it does.

Paul then turns to our speech.

He wants our speech to be gracious and seasoned with salt.

Speech here, it's not uh it's the word for dialogue, it's a conversation, right?

So Paul doesn't immediately have in his mind kind of standing on street corners, just kind of shouting the gospel to people.

Do that, God bless you.

Um but he's talking more about a conversation that's happening here, that in your conversation it should be gracious, that is, filled with grace.

And he doesn't just mean just be polite, it means that in everything that you say, it should speak of kindness towards others.

How would it blow people's minds if we spoke in a way that was primarily concerned for them and their good?

Conversation happens less and less.

Have you noticed this?

What the silent when you what am I trying to say?

Don't you find more and more that what is happening in the other person's silence is all they're doing is they're they're waiting for their turn to speak.

They're not actually listening to what you say, they're just waiting to say their bit into the void that's in the middle between you.

Imagine if you actually listened and responded in a way that was interested in them, that's responded in a way that was kind, other person-centered.

And then connected with that is this idea of being seasoned with salt.

People kind of mangle what seasoned with salt means.

Well, so salt was a preservative in the ancient world, and uh it's really quite simple.

Salt, so seasoned with salt is an ancient Jewish idiom for interesting.

Not boring.

If you're a boring person, stop.

Find a way to be interesting.

Season of salt means that it's interesting.

Intriguing, that's a better way to put it.

Not boring or predictable.

It could be a question that invites somebody into conversation about what they believe to be true.

Do that the next time you go to the cinema with a non-Christian friend.

Let me give you a little evangelistic tip.

Invite non-Christian friends to go and watch movies lots, right?

There you go, you can do that.

It's easy.

Done your good Christian duty.

And then, when you're leaving the cinema, when you're walking out, uh ask them, what did you like about the movie?

Well, how is that an evangelistic question?

Haha, it really is.

Because when their answer to what did you like about the movie, what they're saying is, here were uh here's where I saw truth and beauty in that movie.

What didn't you like?

Here's where I here's where it communicates what I see is wrong with the world.

You're building a worldview, even just by saying, What did you like?

What don't you like?

Do you know the best do you know the best question that you can ask a non-Christian?

Why?

Why do you think then?

Why did you why what do you mean by that?

Why did you act like that?

Why is it that you do that?

The more and you don't need to be a pet, don't be like a petulant four-year-old.

Like I've got one of those at home.

Yeah.

My daughter loves to ask nonsensical why questions right now.

Why is blue?

Don't be like that.

But to Jenny, why?

Because people do things and don't always think about why it is that they do them.

They say things, and that's kind of the fruit of the tree, but the more you ask why, the more you get to the root of what it is they really believe.

And that's where you speak the gospel to.

You don't speak the gospel to the fruit.

Somebody sleeping around?

That's fruit.

The root issue is why are they doing it?

What acceptance?

Intimacy are they craving?

And then you show them how the gospel fulfills it.

Anyway.

And then he says, I really need to motor on.

And then he says, uh, and know how you ought to answer each person.

So by the end of the day, please could you know all of the answers to all of the possible evangelistic questions that you could be asked by a non-Christian?

Okay, that's your homework.

See you later.

No, that's silly, isn't it?

Because you can't know all the questions.

And it's okay to say, I don't know.

But here's a good rule of thumb.

Why don't you plan not to get caught out twice?

Somebody asks you a question you don't know the answer.

Say I don't know.

It's incumbent upon you to go and find the answer so that when you get the same question, you have it.

That's a good rule of thumb.

To say nothing of the fact that you have an opening to that non-Christian person.

Because you can say, Do you know the way I said I didn't know um the answer to that question?

I actually went away and you know read a book, you know, one of these things that have paper in them, or an electronic unit.

I scrolled through some websites.

Just be careful on the websites, especially on theology.

Anyway, come and talk to a pastor, a pastor in your church, find the answer.

And then you go back and go, I was thinking about that.

And I did some research.

Here's what Christians believe on that low-hanging fruit way back into an evangelistic conversation.

And then inevitably they ask you another question.

You go, I don't know, and the cycle, you know, the feedback loop just kind of kicks in.

But a good rule of thumb is to not be caught out twice on the same question.

We must finish.

Some final reflections for those who call city church their home.

Paul is longing that we would grow deeper into Christ and as we do, grow closer together to one another.

It is the whole reason why we are now as a church talking about formalizing our membership.

Up until this point, it has been, well, if you're if you're here and you're coming along and you're serving and you're given, then you're a member.

But now that we're one church over two services, it becomes harder to know who it is, who is part of us, joined on that bigger than us mission.

And our membership is a way of saying to one another, I am in this with you.

It's a way of the leaders saying, I am here to, we are here to care for you.

It is a way for us all to say, I want to be known by you, and I want to know you more.

It is not automatically true that everyone who comes in here will experience the community that is described in Colossians chapter 4, and we don't do it perfectly.

Colossians 4 · chapter mention

But we want to.

We want to do it better, we want to grow in it.

Would you join us in that?

Would you lean in?

Naturally, we can't know everybody here with equal depth, but we could know some people really well.

We could let a few people know us.

Why not reach out to that person who has come across your mind from time to time and you thought, I must get a coffee or a beer with that person.

Why don't you reach out to them today and say, let's schedule a time where we can get together?

And then when you do, don't just talk about the coronavirus.

Don't just talk about the weather.

Say if you don't know them, tell me your story.

Like where are you from?

How did you become a believer?

How are you encouraged right now?

Are there ways that you're being challenged that I can pray for?

Or go one better.

Don't ask them.

Tell them yours.

Because if you go first, you give them permission to be vulnerable.

So be brave.

I have never, ever, ever had the experience of opening up to somebody and saying, here's what's really going on in my heart, and having them go, I had no idea that you know a Christian would struggle with that, and then run out of the room screaming, it just doesn't happen.

They said.

Thank you for being honest.

Here's what I'm dealing with.

And the community and the love and the affection has been deepened.

If you've been coming to prayer night, and this is just a little chance, if you've been coming to our prayer, we do prayer as part of our community groups.

Guys meet together, girls meet together.

If you've been going along to those, and it is it is being at the level of you just pray for me and work right now.

Just pray that I work really well with my colleagues, or you just pray for this assignment that I'm working on.

If that's it, why why are you coming?

There's more going on in your heart than the assignment that you're working on.

I guarantee it.

We're all bloodbought.

We're all sinners at the foot of the cross.

We're all in all in need of grace.

I'm not perfect.

I'm broken.

I don't love my wife the way I should.

Sometimes I'm harsh to my children, and I need to repent of that.

Sometimes I need to go to my daughter and say, I'm sorry for shouting.

There.

I'm not perfect.

And neither are you.

Congratulations.

Would you serve alongside us?

As a church, we're always looking for people to help.

To help in unseen and small ways, set up and tear down.

We have one person to tear down the church after this service.

Would you stay behind and lend a hand?

Would you consider lending a hand on what once a month?

Would you help with hospitality or with welcome or with music?

If indeed you can play or sing.

I mean, don't volunteer for that if you can.

You'd be surprised.

You think, well, how is that me joining you on mission?

How is that me joining you on getting the gospel out?

Well, if you come in here early on a Sunday morning, you help make the place tidy and you clean the toilet.

What you are communicating to everyone who comes through the door is that we take seriously what happens here.

Come in here and the place is an absolute mess.

Toilets are stinking, communicates to every guest, every non-Christian, what happens in here doesn't really matter because none of them care about it.

It really is a gospel ministry.

And as we prepare to go on the weekend away, where one church over two services, there are going to be people there that you don't know.

Would you consider having a meal with someone from a different service?

Someone that you don't know.

Or perhaps you sit with them and you realize that they're in the same service as you and you feel all awkward, but we'll move on swiftly past that.

Ask them who get to know their story, get to express some of what it means to be life together, and to pray that God would continue to lavish his grace upon us, to make us into this sort of church family, that as we love one another more, the light of our witness intensifies here in Dublin for the glory of Jesus.

Let's pray.

Oh Lord, forgive us the ways in which we have not loved you the way we should, and we have not loved or cared for those in our midst the way we should.

Forgive us our prayerlessness.

Give to us a renewed desire and devotion to you as we express our dependence on you as we seek to join you in praying in line with your will.

Help us to set aside those tribal labels and promote and celebrate our union with one another because of Jesus.

Help us, we pray, we need your grace.

We pray it in the name of Jesus.

Amen.