The Gospel Keeps Growing | Chad Lewis | Colossians 1:1-14

Thank you for joining us for a sermon from Sojourn North.

Well, when I was growing up, I was not the giant you see before you today.

I'm not really a giant, but I am tall.

But I wanted to be tall as a kid because I loved basketball, and I was like, this is the way that I've got to be able to do it.

But I was always behind the growth curve.

And so I was always smaller than my peers.

I was real thin and just short.

And I was like, man, I want to grow.

I want to grow.

And so I watched a Brady Bunch episode, and one of the sons on the Brady Bunch wanted to grow taller, and he decided he was going to try to stretch himself out so he'd hang on a bar.

And it didn't work for him, but I thought as a kid, it was like, I'm willing to try that.

So I did.

And guess what?

It didn't work, right?

Because you cannot make yourself grow.

Now you can help your growth or hinder your growth.

And we talk a lot about growth and parallels in spiritual life.

And we'll talk about growth until the day we die, because this is a life of continual growth.

But even though you can help and hinder it, there's something other than you that causes you to grow.

And the reality is things that are alive do grow.

And things that are dead don't grow.

And so many people treat their spiritual life would be like me as a kid trying to stretch myself on a bar, or if I went to a mirror and said, Chad, grow, grow taller, and then coming back the next day, Chad, why haven't you grown taller?

What are you doing, man?

What are you doing?

And just beat myself up.

That'd be ridiculous, right?

But that's how we treat the spiritual life sometimes.

And so as we continue in our journey through Colossians this week, I'm very excited because Paul gives us a reminder of how spiritual life begins and how it's sustained.

Because it begins by us receiving.

We don't do anything to earn it.

We don't seek it out in and of ourselves.

God is the initiator of this gospel story.

And so we receive it, and then fruit appears, and then growth continues.

And so the reality is this: I have a slide for you to read.

I'm always coming up with different ways to think through how life is a continual growth.

So this isn't your sentence to carry for the week, but this is something I've been thinking about this week.

The soul is never finished in this life.

So we talk about you never come to a place of arrival.

You're always growing, you're always needing God, you're always seeking his face.

The soul is never finished in this life.

It is continually being healed, reordered, and drawn.

So each of these words in the second sentence means something to me.

So it's continually being healed, our wounds are being healed.

The relational wounds we have, it's a long journey.

But God is in the journey of healing us.

It's being reordered because our loves and our desires go different places.

And we go to lesser loves thinking they'll fill us up, and God reminds us over and over again these lesser loves will not fill us.

So he's reordering our desires and our loves to be for him and for others.

And then finally, he's drawing us.

He's drawing us to himself, his heart.

He's drawing us into community.

And it's in these places that we find growth in our lives as we seek his face.

So today we're going to look at the first section of Colossians 1, 1 through 14.

It's a thick passage with so much truth, but we're going to draw out some points about how growth starts in the gospel and how it's sustained.

And my prayer today is that even though some of these truths we've heard over and over again, that God would sink them more deeply into our hearts, and that we'd sense new invitations today as well.

So with that, I might invite you to stand for the reading of God's Word if you wish.

Paul starts this letter by saying, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by God's will, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints in Christ at Colossi, who are faithful brothers and sisters, 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, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love you have for all the saints, because of the hope reserved for you in heaven.

You have already heard about this hope in the word of truth, the gospel, that has come to you.

It is bearing fruit and growing all over the world, just as it has among you since the day you heard it and came to truly appreciate God's grace.

You learn this from Epaphras, our dearly loved fellow servant.

He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has told us about your love in the Spirit.

For this reason also, since the day we heard of this, we haven't stopped praying for you.

We are asking that you be filled with the knowledge of all his wisdom and with his of his will and all his wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has enabled you to share in the saints' inheritance in the light.

He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.

In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Ah, there's so much in here.

I think every time I read it, there's a new way that my heart leans, depending on where I am at the moment in the day.

And so I'd encourage as we go through this book, take the sections that we're going through and just go over them even daily and look at phrases.

In this passage, I was shocked this week of just underlining phrases.

Because you got faith, hope, and love.

I've got them at the back of my sermon.

Faith, hope, and love, the gospel.

He rescued you, he transferred you, he redeemed you, he forgave you.

And therefore, we're filled, walk worthy, bear fruit, grow, be strengthened, endure, give thanks.

It's just so much in here, and you can focus on one little phrase and just really go to the Lord with it and go deeper into that.

So as we look at this, let's remember again, we went through a big overview of Colossians last week, just a big picture.

And we talked about Colossae as being uh, we talked also about, I'm gonna say Colossae and Colossae over and over again.

I'm meaning the same thing, um, but I've heard it so many ways.

Uh so there you go.

I'll I'll you you'll forgive me for that.

But it was it was once an influential town, city, and then it became not on the main trade route or anything like that.

So it became more of an ordinary, less influential city.

So this beautiful letter that Paul writes is to an ordinary place where the church has started, and Paul has never visited there, and the challenge is that false teaching has drifted into the church just like it has into so many other churches.

That's why the book of Galatians was written, that's why Paul corrects the Corinthian church, and over and over again we see all these corrected dynamics needed.

And we need those dynamics in our own lives because we said in Galatians as we looked, we have a tendency as humans to drift, and we need to be brought back.

And that's why we go together, and that's why we do it together.

That's why, even the way we set up this church is we have elders that lead the church, and I'm one of five elders, and we have deacons and we have members, but I don't have the Trump card for anything.

We all have equal votes, and so if Fletch said, Chad, stop preaching, I would look at the other elders and I just walk down and we go straight to the potluck.

So maybe we do that.

But Chad, stop preaching.

Okay, okay.

I I didn't hear you.

I think my ears are blocked.

But so false teaching comes in, but we need each other, and it's this corrective dynamic.

And so when Paul comes to this letter he's writing, there are so many things going on that are competing with the gospel.

And so what's sneaking in is Jewish regulations from other aspects, special religious experiences that we'll see.

There's a mysticism that's snuck into the church, ascetic practices, human philosophy, all these different things.

And Paul could spend his whole letter just combating these things, and he will mention them.

But what he does, and all of these things are bringing Christ down in his importance and his bigness.

He just focuses on Christ and says, Let us look at Jesus.

Let us look at what he's done.

And as we gaze upon him, our vision of him becomes bigger, and these other smaller things will fade away.

And it reminds me of the old hymn turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things on earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

And so this is a continual turning that we must do every day.

And so, what we're going to look at today briefly in the outline is the gospel is received, that the gospel bears fruit, and the gospel keeps growing.

So the first point, the gospel is received.

One of Paul's methods, one of the things he does is he goes back again and again and he reminds people where they started.

He says, remember, remember how you started.

And how did this church begin?

It wasn't through a great plan or them having a big building campaign or programs.

All those things are good.

I love that we have this building in this land, but it's a means for us to gather.

It's a means for us to be a light to the community around us.

I like plans, but the plans are not the end.

They're the means for us to gather together and to grow together.

So, how did this church start?

Well, Paul tells us Epaphras, who's bringing the message to Paul, who was saved probably during the Ephesus mission, goes back to Colossae and he has his heart's on fire.

And he wants to share how Jesus has changed his life.

He wants to share this amazing gospel story that Jesus is the Messiah and that he's come to set us free.

For something to be received, it has to be given.

And that's what we see.

He says, You have already heard about this hope, the word of truth.

In a world competing where people say this is true or you can't know truth, Paul is saying explicitly, this is the word of truth.

This is the gospel that has come to you.

And the gospel has come to you and to me.

And there are many times where we can take that for granted because we've maybe heard it since we were really little.

It's something we need not take for granted because all over this world there are people that don't know the gospel.

There are pockets all over our nation where I remember when I first went to college, um, I had a teacher at the University of Memphis, uh, and I had a few teachers.

There it was interesting.

There was a movement, it was like their main goal in life was to prove that Christianity was not true.

Um, and so they would say, This is a myth, and this is this, and this is this, and this is just construct to control.

It's an opiate for the masses, and they would go through philosophy and all these other things.

But Paul is saying, This is the word of truth, the gospel.

And so I ask you, how did the gospel come to you?

I'm asking you to remember just like I remember.

I grew up in church, and even though it was a legalistic church, they did preach Jesus, I thank God for that.

And they preach, I remember being seven years old and laying in my bed at night and just thinking about eternity and being scared because I didn't know where I would be or what would happen.

And I went to my dad and I said, Dad, tell me, tell me, I we talk about Jesus, tell me how to be saved.

And he led me how uh led me to Jesus as a seven-year-old.

And we had a tradition of faith in my office.

If you ever come in there, I have an ordination certificate from my mom's dad, my grandfather, who was a deacon in a Baptist church, and my dad was a minister.

I have his ordination certificate, and I have mine.

It's like I I come from a line on both sides that believed in Christ and were affected by the gospel, and I don't take that for granted.

But how did you come to know Christ?

I've heard some amazing stories from people in here.

I'm looking towards the back.

I I it just amazing stories that it wasn't by mistake that you're in the family that you are, that you're in this location, or that you came when you did to the place where you heard about Jesus.

And I think it's also helpful at times to reflect on this.

So we reflect on how we came to know Jesus.

I I think it's you don't need to do this every day, but it's good at times to reflect where would where might you be if you didn't know Jesus?

For me, it's a it's a scary thing because I see in my family line people that didn't follow Christ, and I see what they did follow, and I believe I would have followed the same things apart from the grace of Jesus.

There are many different things that people follow.

Who would you be without Christ?

So, this gift we receive, let's look at the order and remember what Paul says.

We didn't deserve this, but we hear how will the gospel be known unless it's spoken, but we hear it, we receive it, we believe it, we understand it, and we thank God for it.

And then we grow deeper into it and more deeply into it over and over again.

The gospel doesn't start with clenched fists, it starts with open hands.

And it's saying, Lord, I don't deserve this, and I have this sin that I cannot pay for, and I don't know what to do.

And you say that you paid for me and my sin, and so that I can know you forever, forgive me of my sin and be my savior.

And we enter a new life, and it's the journey for the rest of our lives, and it affects all eternity.

So the gospel is received, and we see in this passage that when something becomes alive, it does grow.

So this is the second point.

The gospel bears fruit.

And I've heard this throughout my life, and I want to nuance it a little bit as we continue.

But how do I know the gospel's at work in me?

You are gonna have seasons in life.

There are there are springs in our lives where there is growth and we see just beautiful things happening.

There are summers in our lives spiritually where it's it's hot and we just feel the heat on us.

But there's winters too.

But even in the midst of all these things where we may ebb and flow, and and it's our faith seems to be increased and decreased and just go up and down.

It's not the measure of our faith at times, but who our faith is in.

Because Jesus is steady, he's our rock.

And so, how do I know the gospel's at work in me?

Well, we just say, look at the fruit.

Not in just a one-hour time, but over a lifetime, over years.

Let's look at verse 4 again and following.

You can follow along.

So it says, For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints, because of the hope reserved for you in heaven.

And then once again, you have already heard about this hope in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you.

It is bearing fruit and growing all over the world.

So the gospel is just spreading out in this time.

Churches are being planted, people are coming to know Christ.

Think about just how small the gospel was as far as the message when it first started.

It was so small, but then it explodes like wildfire.

So Paul celebrates.

What does Paul celebrate?

He celebrates their faith in Christ.

He celebrates their love for all the saints, and he celebrates their hope, which is stored up in heaven.

And there's faith, hope, and love.

You think of 1 Corinthians 13.

Faith, hope, and love.

The greatest of these is love.

These three things become the fingerprints of the gospel as we grow: faith, hope, and love.

And remember, our growth can be helped or hindered.

And so we gather so that we can be helped to be remembered, remembering where our hope is, so we can grow in love for one another.

And so our faith is increased.

The gospel is bearing fruit and growing, and it takes root.

So Paul's immediate response to all this is that when we think about fruit, it is a lifelong pursuit.

And I think about oak trees in our study and just how many years it takes for them to grow down roots into the ground and grow, and it's just a dense wood.

But it sometimes it takes 50 years for all that growth to take place, for all these acorns to start popping out.

And and uh do acorns grow oak trees?

Okay, I started to have an agricultural problem there uh in my mind, ADD moment, but it's like they they start producing so much fruit, but they are their roots are so strong.

And so when the storms come and the scriptures talk about us being oaks of righteousness, but growth is over a lifetime.

And even as the women study Abraham, when you take snapshots of Abraham's life, he was a mess.

But when Romans talks about Abraham, it talks about him being righteous, and it's it's his righteousness is because of his faith in God.

But when you look at the long term of Paul's life, he sought God.

So let's look at the long of our lives.

And so the question is even if you're looking at your lifetime from the time you began to now in the faith, has your faith increased?

Has your love, not is your love perfect, but has it increased?

Are you convicted of sin as you as you drift?

And these are signs that growth takes place.

And it's an illustration that I use all the time, but I I think these two illustrations are very powerful because it shows the effect of what takes place.

The first one I share is that when you go out to work outside, and maybe it's even a cloudy day, but you're you're just working, and then you come back in some hours later, and someone says, Oh, you you've got color on your skin, you're a little sunburn, and you're like, really?

So you look in the mirror and it's like, oh, you were affected by the sun even though you didn't even realize it.

And so when we're in God's word, we might not feel growth.

When we come on a Sunday gathering, you may feel all sorts of different things, but to sit under God's word, to sing these songs, maybe it's a word or phrase that just jumps out to you that the Holy Spirit brings to you.

One of the greatest encouragements that I continue going with is that when someone says, God spoke this to me through your sermon, and then they tell me, and I don't even, I didn't even say it.

And it was like, that's God speaking to your heart.

I remember being in a counseling session sharing with someone who was seeking out counsel pastorally, and I said, Well, where do you sense God working?

And have you have you been in Encouraged by anything.

And they said, yes.

During the liturgy on Sunday, the phrase, the finished work of the cross, just jumped out to me, and I went, Oh, it is finished.

The cross finished the work, and I don't have to work anymore for anything to gain God's approval.

And it just clicked for them.

But that's being affected by the sun to put yourself in those places.

And the other illustration that we use that I use all the time is that one about the plant.

It's not going to grow, it's not going to thrive.

It's not going to flourish.

But that same plant put in the sun with water and nutrients.

And I hear that if you play Mozart, that there's some studies that show that plants thrive with classical music.

I don't know.

I'd like for someone to try a rock and roll, see, because I think they would really branch out.

Maybe with worship music, they would raise their hands more.

I don't know.

But there's a difference there.

And where are you putting yourself?

Think about seasons where maybe you ostracized yourself from gathering with other believers or being in Christian community.

And that's why, even in your bulletin I'll share in just a minute, remind you again, like this commitment that we're trying to seek to take intentional steps towards community together.

Not because it's cool to be in community, I think it is, but it's because God uses that in our lives to help others and to help us.

So be the plant that puts yourself in the place of growth.

And say, Lord, I'm before your word.

I'm with God's people.

I want to seek your face today.

Lord, grow my heart, grow my love, grow my faith, grow my hope.

And may others see that and be encouraged.

And the beauty of this final point is that the gospel's received, the gospel bears fruit, but the gospel keeps growing.

Paul moves from what the gospel has done to what the gospel continues to do.

And let's read verses nine and following again.

And I'm going to emphasize some words here.

Again, the ones that jumped out to me.

And I'd encourage you, take your bulletin because you can write on it and just underline different things as you read this week.

Paul says in verse 9, for this reason also, since the day we've heard of this, we haven't stopped praying for you.

That's beautiful.

And look at the prayer that he has.

He doesn't pray for circumstances to not be hard because he knows in life circumstances will be hard.

There are so many things that we carry.

Remember, we're talking about you may see someone and you not know what their hearts are bearing.

We all carry things.

Life is hard.

But this is what Paul asks.

He says, We are asking that you be filled with the knowledge of his will.

What does God desire?

Be filled with that.

And all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

Why?

So that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the knowledge of God.

So we're growing and knowing Him, being strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, so that you have great endurance and patience joyfully, giving thanks to the Father who has enabled you to share in the saints' inheritance in the light.

And there's so much in there.

We could spend weeks and weeks on just that section.

Filled with the knowledge, walking worthily.

But remember, our walking worthy comes as we get to know God more, as our false pictures, as our bad pictures of God are changed, and we see Him and we see His will and we follow that, as Romans 12 says, through the renewing of our minds, so that we may present our bodies as living in holy sacrifices, fully acceptable to God.

And if you look at the progression, it is such an active progression.

And it's God's work and our participation.

God's work and our participation.

God is working, He is always working, and He invites us to participate.

So He says, be filled, walk worthy, bear fruit.

And remember, we can't produce that fruit, but as we walk worthy, as we seek His face, as we stay connected to the vine, as Jesus talks about in John 15, we will bear fruit.

There's growth.

Be strengthened, endure, give thanks.

And I think as we come to the end of this first sermon, the beautiful progression is the word that stuck out to me is endurance.

He says that you may have great endurance and patience.

Why does Paul say that you need great endurance and patience?

Well, because false teachers will come in, because you will be discouraged, because the hardness of life will beat you down.

Because there will be times of mourning, and there will be times of joy, and in the times of mourning we can wander and just say, man, it's too hard.

In times of joy we can pursue things that are lesser loves, because our loves are not reordered until we continue to seek his face and we want to continue to do that.

But where does the endurance come from?

Well, it's verse 11.

Being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might.

And this is where we get our strength.

That Jesus is our pattern, he shows us how to live, but we can't do it, so he's our pardon.

He lived for us and died for us and rose again for us.

But now he's our power so that we can live and follow what he asks us to.

And then to close this in verses 13 and 14, what does Paul do?

He hits the gospel again.

He says in verse 13, he has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.

There is a transfer in Ephesians 2 talks about transferred for the domain of darkness to the kingdom of light.

We were dead in our trespasses and sin.

That's where we were.

But he's made us alive in Christ.

And the beauty of it, in him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

And I love it during our liturgy when we have that time of assurance.

It was really cool on our family Sunday when we had a student read assurance over you to say, your sins are forgiven.

That's past, present, future.

God's got you.

And so here's your sentence to carry for the week.

The Christian life begins with receiving the gospel and continues by growing ever more deeply into it.

The way our Christian life begins is the same way it keeps going.

The Christian life begins with receiving the gospel and continues by growing ever more deeply into it.

And as we go through Colossians, let us be amazed by who Christ is, by what he's done, by the sacrifice he made, by the love he has for us, by his power, by his might, by his presence.

Next Sunday, what I want to do is at communion, and I'll have these cards for you for next Sunday too, but I want you just to take them with you this week.

I've been putting these in the inserts.

You notice that I got card stock this week.

You like that, don't you?

Yeah, your pen's not going to go through that unless you really stab it.

But take this and pray.

There's an other box at the bottom because some of you may be like, none of these are for me, but my desire for you, my desire for myself, is that we take the next step in intentional community.

And so you'll check one of these boxes, you'll put something other.

It can be something simple, it can be something big, whatever God's leading you to.

But slow down and pray through this.

And then I'll have a place for you to place these cards next week so that the elders can gather these and pray over them.

And even in the comments and prayer requests, if you need help getting something done or being prayed for, we want to do that.

We divide up the member and a tender list among the elders, and we pray for you throughout the months, and we're about to redivide the list again, and so we switch that around.

But it's our desire for all of us to grow and to receive help.

And so as we come to communion, we're reminded again that the gospel is received and it's sustained by the work of God.

And so if you're a Christian here, whether you're visiting or a member or a tender, whatever it may be, I'd invite you to come after I pray and to take some juice and bread back to your seat and hold it.

We'll be singing a song together.

You can either just sit and reflect on the words or you can sing along.

But this reminder, because communion is about remembering.

It's about remembering again, just like Paul says, remember where you came from.

Remember what God has done.

Remember all that Jesus has done.

Remember that he promises to come again.

He's making all things new.

But remember, in this moment, he's at work in our lives.

He is real, more real than the air we breathe.

And he's inviting us to seek his face.

Let's pray together.

Lord, I thank you for the beauty of this letter to the Colossian Church.

Lord, I thank you for this reminder for us to slow down and remember where we've come from and how you've worked in our lives so that we may know you.

And it's not by mistake that you placed us in this place at this time.

And I do pray, Lord, as we come and take communion, that you bring encouragement to our souls, hope to our souls that we may grow in faith, that we may grow in love, and that our hope in you and what is to come would fuel us in this very moment.

I pray that you give comfort for those who are hurting, that you give strength to those in need because of their weakness.

And through it all, Lord, may we be edified as we seek to do this together as a community.

And we ask this in Christ's name.

Amen.