Colossians: Unpacking and Integrating the Gospel

This fall, we're going to study our way through the book of Colossians.

So, as we study Colossians, we're going to be asking ourselves the question: how do we live and how do we grow with Jesus?

How do we rest in Jesus?

How do we live with Jesus?

How do we grow with Jesus?

Paul wrote this letter to the people in Colossae in about AD 60, so this is about 30 or so years after the life of Jesus.

And Colossae is in southern Turkey.

Here's a map to give you a little bit of an idea.

Italy's in the top left corner, go across the Mediterranean Sea.

In southern Turkey, you have Colossae.

This city was a marketing center.

It's pluralistic.

There were lots of ideas floating around about what life should be about.

World views were competing.

So a lot like today in that way.

And these people had heard the gospel of Jesus.

Full forgiveness in Jesus alone, full righteousness in Jesus alone.

And then a new teaching was developing, a so-called deeper teaching.

And Paul writes this letter to this church to say there's nothing, nothing deeper than Jesus.

There's nowhere else to go.

If we look at the structure of the book, it teaches us, the structure itself, Colossians begins chapters 1 and 2 with God's promises to us.

What is promised to us in Jesus?

The indicatives, what's been indicated to us in Jesus?

Paul is just lavishly pouring that out.

Out of one and two come three and four.

God's call on our lives.

How should we live?

What are the imperatives for us?

So we move from the promises of God's grace, which empowers and animates the fruits of God's grace.

A couple of months ago, I got onto a plane, I took my seat, I had the bulkhead seat, so there was a wall in front of me, so I couldn't put my backpack like under the seat in front of me.

And so I started getting out my stuff.

I got out my iPad and I got out that charger cord and I got out my AirPods and I got that charger cord, and then realized I needed a converter, so I got out the converter, and I get all that, I put my backpack up.

I sit down, in my lap is just a mess of cords at this point.

And I'm paranoid, I'm gonna drop one like down in there, and you know, forget it, it's gone forever.

So I'm paranoid, just a mess of cords, just a nest.

And I look over, and this other guy across the aisle, he very calmly and coolly pulls out of his backpack this little pouch, and he just sits down, cool as can be, and unzips it, and every cord is rolled up perfectly.

And I'm like, I want to be him.

Who is who is this man?

Where did he come from?

What does he know?

What else does he know about life that I don't know?

Too arrogant to ask him.

So I just start Googling.

Like, what is that?

What is that pouch?

What is that thing?

I'm like, Googling.

So I I order the Cal Pac Tech Organizer.

And I'm so excited about this thing.

It's gonna take a week to get to me.

It wasn't on Amazon.

You'd go straight from their website.

It's gonna take a week to get to me.

And I'm such a dork that every day I'm clicking to see where it's at.

When will it get to my front porch?

You know, like, okay, it's on its way.

Every day I'm so excited about this Cal Pac Tech organization.

Finally, it shows up.

I immediately hustle home.

I go and I get that thing and I unbox it and I get all my chords.

Here's a picture of it.

Oh sometimes I just unzip it.

I do.

I try to do that when nobody's at home because I'm ashamed that I do it.

I just unzip it and look at it, and like, oh, that is beautiful.

Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you?

You're like, that is beautiful.

That is beautiful.

I was so excited to unpack this Cal Pack tech organizer and integrate it into my life.

I'm that big of a dork.

Now you you may not be that big of a dork about something like that, but you know the feeling because you ordered something.

You ordered it and it was on its way.

Maybe you tracked it or you're just hoping it's gonna show up and you can't wait.

Is it here yet?

Did it come?

And you're excited because you want to open it, you want to integrate it into your life.

All right, well, this is a sermon, I'm a preacher, so here's the sermon question.

The question is, how does the gift of Jesus, which has been given to you already, how do you unpack that and integrate it into your life?

Because it's possible just to have it.

That you are fully Jesus's and Jesus is fully yours, but not necessarily integrated into your life.

What are the implications of this good Jesus?

So let's study Colossians.

We're gonna break this down a couple verses at a time.

Colossians 1, 1 and 2.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ, a classe, grace to you and peace from God our Father.

So the beginning point, sort of foundational point, number one, we experience peace and wholeness through God's grace alone.

Paul's greeting here, and also in a lot of his letters, is grace and peace to you, which is still interesting because the Jewish people would always greet peace to you.

Peace is this word shalom, which is a state of life, a way of being, it's a sense of fullness, it's a way of wholeness of heart.

And so Paul takes their typical greeting, peace to you, and he says, Grace and peace to you.

As if to say, there's no shot at peace unless you know God's grace.

As we come alive to God's grace, as we integrate it into our lives, we experience greater peace.

Verses 3 through 5.

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 the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.

Point number two is this our assurance is in Jesus' work for us, not our work for Him.

To be assured is to be confident, like to be confident and at peace.

Tuesday morning, I wrote most of the sermon on Tuesday morning as I sat on my back porch.

As I sat on my back porch on Tuesday morning, I never once was concerned that I was trespassing.

I was never never concerned, I was not anxious, I had no fear, I was fully assured, fully confident that I was allowed to be there.

And even if somebody had come up and said, hey, you can't be here, you can't be, I would say, no, no, no, no, this is you, you can't be here, is what I'd say.

I'd say, get off my property.

I'd say a few things.

Why are you in my backyard?

I'd have a lot of things to say.

But say it happened.

I could, I could actually say, just one second, I could go in my house, I could I could show them paperwork that I bought this house.

Right?

The receipt brings full assurance.

A purchase has been made.

And the point is that Jesus, the cross and the resurrection, it gives us that assurance.

It's that receipt that we have, that we're always like, no, no, no, no.

Like, no matter how I feel or what my emotion is right now, like I have a receipt.

It's the cross and the resurrection.

And that's what brings me my assurance.

And that's why, verse three, we can live in gratitude to Jesus, and why verse 4, our faith is not in a system or in our merit, but it's in him.

Verses 3 through 5, Paul assures these people in Jesus.

He gives these markers of the Christian life.

The first marker we see in verse 4 is just faith in Christ.

That's the beginning point.

That we rest in Jesus.

Jesus is enough.

The second marker is love for others.

Meaning they have a love of Christian fellowship.

There's just something about being with other Christians.

And the third marker is hope for the life to come.

A joyful expectation.

And our home in heaven to come.

Notice what he does not list.

He does not list your spiritual disciplines, as good as they may be and as helpful as they are.

He does not list your spiritual resume.

He does not list your righteousness report.

He says, Jesus, love of others, hope in heaven.

We are assured because of Jesus.

Verses 5 through 8, starting in the second half of verse 5.

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

Just as you learned it from Epiphrast, 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.

Point number three is this fruit, we could say godliness.

Fruit, godliness, develops not when we try harder to be better, but when we root deeper in Jesus.

Look at that verses five and six.

Of this you have heard before in the word of church, the gospel, okay?

The gospel, beginning of verse six, is come to you.

It came toward you.

God has pursued you, as indeed in the whole world.

And what is that doing?

The gospel in you, the message of Jesus is enough for your full forgiveness and full righteousness.

It's bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you since the day you heard it, and understood the grace of God and truth.

Verse 6, that word understood, it means to know with implications into your life.

Right?

It's the CalPAC Tech organizer.

You have it, and it's understood into your life.

It's integrated into your life.

In the gospel, we're safe with God.

We're beloved and we're secure because Jesus alone.

That brings such a safety and a security and assurance.

That we're loved while we're a mess.

I think Megan prayed, like whatever condition we're in, whatever condition we're in, Jesus loves us.

I mean, that brings such a security to us.

And in that confession that we're imperfect, sinners in need of grace, it can bring a peace and it brings a healing to the heart that wants to self-justify.

And now the gospel begins to bear fruit.

Verses 9 and 10.

And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing the knowledge of God.

Point number four is this what God does in us creates the life that flows from us.

So the inner life leads to the outer life.

Paul is arguing that if peace and wholeness and godliness and fruit and all that are desired, don't move on from Jesus.

And then Paul kind of lays out a process for us in these verses.

How is this birth?

How is this fruit birth?

How's the godliness birth?

Look at verse 10.

So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, okay.

How are we gonna do that?

Fully pleasing to him, how are we gonna do that?

Bearing fruit in every good work, okay, and increasing in the knowledge of God.

How are we going to do this?

If all we have is verse 10, we are doomed, aren't we?

We're doomed.

But that's not all we have.

We have verse 9 in front of it, that you may be filled in the knowledge of his will, spiritual wisdom, that we are filled by him.

And then we have verse 11, being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.

So the fruit of verse 10, that kind of life, endurance, patience, fruit, wisdom.

It comes through his strength and his might.

So the process over and over and over again, what God does in us creates the life that flows out of us.

So if you're trying to get the life on the outside to work on your own and your own merit and your own behavioral management, but you're never going into the heart to say, you know, Jesus, I want you to save your Lord in my heart, and I want the implications of your lavish grace in my heart.

If you're never doing that, you're just gonna be exhausted.

You'll be very condemned because you won't really be resting in your forgiveness, and then you'll be exhausted because you're trying to be really, really, really, really good.

And at times you'll be very proud because you're gonna pull it off a little bit.

And then you'll have a horrible couple days and you'll be in despair.

And the gospel rescues us from all this sort of self-justification and self-righteousness.

And it deepens us, but we're deepened into our sin that we're not these things, and we're also deepened into Jesus, that He is more than enough.

So we're humbled and loved, which gives us a peace.

And then it gives us patience with imperfect people, it bursts compassion toward people who are not perfect, and it builds endurance.

Verses 12 through 14.

Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints and light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

You see it here in the verses, verse 12, he qualified us, who has qualified you, so it's his work, not ours, in whom we have redemption.

In him we have redemption.

His work, not ours.

Point five is this gratitude is the life lived with Jesus.

The kingdom of light refers to a life with God, goodness, truth.

Darkness is an image of slavery, of lies.

So let's ponder these two images.

Here's the first image.

This is an image of this is the southern coast of France.

300 days of sunshine, beautiful water, you have a glass of Bordeaux, red wine.

I mean, this is unbelievable, right?

Oh, this is lovely.

And then let's ponder Siberia.

And I would just say, like, like which one?

Like which one, which one would you prefer next week?

Right?

Which one would you prefer for your life?

I mean, this is the imagery Paul is building for us.

A way of light, a way of freedom, or a way of darkness and a way of slavery.

The kingdom of darkness is any life oriented around the lie that God's grace is not enough for you.

That either you think you're too far below it, too guilty, too ashamed, or you think you need to add to it because you're proud and self-righteous.

We accept all sorts of lies about ourselves, how we're not enough or how we need to do more.

But gratitude is the life of the Christian because we see that Jesus is enough, whether we're the rebel or we're the self-righteous.

Our sin is put upon him who knew no sin.

So we become the righteousness of God.

His righteousness is given to us.

Last year, Sam Rapp and Keel and I went to play golf up in Tennessee with a friend.

We woke up early, we drove up I-75 to play a course that none of us could ever get onto ourselves.

It's private.

It's private.

You can't go, it's private.

But our friend is a member.

So we pull off of this highway onto this little driveway, like a one-lane little driveway.

There's no sign.

There's nothing, just one little driveway back into the forest.

And this course is in this valley.

There's no houses.

All you see is forest and mountains.

It's unbelievably lovely.

This driveway cuts to the forest.

There's nothing, you can't hide anything better.

This place is completely hidden.

There's nothing there except a gate and a call box.

So I roll down the window, three ministers.

Three ministers.

So call the box and they say, you know, good morning, how can I help you?

I did not give them my name.

I gave them my friend's name.

Because I'm qualified through my friend.

And the gate opens, we play golf, we eat, there's a snack hut.

That was unbelievable.

Just in the middle of the course.

Let's just stop and just go inside and eat.

We played golf.

We ate, we drank.

It was amazing.

I never once did I cut the grass.

I did not clean the windows.

I did not vacuum.

I'm not sure if I picked up my golf bag, to be honest.

I think other people did it for me.

The entire time.

I did not work my way in, and I did not work my way to stay there.

I was qualified because of my friends' qualifications.

That's an image of Jesus for us.

That Jesus is more than enough to get us in and to keep us in.

You and I are not qualified by our work, by our record, our qualifications, but by Jesus alone.

So grace and peace to you.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we are so grateful that by Jesus alone we are at peace with you, for all of our sin has been forgiven by the blood of Jesus.

All the righteousness we ever need comes to us, the righteousness of Jesus, and we are your beloved, secure and assured and confident because Jesus is enough.

Forgive us for the ways we rebel, forgive us for the ways we're so proud in our righteousness and self righteousness.

Forgive us for the ways that we don't rest in your qualifications for us.

Would you give us even more faith in Christ, love for others, endurance, and a hope in heaven?

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.