I have two very distinct memories from my middle school years. There were a variety of things that defined my middle school years, but two of those things were the mountains and dirt-bikes. I lived in a valley with my house right in the foothills—most of our Minnesota family called them mountains. Between what my dad leased and my relatives and neighbors, I had ten thousand acres of land in the foothills to ride my dirt-bike. That’s basically what I did.

I also had a spot that I loved in the foothills behind my place. If I was ever having a bad day—angry about something, stressed about something, disappointed about something—I would ride my dirt-bike to the top of the hill behind my place and park it at the biggest cliff—probably about 50 or 60 feet high, then sit with my feet hanging of the cliff looking over the valley. From there, I could see everything. And it seemed like the longer I sat there, the smaller I felt, and the more my problems slowly faded away.

I also did a lot of hunting in the mountains. We would pack seven miles back into the mountains on horses and mules, set up camp, and then do day hikes further into the mountains looking for elk and mule deer. There were times when we would hike so high into the mountains when we would break the timberline. The timberline is where you get to such a high elevation that trees can no longer grow there. In the rocky mountains it’s about 2 miles above sea level. Every time we broke the timberline—without fail—my dad would stop everything we were doing, sit down, and say, “Just look at that. God spoke that all into existence” and we would just sit there and stare at it for a while.

The verse we’re looking at today is from Romans 11: ”For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11:36). This is a reminder that everything you see—and a bunch of things you can’t see—have come from God. Notice that it didn’t say that some things have come from God, but ALL things have come from him. That’s why the Bible begins by saying, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1, NIV). There was nothing—besides God—before the beginning.

I also think it’s important to understand that when God does something he always acts in line with his character—who he is. So, when he does something it shows us who he is. That means that when God creates everything from nothing we can learn that God is creative. That’s who he is. That also means we can learn a lot about God from studying the world he created. That’s a massive part of what we do in this school. We’re not just studying history and math and welding, but we’re coming to a better understanding of the world God created. When we study history, in a simplistic way, we’re learning how God writes a story. When we study welding, we’re actually learning about the way certain metals melt and how to control that, which teaches us about how God has created metal and the various ways we can use the metals he has created. The better we understand the world God created, the better we understand the one who created it.

There are some specific things we can learn about God’s character and attributes by looking at creation. One of the things we clearly see when we look at creation is that he is a God of order not chaos. Things are designed to work together and to work in patterns and rhythms. There’s this clear order to creation which shows us that God is a God of order. We also see that God is faithful by looking at creation. Repeatedly throughout the Bible we’re told that we’re reminded of God’s faithfulness by the repeated coming and going of the seasons. God is faithful to bring rain in the spring, heat in the summer, and cold in winter. He’s faithful. We can also learn a lot about God by zooming WAY out. I’ve had both the freshman and the seniors watch this video that keeps zooming out all the way to 86 billion light-years. The universe is MASSIVE—bigger than we can even comprehend. The first question that both classes asked was, “Why did God create it so big?” There are a bunch of ways to answer that question, but one way to answer that question is that God created it so big because God is so big. He wanted us to get a glimpse of his power and might and vastness.

Ultimately, though, the answer to all of these questions is that God created it for his glory. The verse we looked at in the last chapel I spoke at said, "Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." (Isaiah 43:7). We talked about how you were formed and made for God’s glory, but that’s also true of everything that God has formed and made. He made it all for his glory. Probably my favorite verse that talks about this is Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Psalm 19:1–4, NIV). Not only did God create everything for his glory, but every aspect of creation is worshiping God and bringing him glory.

All of those things are there for God’s glory but they’re also there to lead us to join with creation in worshiping God and bring him glory. God didn’t just create the mountains so that we would see their beauty and power and majesty and be in awe of them. That should happen. BUT, the awe we experience when we see the mountains should cause us to look beyond the mountains to the God who made them. When you see the sun setting beautifully over the lake, with all of the reds and oranges and purples, we shouldn’t just stop and be amazed by its beauty, but we should thank God for it and praise him for his beautiful creation. When you see a massive, powerful thunderstorm rolling in, with thunder so loud that it shakes the windows of your house, know that it’s there for God’s glory. It’s there to draw our eyes to the God who created the thunderstorm in worship and praise for his glory. When you use a microscope in class, and zoom way in and see the intricacy of the cell and the beautiful design of it all, that too is there to cause us to look to God and praise him and glorify Him.

Some of you know me pretty well already, others of you are going to get to know me a bit more throughout the year. However, none of you would have recognized me when I was in Middle School and my Freshman year of High School. Not that I looked that different, but my personality was very different. I was almost a different person. I was really quiet and shy and was afraid of embarrassing myself. I wasn’t a leader at all, but was more of a follower—kind of doing what everyone else was doing. I was really awkward. It was a rough few years of my life. 

Really, every season of your life is going to have some great benefits and some great struggles—some rough patches. In the Middle School and High School years, part of the struggle is trying to figure out who you are. You hit puberty, things start changing, and you start trying to figure out what type of person you’re going to become. That’s why things begin to get awkward—because everyone is trying to figure it out. And it takes a while to figure some of this out and it takes a decent amount of trial and error. You’re going to see some of your classmates who try to figure this out by just trying to fit in with everyone around them—others are going to try to figure this out by working hard NOT to fit in with those around them. Some are going to try to figure this out by playing a bunch of different types of sports. Some are going to try to do it through working hard on their school work.

It might change on a regular basis. I still remember the day when one of my best friends showed up at school very different. When we first met, he was working really hard to fit in with the sports people—he played basketball and dressed like basketball players. He was really good at golf, so he dressed like a golfer. Then, all of a sudden, one day he showed up wearing cowboy boots and wrangler jeans and an Ariat shirt. I never actually said anything to him about it. I didn’t make fun of him. We just kept hanging out and doing stuff together. He ended up starting his own business shoeing horses and was a team roper on the weekends for a while. 

Some of that is all fine and dandy. In many ways, it doesn’t really matter if you’re a sports person, a cowboy, or an artistic person. However, it’s not fine when those things begin to become too important for you. When these things begin to define who you are and what you do. When these things become the be-all-and-end-all of your life. When that begins to happen, you’ve built your life on the sand that is going to crumble the moment a storm comes because ALL of those things are temporary things that could be taken away in a moment's time. 

Let me give you one lighter example, then a much heavier example. I’ve known plenty of people over the years who have built their life around the idea of being an athlete. That’s who they ended up deciding who they are. Well, guess what? That can easily be taken away from you in the blink of an eye and you have no control over that. The other team can come in and cheap shot you and end your high school career. What will you do then, when everything you’ve built your life on is taken away from you?

I had to wrestle through this coming out of my hospitalization a few years ago. When I came out of the coma, I couldn’t talk. My vocal cords were paralyzed. And talking is what I do for a living—it’s the calling God gave me. If I had built my life around that identity—being a pastor or a speaker—it would have shattered me. Thankfully, God had worked in me over the years to make sure that wasn’t the case. Also, thankfully, God also decided that he just wanted to keep my quiet for a month or so then give me my speech back. 

If you’re going to build your life on something, it has to be built on something much more firm—something that cannot be taken away from you in a moment. That’s what this year’s theme is all about. We read this in Isaiah 43:7, “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (Isaiah 43:7, ESV). This is a reminder that God has created us and designed us for a purpose. That purpose is to glorify Him. 

I’ve been talking about this with the Seniors a bit the last couple weeks. When we understand that God is the one who created us, we also begin to understand that God is the one who gets to tell us our meaning and purpose in life. We’re not actually the ones who get to decide that. When a potter decides to make a cup, and not a plate, the cup doesn’t get to decide that it wants to be a plate. The Creator decides our meaning and purpose. For us, our Creator has told us that he designed us and created us to bring glory and honor to Him. 

This is a firm place for us to build our life upon. Here’s why. It’s no longer about the specific things we do, but about a bigger purpose behind the things we do. So, if you’re working hard to glorify God through your athletic abilities and you get injured, life is not over. You just simply move on to the next way you will bring glory and honor to God in your new situation. When I was wrestling with the idea that I may never speak again, I remember clearly thinking, “Well, I guess God wants me to become a writer or has something else planned where I can glorify Him without being able to speak.” This is why we must build our life on the reality that we are created to bring glory and honor to God. It allows us to find purpose and meaning in whatever situation we find ourselves—even in very difficult situations. 

This is what we’re going to be focusing on throughout the year this year. We’re going to be looking at it from a variety of angles. We’re going to be looking at a bunch of different verses that point to this reality and help us understand what it looks like to glorify God at school, in our friendships, at work, in the play, on the field, in the way we talk, even in the way we eat our food. How do we live this life God has created us to live—a life that was created to glorify God in everything we do, whether big or small?

I want you to take some time this next week—or in Connections Groups on Wednesday—to think about two things: 1) What am I building my life on right now? What would devastate me if it disappeared? And 2) Stop a couple times throughout the next week and ask yourself, “How can I glorify God in this?” 

[Read Psalm 32]

There was a time in my life when I wondered whether I was going to be crushed by the weight of guilt and shame. I’m not going to go into the nitty gritty details of that moment—not because I’m too ashamed to talk about it, but because I don’t want to dump all of my “stuff” on the congregation. I had sinned and nobody knew about it. I was ashamed of what I had done. I felt guilty about how I allowed things to get out of control. It was also a sin that couldn’t be hidden. People were going to know what I had done and I really didn’t want anyone to know what I had done. So, I tried to hide it and cover it up myself. I tried not to talk about it. I tried to keep it a secret as long as I possibly could. But the longer I kept quiet, the longer I tried to cover it up and hide it, the heavier and heavier it weighed on my soul. As David says—my bones wasted away and I felt God’s hand heavy upon me. I worried that I was going to collapse at times. 

This is what David is experiencing in this Psalm. He says, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah” (Psalm 32:3–4, ESV). The longer David kept silent about the sin in his life, the heavier it got. He says it felt like his strength was dried up—he wasn’t sure he could go on. He says it felt like his bones were wasted away—like they no longer had any strength, he wasn’t sure he could stand anymore. He said that he groaned all day long. I’m not sure if I’ve ever felt so heavy that I groaned all day long, but I have felt so heavy—a weight that sits right about here—that I find myself sighing a lot. There’s so much weight hanging on my soul, that it has to release somehow—and rather than coming out in a groan, it comes out in a sigh.

This is what happens when we try to deal with sin on our own and in our own strength. It will destroy you. 

So, if this is what sin does in our life, how should we respond? I mean, if recognizing the sin in our life can be so heavy and brutal, how should we respond? There are a variety of ways people respond to the crushing weight of sin in their life. 

Some people respond by simply ignoring it. They live by the slogan—ignorance is bliss. As long as I’m not convicted of my sin, as long as I’m not aware of the sin in my life, then I will not be guilty and will not carry such a heavy burden. So, they work very hard to pretend like the problem isn’t there, or they work really hard to drown the problem, using a variety of drugs and alcohol. That’s their solution to the problem.

Others go the opposite direction. They don’t ignore the problem, they try to outwork it. They believe that if they work harder—try harder—they will be able to outwork the guilt and shame they feel. Some try to work hard enough to do enough good things to outweigh the bad things they’ve done. Others try to work hard enough to undo the bad things they’ve done. They work, work, work, work, trying to outwork the sin in their life. That’s how they feel better about it all—at least that’s what they think. 

However, the Heidelberg Catechism takes a much different approach to this problem. It asks the question: “Since no one in this life can obey the Ten Commandments perfectly, why does God want them preached so pointedly?” This question answers both of those strategies. First, God does not want you to ignore the sin and guilt and shame in your life. He actually wants the Ten Commandments preached pointedly. He wants you to be very aware of the sin in your life. He does not want you to ignore it. Second, the catechism reminds us that it is impossible to outwork your sin. You can’t do it. It’s impossible. You will only dig yourself deeper and deeper into the hole you put yourself. If you try to ignore your sin—it will slowly eat at you from the inside. If you try to outwork your sin, it will wear you into the ground.

So, the catechism asks: Why does God want us to be so aware of our sin? Does God want us to feel guilty all the time? Does God want us to  beat ourselves up all the time? No. The catechism says, “First, so that the longer we live the more we may come to know our sinfulness and the more eagerly look to Christ for forgiveness of sins and righteousness. Second, so that we may never stop striving, and never stop praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, to be renewed more and more after God’s image, until after this life we reach our goal: perfection.”  God wants us to be very aware of the sin in our life because he wants us to be very aware of the forgiveness and salvation that come from Jesus Christ. He wants us to never stop praying for his grace, forgiveness, and salvation. 

This is what David does in this Psalm. After trying to keep quiet about his sin, trying to ignore it or carry it on his own, feeling the weight of sin pressing down on him, he says, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”” (Psalm 32:5, ESV). This is our proper response. It should be our immediate response when we recognize any sin in our life. We stop what we’re doing and confess our sins to God. 

What’s interesting is that we don’t naturally do this. David even calls us out and says, “Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.” (Psalm 32:9, ESV). There are a variety of ways to apply this statement, but it definitely applies to confessing our sin to God. Don’t be like a stubborn mule, that needs to feel the heavy hand of God upon you, before you confess your sin to him. Don’t make it necessary for God to grab hold of your lead rope and drag you to the point of repenting of your sin. Just confess it and repent of it right away. 

 Here’s why we can confess and repent of our sin right away: ““I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” (Psalm 32:5, ESV). God forgave him. There was no wait. There were no stipulations and steps that David needed to take before being forgiven. He sought forgiveness and God forgave him just like that. 

It’s actually more than that. A little later in the Psalm we read this about God: “You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.” (Psalm 32:7, ESV). This isn’t just talking about loud shouting, it’s actually talking about shouting for joy. It’s a picture that God’s not reluctantly forgiving our sin when we come to him in confession and repentance. Rather, he is eagerly awaiting our confession and repentance. And when we come to him, he is joyfully ready—joyfully excited and eager—to forgive us and deliver us from our sins. 

This is actually the reason why we shouldn’t be hesitant to come to God in confession—why we shouldn’t be afraid to come to God in confession. Why would we? What are we afraid of? Why are we hesitant? God is joyfully ready and eager to forgive your sin, when you come to him in faith, confess your sin and repent. 

Why in the world would you hold on to it, when holding onto it means that you will continually be weighed down and crushed and weary? Why would you try to ignore it, allowing it to slowly eat away at you from the inside? Why would you try to outwork your sin, exhausting yourself and wearing yourself out, attempting the impossible? God is ready and waiting—eagerly to forgive you! Confess and Repent. 

That’s why David begins the Psalm this way: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” (Psalm 32:1–2, ESV). Those who are able to live their lives with this level of freedom are blessed. Since Jesus Christ has lived and died and rose again from the dead for the forgiveness of our sins. Since he is eagerly waiting for us to come to him in confession and repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We are blessed in such a powerful way. 

Those who do not know Jesus Christ do not know this freedom and blessing. They have no place to go with their guilt and shame. They have to try to ignore it or try to cover it up or try to outwork it on their own—all of them are impossible tasks. That’s why David says, “Many are the sorrows of the wicked…” (Psalm 32:10, ESV). They are filled with sorrow because they have all of this sin and shame and guilt bearing down on them and they have no place to go with it. That’s such a sorrowful, difficult place to be. 

Rather, those who know Jesus Christ, and have put their faith and trust in him for the forgiveness of their sins, David says: “Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Psalm 32:11, ESV). We can rejoice. We can shout for joy. We can live with joy and peace and freedom BECAUSE we have a Savior who is both willing and ready to forgive us when we confess our sins to him. It’s such a beautiful, powerful truth. 

I’m belaboring the point, because I don’t think many people see the act of confessing and repenting of our sin as a joyful thing. Of course, we should not take it lightly. Of course, we should not be flippant about our sin. However, we also shouldn’t approach confession and repentance as dreadful things—things that we dread doing, things we would rather ignore. Rather, I want us to see the beauty and power of having a God who is ready and willing to joyfully take the burden and guilt and shame from us, cast it as far as the east is from the west, and send us back out into the world with freedom. Knowing that, should create and stir up joy in us. It should cause us to be quick and eager to repent. 

Here's what this looks like in everyday life. As many people know, I do all of the work on our family’s vehicles—and we have a lot of vehicles. When I was younger, I actually wanted to be a mechanic and I enjoy working on motors when I have the time and money for it. However, when you have this many vehicles to take care of, you don’t have much time nor much money—which means working on vehicles becomes much more stressful. That stress increases when something goes wrong—when you twist off a bolt, or break something. In those moments, as the stress builds up, some words typically come out of my mouth—words that should not be coming out of the mouth of a believer. There was a period of my life when this would happen, and I would spend the rest of the time working on my vehicle angry AND feeling guilty that I still haven’t learned how to control my tongue. Eventually, I realized that was not the way Christians are to handle situations like that. Rather, the moment I recognize that I said something I shouldn’t have said, I stop everything that I’m doing, come to God in prayer, and confess my sin. I say, “Lord, I’m sorry that I did that again. I wish I didn’t do it at all. Please forgive me. Please work in my heart so that these things happen less and less. Help me.” Then, I get back to work. I’m free—I don’t have to dwell on it anymore—because I know that he has forgiven me and cleansed me. It’s such a beautiful thing. 

This is also why we try to have a time of Confession, Repentance, and Pardon in every worship service. It’s a beautiful thing that should cause us to praise and worship God. Typically—like this morning—we even have a song of response right away after the time of Confession, Repentance, and Pardon. It’s there because the proper response is to praise and thank God for the beautiful gift of forgiveness and freedom from sin that he offers us. 

This should also be more than something we do once a week. This is the natural rhythm of the Christian life. The Christian life is one repetitive pattern of messing up, confessing and repenting of our sin, receiving forgiveness, and then being empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue living the Christian life. This pattern should be happening regularly throughout the day. 

It should become almost as natural as breathing. And the more natural it becomes—the more joyful it becomes. The more natural it becomes, the more we realize the truth of how David begins this Psalm: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” (Psalm 32:1–2, ESV). And the more natural it becomes, the more we will begin to rejoice and praise our God and learn the truth of how David ends the Psalm: “Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Psalm 32:11, ESV). 

Sermon Outline

I. Introduction: The "Neutral Zone" of Pastoral Vacancy

• Pastoral vacancy as "liminal space" - between letting go and grabbing hold

• Natural tendency toward fear, worry, and anxiety about unknowns

• Central thesis: The church was never designed to rise and fall because of a single person

II. Continue Steadfastly in Prayer (v. 2)

• Key principle: Persistent, unflagging commitment, not sporadic prayer

• Being "watchful" = guarding against the temptation to stop praying continuously

• Hallesby's insight: "Only those who are helpless can pray"

  • We avoid prayer because we think we're in control

  • Reality: We are helpless all the time, therefore should pray all the time

• Application: Acknowledge helplessness during vacancy and turn to God in prayer

III. Pray for Gospel Doors to Open (vv. 3-4)

• Paul's example: Recognizing helplessness in changing hearts

• Prayer for God to open doors for the Word and provide clarity in presentation

• Application: Pray not just for comfort, but for gospel advance in Beaver Dam during interim

• Ministry doesn't go on hold - it continues through the congregation

IV. Walk in Wisdom Toward Outsiders (vv. 5-6)

• Shift in focus: From Paul's ministry to the congregation's ministry

• Living out faith surrounded by non-believers with wisdom, grace, and winsomeness

• Godly living as response to slander and foundation for gospel spread

• Early church model: "Christianity was supremely a lay movement, spread by informal missionaries" (Green)

V. Practical Gospel Sharing

• Method 1: Personal witness - sharing belief, reasons, and Christ's work in your life

• Method 2: Hospitality - informal home evangelism through meals and conversation

• Gospel spread through everyday Christians, not just pastors

VI. The Body of Ministry Workers (vv. 7-15)

• Paul lists eleven different people with unique ministries

• Key point: Multiple people showing pastoral concern, not just one pastor

• Encouragement through the care of many workers

VII. Connected to the Larger Body (v. 16)

• Letters shared between churches (Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis)

• Churches supported and encouraged one another

• Application: Faith Community Church connected to denomination, surrounding churches, and retired pastors

• Part of a body much larger than single congregation

VIII. Fulfill Your Ministry (v. 17)

• Paul's charge to Archippus: "See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord"

• Universal application: God has given every member a ministry

• Ministries vary by gifts: preaching, deaconal care, music, prayer, workplace ministry, etc.

• Challenge: What is your ministry? Are you fulfilling it?

IX. Conclusion: Christ Builds His Church

• Church doesn't rise and fall based on single person (except Jesus)

• Promise: "I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18)

• Final charge: Keep eyes on Christ, pray continually, fulfill your ministry

Main Theme: Ministry belongs to the entire body of Christ, not a single pastor. During pastoral vacancy, the congregation should pray steadfastly, engage in gospel ministry, and fulfill their individual callings while trusting Christ to build His church.

Sermon Audio

Sermon Manuscript

[Read Colossians 4:2-18]

Our congregation is about to enter an interesting season in the life of the church—a pastoral vacancy. Many of you have been around this congregation long enough to have experienced this a few times. However, it doesn’t matter how experienced you are with pastoral vacancies, they are still an interesting season in the life of the church. I use the word “interesting” intentionally. Some may want me to use words like difficult or anxious or unknown to describe this season, and some of those words may describe moments, but I don’t think they need to describe the entire season of pastoral vacancy. 

The official word for what many churches experience during a vacancy is “liminal space”—the awkward period of time when you’ve left something behind and have not landed in a new place—some people describe it as that place between letting go of one trapeze rope and grabbing hold of the next one, when you’re hanging in mid-air. Because I am a sports guy, I prefer to call it the Neutral Zone. It’s a time that can be categorized by fears, worries, and anxieties because it feels like there are so many unknowns. Who is going to be the next pastor? What are they going to be like? What is going to happen in between? And a whole host of other unknowns and unanswered questions. I’ll even admit that this has been a hard week for me as I’ve wondered about many of those same questions. It’s extremely difficult for me to step away from a congregation I’ve loved, who’s loved me and my family, and whom we’ve given our lives to for the past seven years.

Yet, as I’ve studied this morning’s passage, and prepared this morning’s sermon, I’ve been reminded by God and His Word that this doesn’t have to be a season—shouldn’t be a season—that is categorized by all those worries and fears. It should be an interesting season where a congregation learns a lot about itself and the ministry God has given them in the world. 

Here’s why that’s the case: the church was never designed to rise and fall because of a single person—including the pastor. One of the core focuses of my ministry in this congregation has been to work diligently to spread out the work of the church to the church—and not have it all centered on the pastor, or to have the focus on the pastor, or dependent on the pastor. I didn’t focus on this because I was lazy and didn’t want to do the work. I focused on this because a healthy church is not centered around a single pastor. A healthy church functions like the Body of Christ, each member using their unique gifts to build up and strengthen the rest of the Body of Christ. Of course, things will change in the absence of a pastor, but the ministry of this congregation will continue through the people God has placed in this congregation. That’s the way God has designed this to work. 

Now, I didn’t plan this out when choosing to preach through Colossians, but providentially, if I had chosen a passage to preach on for my final sermon, this would have been way up the list. I think there’s a lot of great wisdom for this congregation to remember during the upcoming vacancy. 

Paul begins by saying, “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.” (Colossians 4:2, ESV). May this reminder be a central focus during the period of vacancy. One of the notes I came across in regard to this passage says, “It implies a persistent, unflagging commitment, not just sporadic prayer.” This is very close to the command to pray continuously. I actually love that it says to continue steadfastly in prayer, because it seems to add the nuance that it’s difficult to pray this way. It’s much easier to pray sporadically on and off, but it’s very hard to pray continuously. It requires a level of perseverance—steadfastness.

Notice that it says that you need to be watchful in your prayer. Most commentators believe this is talking about being watchful over the temptation to not pray continuously—not being watchful of things to pray for. It’s the idea that you need to be aware that you will not naturally pray continuously—you will naturally slide into sporadic, occasional prayer. So, you need to be on the watch for it. You need to pay attention and be diligent not to fall into this trap. Be in prayer continuously. 

One of the best books I’ve ever read on prayer is “Prayer” by Ole Hallesby and he has a powerful line where he says, “Only those who are helpless can pray.” (18). He also says, “As far as I can see, prayer has been ordained only for the helpless. It is the last resort of the helpless. Indeed, the very last way out. We try everything before we finally resort to prayer.” (18). Why this is so powerful is that it points to one of the main causes of prayerlessness in our lives: We don’t actually believe we’re helpless. We think we’ve got things under control. We can handle it on our own. So, we don’t pray, or only pray when we finally realize our helplessness. But the reality is that we are helpless all the time, which is why we should be praying all the time. 

This is also part of the uneasy feeling during a pastoral vacancy. Having a pastor helps a congregation feel like they are no longer “helpless” and when the pastor leaves, they begin to feel very helpless in a variety of ways. You can respond in two ways. You can respond to that helpless feeling by trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do it all on your own or in your own strength OR you can respond by acknowledging your helplessness and turning to an all-powerful, all knowing God for help in prayer. I love how simply Ole Hallesby puts it, “Prayer therefore consists simply in telling God day by day in what ways we feel that we are helpless.” (26).

Yet, this passage is speaking about more than just coming to God in prayer for our own comfort and peace, but also continuously praying that the gospel would spread. We read, “At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.” (Colossians 4:3–4, ESV). On the one hand, this is deeply connected to what we were just talking about. Paul realizes that he is helpless in changing hearts and causing them to receive and believe the Gospel. So, where do you turn in your helplessness? To God. So, Paul tells the church that they need to be praying that God would open a door for the Word of God to spread and that he would be able to present the gospel clearly to his listeners. 

I think this is another important reminder for this church in the interim period.  I want you to continue steadfastly in prayer throughout the interim, not only for peace and comfort, but also that God would open wide a door for the gospel in Beaver Dam during the interim. It’s this reminder that the ministry of this congregation is not put on hold while you wait for the next pastor because the ministry of this congregation comes from the congregation. So, be praying that God would continue to open doors and continue to do a powerful work in Beaver Dam in this time. 

That’s also why our passage shifts away from Paul’s ministry to the congregation itself. We read, “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” (Colossians 4:5–6, ESV). This is turning away from the focus on Paul’s ministry to the ministry of the people in Colossae. He’s telling each member of the congregation to recognize that they are living out their faith in the world, surrounded by people who do not know the gospel, and that they are to interact with these non-believers with wisdom, focus, grace, and winsomeness. Once again, this is a reminder that the ministry of the church—the evangelism of the church—is not about one, single person. It’s about the church—every member—living their faith out in the world, taking every opportunity to share the gospel, learning how to interact and respond to questions and criticisms, doing it with grace, but also in an effective way that draws people in. 

I also want to make sure we don’t miss another aspect of this. He begins this by saying, “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders…” (Colossians 4:5, ESV). This is an interesting way to word this. Some may think he’s telling Christians to be weary of “outsiders” and to make sure you’re not tempted and drawn away from the faith. While that can be a concern, that’s not exactly what he’s talking about. What he means is that we should live godly lives in the midst of the world. Especially when this was written—but no less today—there were tons of slanderous and false accusations being leveled against Christians, trying to prevent people from following Jesus. Paul is telling them that not only are they to know how to verbally respond to those slanderous attacks, but the way they live their lives should be a response to those attacks AND their lives should lay a groundwork that helps with the spread of the gospel. 

This entire conversation reminded me of a really good book I read a couple years ago. It was called Evangelism in the Early Church, by Michael Green. In the book he’s trying to figure out how in the world the gospel spread like wildfire in the first and second centuries. Unsurprisingly, he ends up saying much of what Paul is saying in this passage. I love this line from the book, “The ordinary people of the Church saw it as their job: Christianity was supremely a lay movement, spread by informal missionaries.” (Loc. 5996). To tie everything together, he also says, “It was, then, with the Scriptures and prayer as their main weapons, backed up by their love, their burning zeal to share their faith with others, and the sheer quality of their living and dying, that the early Christians set out to evangelize the world.” (Loc. 5613). The gospel spread like wildfire because everyday Christians prayed for the spread of the gospel, and then lived out that gospel in their daily lives, and took every opportunity to share that gospel with those who were not saved. The church was built, not by pastors, but by the congregations. 

I realize that people begin to hear this and get kinda nervous or begin feeling guilty. We all know that if you want to make someone feel guilty all you need to do is ask them when was the last time they shared the gospel with someone. Yet, we know feeling guilty doesn’t accomplish anything. People start to feel nervous about this because they feel like they have no idea what to do. They feel helpless…which should cause us to do what? To pray to the God who is not helpless. Our helplessness should not prevent us from doing the work God has called us to do. Rather, it should cause us to continually rely on God through prayer, as we do the work he’s called us to do. 

With that said, I do want to share a couple ways the early church shared the gospel that helps people realize that it’s not as complicated as we’ve made it over the years. We talked about this first one repeatedly as we went through the Gospel of John. Green writes, “But what could the first generation believers do to share with others who had not been present the new life they enjoyed in Christ? They could bear their witness; that is all. They had two things to say. First, that they had believed, and had found the claims of the divine Teacher to be true in their own lives and experience. Second, they could give the evidence on which they had committed themselves.” (Loc. 1665). Sharing your witness with non-believer doesn’t have to include much more than simply talking about the fact that you believe in Jesus, why you believed in Jesus, and how you’ve seen Jesus work in your life. That’s not actually that hard. It’s also not very intimidating to do because it’s not confrontational or anything like that. You’re just simply telling them about what you believe and have experienced through Christ. 

The second one is often overlooked, but is very powerful. Green writes, “Third, it is very noticeable that the home provided the most natural context for gossiping the gospel…The sheer informality and relaxed atmosphere of the home, not to mention the hospitality which must often have gone with it, all helped to make this form of evangelism particularly successful.” (Loc. 270, 5003). Hospitality was another key to sharing and spreading the gospel. Simply having people over to your house for a meal and having a conversation with them about life. As you have a conversation, you’re able to talk about a wide variety of things—including what you believe and why you believe it. It’s a powerful way to share and spread the gospel. 

The point is that ministry is not about a single person—but about a body of people working together—continues throughout the end of the book. We see Paul begin to list person after person after person at the end of the letter. He talks about eleven different people in this passage. I wish I could spend the time diving into each of them and their unique ministry and their history—or even future—but we don’t have the time for that this morning. Rather, I want to focus on the main point of this final section. GK Beale does a great job summarizing this portion by saying, “Paul emphasizes his sincere pastoral concern for the Colossians by reminding them that not only he but also his coworkers have pastoral concern for them and they should show the same concern to others.” (Beale, 349). Paul's not just giving a list of names here, but he’s showing the Colossians how much they are cared for—not only by him—but by all of these other people working on their behalf. 

It’s this powerful reminder for the Colossian church—and ours—that not only is the church not about a single person, it’s also not about a single church. In this final section Paul writes, “And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.” (Colossians 4:16, ESV). Earlier, we were also reminded that there was another church in the valley at Hierapolis. These churches weren’t disconnected from each other. Not only did they share pastors and workers between them—like Epaphras—they also shared letters between them. This letter was to be read in Laodicea and there was a letter to Laodicea that was supposed to be read by the Colossians—most likely another one written by Paul that we don’t have. These churches were connected to one another and supported one another and encouraged one another. 

I think this is another important reminder in the midst of the upcoming vacancy—and the beauty of being part of a denomination. Faith Community Church is not alone in this. Not only do we have members from the surrounding churches who are willing to fill the pulpit and bring God’s Word for us. We also have retired pastors who are interested in helping during the interim period. On top of that, we are connected to Classis Wisconsin and they are committed to caring for you and providing support in this vacancy. The surrounding churches in Randolph, Fox Lake, Waupun, and Horicon are committed to supporting you in this vacancy. There are denominational staff who have already helped provide resources and support and will continue to provide those resources and support. We’re part of a body that is much, much larger than this single congregation and we’re all in this together—which is a beautiful thing.

I want to end with what I think is the central message of this passage. It’s with Paul’s words to Archippus—poor Archippus who gets called out by name in this letter. We read, “And say to Archippus, “See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.”” (Colossians 4:17, ESV). We don’t know why Paul felt it necessary to call out Archippus in front of the congregation. It could have been because the congregation was undermining his ministry and he needed to be publicly lifted up by the Apostle. It could have also been because he was being lazy, and had settled, and was no longer fulfilling the ministry the Lord had given him and Paul thought it was worth a public rebuke to get him back up and going. Whatever the reason, the message is very clear. God has given you a ministry and you are to fulfill that ministry.

I think that is not just true of Archippus, but to every single member of this congregation. God has given you a ministry. That ministry looks different for every one of us and it depends on the gifts that God has given you. But either way, He has given you a ministry. That ministry may be like a pastor or elder—preaching and teaching and shepherding. It may be that of a deacon—caring for the physical needs of the congregation. It may be a ministry of musical gifting. It may be a ministry of caring for the poor in the community. It may be a ministry to children. It may be a ministry of prayer. It may be a ministry that occurs through your. Workplace. I could go on and on and on and on. The point is, God has given you a ministry. What is that ministry? Are you fulfilling it? If not, make sure you are fulfilling the ministry God has given you because the ministry of the church is the ministry of its members.

The church doesn’t rise and fall based on a single person—unless that person is Jesus Christ—and thank God he has promised, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18, ESV). Keep your eyes on Him in this interim period. Continually be in prayer to him. And fulfill the ministry he has given you. And through all of that He will build his church. 

Sermon Outline

Main Thesis

All roles in Christian life—whether in marriage, family, or work—are fundamentally about serving Christ rather than people, and this service must be done "heartily" (from the soul) with eternal perspective.

I. The Foundational Principle (3:17, 23-24)

• Connection to previous passage: "Whatever you do...do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus" (3:17)

• Key phrases throughout: "in the Lord," "pleases the Lord," "fearing the Lord," "for the Lord," "from the Lord"

• Central reality: "You are serving the Lord Christ" (3:24) applies to all roles, not just servants

II. What "Hearty" Service Means (3:23)

• Greek concept: Working "from the soul"

• Two dimensions:

  • Working hard for Christ (full effort, not half-hearted)

  • Working from the heart (genuine motivation, not external compliance)

• Contrast: Not "eye-service" or people-pleasing, but "sincerity of heart" (3:22)

III. Marriage Roles (3:18-19)

For Wives (3:18):

• Command: Submit to husbands "as is fitting in the Lord"

• Qualifier: Ultimate submission is to Christ first

• Manner: Heartily—not grudgingly or externally only

For Husbands (3:19):

• Command: Love wives, don't be harsh

• Biblical love: Laying down your life (cf. 1 John 3:16)

• Manner: Heartily—joyfully, not as victim or martyr

Core principle for both: "Get over yourself" (Philippians 2:3)

IV. Family Dynamics (3:20-21)

For Children (3:20):

• Command: "Obey your parents in everything"

• Motivation: "This pleases the Lord"

• Qualifier: In everything that pleases Jesus

For Fathers (3:21):

• Command: Don't provoke/embitter children

• Goal: Joyful obedience, not mere compliance

• Principle: Make parenting enjoyable for parents (cf. Hebrews 13:17)

V. Work Relationships (3:22-4:1)

For Servants (3:22-25):

• Serve earthly masters as serving Christ

• Work from sincere heart, not for show

• Ultimate authority is Christ, not human masters

For Masters (4:1):

• Treat servants justly and fairly

• Remember you have a Master in heaven

Historical note: Paul's approach undermined slavery by changing the dynamic rather than direct abolition

VI. Eternal Motivation (3:24-25)

Positive reward (3:24):

• Inheritance from the Lord as reward

• Changes perspective on all earthly service

Negative consequence (3:25):

• Wrongdoers will be paid back

• God shows no partiality (rich/poor, male/female)

Conclusion

Every word and deed should be done heartily for Christ, motivated by gratitude for forgiveness and anticipation of eternal inheritance. This transforms how we approach marriage, parenting, work, and all relationships.

Sermon Audio Recording

Sermon Manuscript

[Read Colossians 3:18-4:1]

Some of you know Rachel and I’s story, but I’m not sure how much I’ve talked about it since coming to Faith Community Church. We got married very young. I was twenty and Rachel was eighteen. We had no money. We had a small trailer house. We had one young daughter. We had no idea what we were doing. The first couple years of our marriage were not bad, but they were fairly rough. I kinda dove into marriage thinking I knew what it was about and what I needed to do as a husband and a father. That statement right there shows you how little I knew…lol. I had no clue. 

As I think back on some of the rough patches of those first few years—and some of the moments I’m still ashamed of—it was the result of being focused on myself. Prior to marriage, all you have to think about is yourself—what you want, when you want it. You’re so used to being able to focus on yourself that you instinctively keep doing that even when you know you have other responsibilities. But marriage doesn’t work that way. Last week I talked about how the heart of love is laying down your life—or getting over yourself. Marriage is the perfect situation to learn how to do that—to learn that you are not the center of the universe, and you can no longer focus on yourself, but need to learn how to lay down your life for your spouse and your children.

Now, this morning’s passage has a lot of content in it, but as I typically do, I want to make sure we understand how all of this connects to the broader message of Colossians, and how it all fits together in a few principles. Because unless you understand the bigger picture, you can’t fully understand the smaller details. 

Right away, I want to make sure we realize that this passage is flowing directly from the last verse of last week’s passage. That’s also why I included it in this week’s reading again. Last week’s passage ended saying, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:17, ESV). It’s this broad command to all believers that since we’ve been united to Jesus Christ by faith, we need to remember that now we’re representatives of Jesus Christ wherever we go and in whatever we say. Last week that was summarizing the way people were to conduct themselves in the Christian community. Yet, Paul is also setting up this week’s passage. He’s working out this reality in all of the various details of the household—which back then contained husbands, wives, children, fathers, servants, and masters. He’s basically telling each of these groups what it looks like to represent Jesus in each of these roles on a very practical level. 

One of the ways we see that is through a few phrases throughout this morning’s passage. Phrases like, “…in the Lord…pleases the Lord…fearing the Lord…for the Lord…from the Lord…” (Colossians 3:18,20, 22, 23, 24 ESV). Basically, every single command and instruction in this passage is qualified by some phrase connecting it to the Lord Jesus Christ. All of our words and actions are “in the Lord” because we’re in the Lord and are not representing Jesus in everything we say and do—and that applies to our marriages, families, and workplaces. 

Ultimately, near the end of the passage he says it very clearly: “You are serving the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3:24, ESV). Now, that statement is specifically directed at servants. However, I believe this is the point Paul is making throughout the entire passage for each and every one of these roles. Wives, be aware that you are not serving your husbands, ultimately you are serving Jesus Christ. Husbands, be reminded that you are not serving your wives, but ultimately you are serving Jesus Christ. Children, be aware that you are not serving your parents but ultimately Jesus Christ. All across the board, Paul is reminding believers that Jesus Christ is the one they serve and the one whom they represent in every aspect of their lives. 

The question is: How should that affect the way we serve in these various roles? Before diving into the specifics, I want to continue looking at the broader picture because Paul gives us a broader understanding of how this affects our day to day life. He says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…” (Colossians 3:23, ESV). Again, this is specifically addressing the servants, but I think it’s really addressing everyone, especially since it connects so clearly to verse 17. Let me show you by taking out some of the middle verses: “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus…Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…” (Colossians 3:17,23 ESV). See how universal that command is? How close it is to verse 17? I think it serves as a solid underlying principle that Paul is trying to make in this passage. He’s making the point that since we’re not serving men, but serving Jesus Christ, that means we’re going to do it heartily. We’re going to heartily be a wife, husband, child, father, servant, master. 

So, what does that mean? What does it mean to do something heartily? The original Greek has this worded in an interesting way. It says that we are to “work from our soul.” There’s a lot to say on this. In some sense, to work from the soul and to work heartily means that we are going to work hard for Jesus Christ. We’re not going to do it in a half-hearted manner, only doing the basic requirements, but going full out for Jesus. So, there’s this sense in which because we’re serving Jesus Christ, and because we love and trust him and have given him our lives, we’re going to love and serve with everything we’ve got—with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

Yet, I think there’s something else here that’s really important and connects with last week’s sermon. One of the points I made in last week’s sermon is that the Christian life is not about the externals, but ultimately about heart transformation that results in changed external actions. That’s also what Paul is talking about here. If you go to the verse prior to this you read, “…not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart…” (Colossians 3:22, ESV). So, in some ways, to work heartily means to work from the heart. That as we serve our spouse, we’re not just going through the motions—doing things because we’re supposed to do them—but we’re doing it from the heart. When we’re interacting with our parent’s, we’re not just going through the motions but doing it from the heart. We’re not doing these things because we want to look like we care, but because we actually care. We’re not doing these things because we want to look like we’re obedient, but because we’re actually obedient. 

That leads us into the nitty gritty breakdown that Paul provides us with. This portion is often called a household code. These were really common back in the ancient world. They liked to create order in the household by outlining the duties of the various members of the household. Also, remember what I said earlier, that the household was bigger than just the parents and the children. In the ancient world, in many ways, the household was the family business, which included everyone who worked for the family business—including servants. So, the household could be fairly large, which required everyone to know their roles and responsibilities to help things function smoothly. Many have noted that what Paul is doing here is taking the standard household code of his day and making it Christian, infusing everything with Jesus Christ at the center of everything we say and do in our homes. 

He begins by Christianizing the marriage relationship. He says, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” (Colossians 3:18–19, ESV). As a side note, I kinda laughed this week as I prepared my sermon because the very first sermon series I preached in this church was through the book of Ephesians, which had me preaching on this topic in the first few weeks of starting as pastor. Now, I’m preaching on it again in the last weeks of being pastor here. God has a sense of humor. 

Obviously, parts of this passage are not very popular today—and it’s not the part that tells husbands to love their wives and not be harsh with them. It’s the part that tells wives to submit to their husbands. Not only is this not popular today, but some women have a visceral reaction to this. I’ve been in churches where I’ve watched people stand up and walk out of the church simply because the pastor read this passage—not even sticking around long enough to hear what he had to say about it. 

And because it’s such an unpopular topic, whenever someone preaches on it—including myself—we often feel like we have to surround it with a bunch of nuance and caveats. I don’t want to do that this morning. It’s pretty clear. Wives, one of the ways that you serve Jesus Christ in your marriage is to submit to your husband. And to connect that to everything I’ve said so far in this sermon, that also means that you are to heartily submit to your husbands—not gritting your teeth, not doing it externally while internally hating every minute of it, not grumbling and complaining. Submit heartily to your husbands because this is how you serve Jesus Christ in your marriage. 

Now, Paul does give his own caveat in this. He says, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.” (Colossians 3:18, ESV). Ultimately, this means that you are submitting to Christ first and foremost, above all things, including your husband. So, that means you must never submit to your husband in anything that would dishonor Jesus Christ or in anything that would cause you to no longer be able to represent Jesus Christ well in what you say and do. 

For husbands, the way they serve Christ in their marriages is: “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” (Colossians 3:19, ESV). I’ve heard some people groan when saying this. Basically saying, “Ohhhh. That’s hard. Love your wife and be nice to her. Why do the guys get the easy part when the wives get the hard part.” That’s absolutely not true and shows a lack of understanding of what the Bible talks about as love. Remember what we talked about last week? “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us… (1 John 3:16, ESV). This is how husbands are called to serve Jesus Christ in their marriages—to lovingly lay down their lives for their spouse. And, husbands, you are to do that heartily—not grumbling under your breath, not gritting your teeth, not playing the victim—but laying down your life with joy and passion for your wife. 

A few weeks ago, I attended my cousin’s wedding and we were asked to give them our number one piece of marriage advice. You may be able to guess what I wrote down: Get over yourself (Phil 2:3). That’s basically what Paul is telling husbands and wives to do in their marriages. Get over yourself in your own unique way. This is no longer about you. And as you get over yourself, you don’t get to play the victim, and you don’t get to play the martyr, and you don’t get to whine and complain and be grumpy about it. Joyfully get over yourself and submit and love. 

Then Paul moves on from marriages and talks about family dynamics. He says, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” (Colossians 3:20–21, ESV). Paul doesn’t beat around the bush here, does he? When should you obey your parents? In everything. Ok, so sometimes? No. In everything. Just in case you weren’t paying attention, children, he said “in everything.” You might say, “Well, that’s hard!” Join the club. It’s hard for wives to submit, it’s hard for husbands to lay down their lives, and it’s hard for children to obey in everything. But Paul says to obey in everything. 

Why should you obey your parents in everything? He tells you: “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” (Colossians 3:20, ESV). It pleases Jesus Christ when children obey their parents. That’s why. It actually tells you that you are to be way more concerned about pleasing Jesus Christ than your parents, which is why you obey your parents in everything. It also means that if your parents were to ever tell you to do something that would not please Jesus, then you must not obey them in that thing. That’s the caveat in this. You must always seek to please Jesus over all things, and that means obeying your parents in all things that please Jesus. 

When talking about obeying your parents, I typically like to bring up this verse from Hebrews. It’s talking about church leaders, but it applies very well to our parents: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” (Hebrews 13:17, ESV). He’s basically telling them that it’s never a good idea to make your parents dislike parenting you. It’s actually better for you in the long run to make your parents live easy—to make it so that they enjoy parenting you. So, obey them in everything and please the Lord. 

Fathers, you need to make sure you don’t provoke and discourage your children: “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” (Colossians 3:21, ESV). We typically use the word “provoke” in a different sense, almost like picking on someone, trying to annoy them or pick a fight with them—like you’re provoking a fight. It’s a little different here. The word can mean something more like resentful and embittered. I get the image of someone who is being kind of beat down and discouraged—someone who is constantly feeling attacked and yelled at. That’s not how we are to parent our children. 

Really, the goal of parenting fits in line with what this passage is about. We don’t want our children to simply obey. We want our children to heartily obey. We don’t want them to do what we told them to do, hating it the entire time. Rather, we want them to learn how to love doing what we want them to do. When parents find themselves in a position where they are making their children resentful and embittered, it’s likely because they are no longer seeking to help their children love the command, but simply obey the command. Yes, children are commanded in this passage to heartily obey their parents—to joyful obedience—but parents are also commanded to work toward joyful obedience in their children. 

I realize I haven’t left a lot of time to deal with another fairly controversial passage in the bible—the topic of slavery. Some people have looked to passages like this to try to justify various forms of slavery or to say that Paul encouraged slavery. That’s just not true. In reality, Paul says something very counter-cultural in this passage. He actually tells slaves that they are not serving their masters—that their masters are not their ultimate authority—but Jesus Christ is not their master. Then, he reminds the masters that they are servants to a greater Master, Jesus Christ, and that they need to act accordingly. 

He says, “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ…Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.” (Colossians 3:22–4:1, ESV). Of course, many people would have loved for Paul to simply tell everyone to do away with slavery because it wasn’t compatible with the Christian faith. However, many have pointed out that what Paul does in this passage was to completely undermine the reality of slavery, changing the dynamic between master and slave. He paints a picture where you have servants lovingly, joyfully serving and working for their masters and where masters are lovingly, joyfully caring for their servants fairly and justly. You can see how this would eventually lead to the point where slavery was completely done away with. 

So, Paul has already given us reason to live and act these ways—doing it from the heart. He’s told us that we do this because we realize that we’re serving someone higher than the people in front of us—we’re serving Jesus Christ. However, he gives us one other reason in two forms. He reminds everyone that there’s a reward waiting for them. It could be a negative reward or a positive reward. 

The negative reward is set before them when he says, “For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.” (Colossians 3:25, ESV). The wrong doer will receive a reward for their wrongdoing, but it won’t be a good reward. They will reap what they sow. And Paul makes sure that nobody thinks they’re getting out of it because God shows no partiality. That means that the rich are not going to buy their way out of this, but it also means that the poor aren’t off the hook either. God shows no partiality to the rich or the poor. It also means that you don’t get out of this because you’re a man or a woman. God shows no partiality. If you’re living and speaking in ways that are contrary to Jesus Christ—you will receive the negative reward. 

However, he also lays out the positive reward, saying, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3:23–24, ESV). There are a variety of reasons why we live and act heartily for the Lord in this life. We live and act heartily because Jesus Christ has taken our sins and cast them as far as the east is from the west and made them as white as snow. So, because we’re so grateful and thankful, we heartily serve him in everything we do. 

However, Paul also lays out this reason—there’s an inheritance waiting for us as a reward. That’s part of our motivation in everything we do. To put this in the setting of the workplace, you’re not actually working at your job for the immediate paycheck you receive. Rather, you need to be working in your job as if you’re serving Jesus Christ, who will reward you with a rich inheritance in heaven. See how that changes everything? This also applies back to everything else we said previously. Why do you submit to your husband even when it’s extremely difficult? Because you’re serving Jesus Christ, who will reward you with a rich inheritance in heaven. Why do you lay down your life for your wife, when it hurts? Because you’re serving Jesus Christ, who will reward you with a rich inheritance in heaven. Why do you obey your parents even when it’s hard? Because you’re serving Jesus Christ, who will reward you with a rich inheritance in heaven.

This is actually the motivation for everything we do. Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything heartily as if you were serving Jesus Christ, knowing that he has a reward and inheritance waiting for you in heaven. 

Sermon Outline

I. The Problem: Misunderstanding Christian Maturity

• External vs. Internal Measures

  • Common temptation to measure maturity by attendance, Bible reading, spiritual disciplines

  • The Pharisee problem: external excellence masking spiritual death

• Consequences of External Focus

  • Creates "fake it" mentality among members

  • Establishes church hierarchy (elite, middle-class, lowest rung)

  • Breeds pride and division

  • Leads to "my way or the highway" attitudes

II. Paul's Context and Purpose

• Addressing False Teaching in Colossae

  • External practices creating hierarchies

  • Division resulting from misplaced focus

• Building on Previous Passage

  • Identity as those who died to old self and were raised in Christ

III. Our New Identity: Chosen, Holy, and Beloved (v. 12a)

• Community Focus, Not Individual

  • "Put on" is second person plural ("y'all")

  • Salvation draws us into both Christ and Christian community

  • No such thing as individual Christianity

• "Holy" as Set Apart

  • Not just purity, but distinction from the world

  • Christian community as "contrast community"

IV. Living Out Our Identity: The Character List (vv. 12b-13)

• Not Legalistic but Identity-Based

  • Not earning family membership but living as family

  • "Since you are already part of the family, this is how we live"

• Forgiveness as the Center

  • All traits connect to forgiving as Christ forgave us

  • Our massive debt vs. others' minor offenses

  • Enables compassion, kindness, humility, patience, forbearance

V. Love as the Binding Force (v. 14)

• Love Summarizes Everything

  • Connects to Jesus' great commandments (love God, love neighbor)

• Love Defined Properly

  • Not just warm feelings or emotions

  • Demonstrated by laying down our lives (1 John 3:16)

  • Action-oriented, not just feeling-oriented

VI. Peace as Community Referee (v. 15)

• Community Application, Not Just Individual

  • Peace of Christ rules in the community because we're "one body"

• Peace as Umpire/Referee

  • Greek word means referee overseeing contests

  • Peace of Christ arbitrates disputes and conflicts

  • Unity isn't optional

VII. Word of Christ Dwelling Richly (v. 16)

• Abundant Saturation in Community

  • Should characterize the community, not just individuals

• Two Overflows of God's Word

  • Teaching and admonishing one another with wisdom

  • Singing psalms, hymns, spiritual songs with thankfulness

  • Word affects both intellect and heart

VIII. Everything in Jesus' Name (v. 17)

• Total Life Application

  • Every word and deed represents Christ

• Specific Community Focus

  • Governing principle for congregational decisions, disputes, conflicts

  • Test: Does this properly represent Jesus Christ?

  • Aligns with our identity as God's chosen, holy, beloved people

IX. Heart Transformation, Not External Performance

• Internal Change, Not Rule-Following

  • Being characterized by these traits, not just doing them

  • Living into new identity through Holy Spirit's power

• Result: Community That Glorifies Christ

  • Loving, forgiving, peaceful, Word-saturated people

  • Honoring Christ in everything said and done

Audio Recording

Sermon Manuscript

[Read Colossians 3:12-17]

There are many different ways to destroy Christian community. It can be destroyed through the slow slide away from doctrinal fidelity and the embrace of our own ideas and opinions. It can be destroyed by ignoring sin and looking the other way and allowing sinfulness to run rampant and destroy the church community. But there’s another way that you can destroy Christian community that is much more subtle. It can be destroyed by making a subtle shift in the way we understand Christian spiritual maturity. 

What makes someone a mature, Christian believer? How do you measure that? Is it measured by how often they attend church, or how often they read their bible, or how often they fast or have visions? There’s a temptation to say, “Yeah, that’s how we measure Christian maturity” but that’s not quite right. Of course, someone who is a mature Christian is attending church regularly, is reading their bible regularly, and is practicing various spiritual disciplines regularly. However, that’s how we measure spiritual maturity because those are all external things. 

Here’s why we don’t measure spiritual maturity this way—based on external things. I can tell you in one word—the Pharisees. The Pharisees measured spiritual maturity based on a whole host of external things—they measured it based on spiritual disciplines, attendance at the temple, and knowledge of the Bible. Based on the external markers the Pharisees would have been the maturest of the mature—the elite—yet Jesus said they were whitewashed tombs full of dead bones. They were not only immature, but they were dead. There was no spiritual life in them. 

This is what happens when churches begin to measure spiritual maturity based on external things. Not only does it cause a bunch of people to “fake it” and practice a variety of external things, but it also causes there to be a hierarchy in the church. You have the elite members of the church who do all of the things, then you have the middle-class who are pretty good, and then you have those who are the lowest rung of church society. Then, as soon as you have this sort of hierarchy formed in a church, then pride creeps in and divisions begin to happen and the community is slowly destroyed.

This can happen in a variety of more subtle ways. Let me give you one quick example. Once people begin to see themselves as the “elite” members of a congregation, they also begin to think that they are the only ones who know how a church should function or operate. I mean, nobody else really understands… So, they begin to take a “my way or the highway” approach to the church and try to shape the church in their own image—or into the image they think it should be. They stop caring about what anyone else thinks or says (because those people don’t know what they’re talking about) and keep pushing in a singular direction or pushing on a singular issue. You can see how that reveals pride, sows and causes division, and will eventually destroy a community. 

Paul is writing this morning’s passage to address those very temptations and issues. If you remember what I said a number of weeks ago, there is some false teaching happening in the Colossian church. It’s a false teaching that is focused more on external practices and measurements and is causing some problems like I mentioned. It’s causing some hierarchies in the church, which have led to some division in the church. Paul is writing this portion of the letter to address these issues. 

He begins by building on last week’s passage and pointing out the reality of the situation. He says, “…as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved…” (Colossians 3:12, ESV). This is who they are now. If you remember last week, it was about the fact that they had died to their old self and had been raised to new life in Jesus Christ and have put on that new self. Well, that new self is someone who is chosen by God, someone who is beloved by God, and who is made holy by God. That IS the new self that they’ve put on in Jesus Christ. 

Now, when people read this, they typically think about this in individualistic terms. I’m chosen, beloved, and made holy by God—which is true. However, Paul is talking about all of this in the context of the community. That’s why Paul begins by saying, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved… (Colossians 3:12, ESV). The command to “put on” is in the second person plural. So, he’s saying, “Y’all need to put these things on. Y’all are God’s chosen people, holy and loved by him.” He’s talking about this more from a community, collective standpoint. 

This is really important because when we’re drawn into Jesus Christ through faith, we’re also drawn into the Body of Jesus Christ through faith. You could also say that when we’re drawn into fellowship with Jesus Christ through faith, we’re also drawn into fellowship with other believers at the same time. We read this in Ephesians, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:13–16, ESV). Notice that it talks about how salvation draws us into Christ AND into the Christian community. It’s a really important reminder that there is no individual Christianity—it’s always done in the midst of a community. 

I also want to point out one of the characteristics of that community. He says we’re, “…God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved…” (Colossians 3:12, ESV). I want to look at the word “holy” for a bit because it can mean a variety of things. In some ways we naturally think of “holy” referring to something that is pure and untainted by sin—which is kinda true. However, “holy” really refers to something that is set apart from everything else. We call God “holy” because he is so pure and righteous and “other” that he is completely set apart from anything in all of creation. Now, when we’re called “holy” that’s not the same with us, however, it carries a similar connotation. The connotation is that the community of Christian believers are set apart from the rest of the world. I have liked the phrasing of the Christian community being a contrast community in the midst of the world. We’re a community that does things differently because we’re God’s chosen people, holy and beloved. We don’t act the same way as other worldly communities. There’s something different here—and people should notice. 

That’s also why Paul gives this list of attributes that we are to put on. This isn’t a legalistic thing, but an identity thing. There’s a difference. A legalistic thing would say, “If you want to be part of this family, you need to do these things.” That’s about earning your way into the family. Yet, that’s not what Paul is doing here. Rather, he’s saying, “Since you are already part of the family—God’s chosen, holy, and loved people—this is how you live now. This is how we do things in our family.” 

So he says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” (Colossians 3:12–13, ESV). Now, in some ways, this is a list of attributes of what it looks like for us—as a community—to live as God’s people in the world. I don’t want to spend time going through each of these attributes. Instead, I want you to see how they are all connected. Some say that all of these attributes center on the idea of bearing with one another, and others say these attributes center on the idea of forgiving one another. I could go either way, but if I had to choose, I would choose forgiving one another since this is at the core of the Christian faith and we’re told that we are to forgive each other AS Jesus has forgiven us. 

This is at the core of what it means to be in Christian community—it’s at the core of what makes the Christian community a contrast community in the world. We live as people who are forgiven by Jesus Christ. And when we’re honest with ourselves, we realize that Christ didn’t just have to forgive us for a little offense, but he forgave a massive debt that hung over our head and our life. He forgave a debt that we could never pay. That leaves us no excuse to refuse to forgive someone else because their debt against you is minuscule in relation to your debt toward Christ. So, as someone who has been forgiven an unpayable debt, you willingly and joyfully forgive in this community. It’s central to everything we do. 

Notice how that is connected to the other traits. If you center your life on being someone who forgives, you can see how a compassionate heart is at the core of who you are. You can see how kindness will play a role and humility. You can see how being quick to forgive allows you to be patient and to bear with one another. They all center around this idea of being someone who forgives because they’ve been forgiven. Or, I should say, it all centers around being a community of believers who forgive because they’ve been forgiven. 

Now, the hard truth in all of this is that the opposite is also possibly true. What if you notice that you’re beginning to lack kindness and compassion in your life (or in this congregation), or that you are lacking patience with other believers, or finding it hard to bear with each other? It may mean that you are not forgiving as the Lord has forgiven you. It may mean that you’ve underestimated the level of forgiveness you’ve received from Jesus Christ and it’s infecting the community—spreading like a virus. The answer then is to do what you always do when you recognize sin in your life—Repent and Believe. 

Eventually, Paul sums this all with a familiar statement, “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:14, ESV). So, he tells us that it’s all about love really. If the Christian community is going to be set apart from the rest of the world—distinct—it needs to be characterized by love. That is what will bind everything together. Love will lead to kind and compassionate hearts. Love will lead toward humility and patience. Love will free you to bear with one another and forgive one another. 

This shouldn’t surprise us because Jesus sums everything up with love. Remember Jesus’ response when the lawyer asked, “"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:36-40). What is the summary of the whole bible? Love God and Love neighbor. Love. 

Now, of course, I always have to take a little detour and talk about what love is and what it means, because we’ve got this all messed up in our current cultural situation and it often infects the church. The vast majority of people limit love to some warm fuzzy feeling they have or to butterflies in their stomach. They limit it purely to the emotions. Yet, it’s more than that. We read this, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16, ESV). Love also requires action. We know love because Jesus laid down his life for us. And because we love our neighbors, we will also lay down our life for them. This doesn’t mean emotions are not involved, but it means that there’s much more going on here. This is why Paul says that love ties it all together. Because when we are willing to lay down our lives for the Christian community, then we are kind and compassionate and patient and forbearing and forgiving.

Then he goes on to talk about peace. He says, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.” (Colossians 3:15, ESV). Again, this is one of those passages that is typically understood from an individualistic point of view. Most people read this and say, “Oh, the peace of Christ is supposed to rule in my heart”—which is true, however, that’s not fully the case. To think of this in the individualistic sense doesn’t make sense in the context because the reason they are supposed to let the peace of Christ rule in their hearts is because they’ve been called into one body. So, how would that apply to you as an individual? It only makes sense to understand this as being a community reality. He’s telling the Body of Christ—the Christian Community—that they need to let the peace of Christ rule in the community—and not division—because they’ve been called into one body.

There’s actually a beautiful image in this passage. The greek word for “rule” actually means something like an umpire or a referee. Even back then, they had umpires and referees overseeing their contests, making sure that people were following the rules, making sure people stayed within the bounds of the game. The image is that the peace of Christ needs to be the referee of the Christian community. The peace of Christ needs to be the umpire when disputes come up or conflict arises. It’s because they are called into one body—unity isn’t optional. 

He goes on to add another layer to all of this. He says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3:16, ESV). Again, this is obviously true about individuals—that individually we are to have the word of Christ dwelling in us richly. However, the point of this passage is that the word of Christ is to dwell in the community of believers richly or abundantly. As God’s people living as a contrast community in the world, we should be known for being a loving people, a peaceful people, and a people who are saturated in the word of Christ. Everyone should recognize this about us. 

He points out that the word of Christ should dwell in us so abundantly that it overflows in a couple ways. First he says that the word of Christ should overflow to the point that we’re “…teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom…” (Colossians 3:16, ESV). The Word of Christ should be such a part of this community that it naturally flows out as we talk to each other and hang out. We will be naturally teaching each other new things from the Word, or teaching each other ways to apply the word in new situations we face. The word of Christ should be so abundant in the life of this congregation that we’re naturally correcting and admonishing one another according to the word of Christ. We’re naturally saying things like, “That’s not how God’s people live and act in the world because he told us…” And we should be so filled with the word of Christ that we will do all of this with wisdom—not beating people over the head with the bible, but not ignoring things either. Because we’re so filled with the word of Christ we will know when to speak and when to listen, which means we’ll do it with wisdom.

Second he says that the word of Christ should overflow to the point that we’re “…singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3:16, ESV). The word of Christ should overflow from our hearts not only in conversations and teaching, but also in song. This not only means that the songs we sing in church should be the overflow of the word of Christ, but the point is that the word of Christ is not only an intellectual thing—it’s not just about teaching and correcting. It hits something else inside of us that causes us to want to sing his praises. 

Ultimately, all of this is summed up by the final verse, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:17, ESV). This is his way of saying, “Since you are God’s people—chosen, holy, and loved—don’t forget that applies to every aspect of your life.” This applies to you in everything you do and in everything you say. You are a representative of him. So, keep this in mind at all times in everything you do.  

Of course this applies to what you do and say in your workplace or at the grocery store or in your home, but the very specific point he’s making here is that this also refers to the way we function as a Christian community. This needs to be the overarching, governing principle of everything we do in this congregation. It needs to be the center of every decision, every dispute, every potential conflict—are we speaking and acting in a way that properly represents Jesus Christ? Are we speaking and acting in a way that is in line with who we are now—God’s chosen people, holy and beloved?

I just want to end with the reminder not to make this about external practices—but about internal transformation or your heart. This passage is not about simply doing all of these things but it’s about your heart being changed to the point where you’re characterized by these things. It’s about living into our new identity—through the power of the Holy Spirit—as God’s people, holy and beloved. A people who love one another, forgive one another, who let the peace of Christ rule in their community, who are filled to overflowing with the word of Christ, and who honor and glorify him in everything they say and do. 

Sermon Outline

I. Introduction: The Moving Day Illustration

• Personal story of unloading the moving truck in hot, muggy weather

• Getting drenched in sweat, exhausted, and gross

• The relief of showering and putting on clean clothes

• Key Point: Once clean, you never want to put the dirty clothes back on

II. Paul's Lists of "Dirty Clothes" (vv. 5, 8-9)

A. The Sins We've Taken Off:

• Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness

• Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying

B. The Lack of Fruit from Sin:

• Each sin promises pleasure but delivers destruction

• Looking back at past sins reveals their emptiness

• Reference to Romans 6:21: "What fruit were you getting...?"

III. The Heart Issue: Covetousness as Idolatry (v. 5)

A. Paul's Key Insight:

• "Covetousness, which is idolatry"

• Connects the 1st and 10th commandments

B. Supporting Scripture - James 4:1-2:

• All conflict stems from coveting

• Murder, adultery, false worship - all rooted in distorted desires

C. Definition of Covetousness:

• More than wanting what we don't have

• "Consuming ambition" and "greed gone amuck"

• Never satisfied, always wanting more

IV. Remembering Our Former Life (v. 7)

A. "In these you too once walked"

• We used to live wearing these "stinky clothes"

• Importance of remembering our past lifestyle

B. The Seriousness of Sin (v. 6):

• "On account of these the wrath of God is coming"

• Sin doesn't just hurt us - it angers God

• The cross demonstrates sin's seriousness

V. The Decisive Change in Christ (vv. 9-10)

A. What Has Already Happened:

• "You have put off the old self"

• "You have put on the new self"

• We are "dead to" our former lifestyle (v. 5, NASB)

B. Connection to Last Week's Message:

• Since we're seated with Christ in heaven

• We seek heavenly things and are dead to earthly things

VI. The Ongoing Renewal Process (v. 10)

A. The Tension:

• Decisive change has occurred

• But renewal "is being renewed" - ongoing process

B. The Monastery Illustration:

• Monks with old and new robes hanging side by side

• Daily choice to put on the new robe, not the old

C. Daily Battle:

• "But now you must put them all away" (v. 8)

• Continual need to "kill" the old patterns

• John Owen's quote: "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you"

VII. The Ultimate Goal: Renewed in God's Image (v. 10)

A. Back to Genesis 1:26-27:

• Originally created in God's image

• Image distorted by sin, but not destroyed

B. Restoration Through Christ:

• Jesus IS the image of God

• We're being renewed to look like Jesus

• Living the life we were created to live

VIII. The Conclusion: Christ is All (v. 11)

A. Earthly Distinctions Don't Matter:

• Greek, Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free

• We could add many more divisions to this list

B. Central Truth:

• "Christ is all, and in all"

• He must be central to everything we do

IX. Application and Challenge

• Don't get caught up in earthly realities and ways of thinking

• Remember: you're dead to those things, alive in Christ

• Continually focus on killing what dishonors God

• Throw off the old, put on the new life in Christ

• Keep being renewed into His image

Audio Recording

Sermon Manusript

[Colossians 3:5-11]

As is typical when you’re in the midst of a transition like this, I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on the last seven years in this church. I was remembering the day we unloaded the semi trailer of our stuff at our house. It was a day full of delays. The truck had multiple issues on the way out, which meant that he didn’t get to our house until very late and the unloading process was pretty rushed so that we could get the driver back on the road. As soon as he got the truck backed up to the house he and I started unloading it right away. It was a hot, muggy day and we had been unloading for about an hour by the time the church crew showed up. I still remember Joanne Verhage making the mistake of slapping me on the back and saying, “Hey Pastor!” which was immediately followed by an “Ewwww!” because I was drenched in sweat. We kept on unloading the truck for another two to three hours. By the time we were done unloading, not only was I exhausted, but I was also really gross. I couldn’t wait to get into the shower, get cleaned up, and get some clean clothes on and relax a little bit.

Guess what didn’t go through my mind as I got out of the shower? I didn’t get out of the shower, look at that pile of nasty, sweaty clothes and think, “I should put that back on.” Even the thought of that makes me cringe. Once you finally get clean, you want to stay that way and put on some clean clothes.

That’s really what Paul is talking about in this morning’s passage. Basically, he’s reminding the Colossians that their old, sinful life is a pile of stinky, sweaty, nasty clothes that they’ve taken off and they’ve been cleaned and cleansed by Jesus Christ, why in the world would they ever want to put that nasty stuff on again?

And just to make sure the Colossians realize what he’s talking about, he gives them a couple lists of sins that represent that old life. He talks about, “…sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry…anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another…” (Colossians 3:5–10, ESV). These are the nasty, stinky old clothes from our old life.

I mean, take a look at that list of sins and tell me how any of those have resulted in any positive fruit in your life. I’ve often said that it’s really important to look back on the sins you’ve committed over the years in order to be reminded how they didn’t actually do anything for you—to be reminded of their lack of fruit. Each of these things promises a bit of pleasure or release, and you may get that for a moment, but over time they slowly kill you—like all sin. Letting your anger explode may feel good for a moment, but the damage it causes lasts much longer. Slandering someone or lying may feel good for a moment, but ultimately slowly destroys you. Sexual immorality and lust may feel good for a moment, but the negative consequences linger for much, much longer.

And the benefit of being reminded of this, and being reminded of this from real examples from your life, is that it takes away the level of temptation today. The example I give quite often is that I went through a period of my life when drinking and getting drunk was quite a temptation for me. I’d go hang out with friends and it wouldn’t take much encouragement from them for me to get drunk right along with them. Eventually, God convicted me of this sin and I haven’t been drunk since. One of the things that helped me was for me to remember all of the stupid things I did when I was drunk and how terrible I felt afterwards. Why would I want to do that again? It was dumb. The same thing applies to various other sins in our lives. It’s why Paul says, “But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.” (Romans 6:21, ESV).

In providing this list of sins, Paul is actually getting at something deeper. He’s not just helping them remember the various sins they’ve struggled with throughout their life, he’s also making a major point. He says something really important in the middle: “…covetousness, which is idolatry.” (Colossians 3:5, ESV). He says that covetousness is idolatry. That should really stop us in our tracks. Basically, Paul is saying that the first and the tenth commandment are pointing to the same reality. There have been many theologians throughout history who have said that the Tenth Commandment, in some sense, contains all of the other commandments because it addresses the heart.

In helping us to understand this point, I typically like to take us to a passage in James: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.” (James 4:1–2, ESV). He’s saying the same thing. Why do you fight? Because you covet. Why do you murder? Because you covet. Why do you commit adultery? Because you covet. Why would you worship another god? Because you covet.

In a simple way, coveting is desiring something we don't have, but it's more than that. At its core, covetousness is about distorted desires. It's not just about desiring things we don't have, but desiring the wrong things. The definition of the Greek word says this, “…in practice it means either ‘consuming ambition’…that aims at supremacy and is linked with arrogance…; or more often ‘greed’ for wealth, covetousness gone amuck, various forms of epithymia, the desire to have what is forbidden, more than one’s due.” (TLNT). It’s this idea of never being satisfied, always looking for more, always willing to use something or someone else for your desires. Yet, those things will never satisfy you, which is why you’re never satisfied and are always looking for more, more, more—hoping it will be different this time.

Then in the midst of this, Paul reminds the Colossians of something important: “In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.” (Colossians 3:7, ESV). Just as they were getting disgusted at these long lists of sins, he reminds them that they used to live this way. They used to live life wearing these stinky, nasty, sweaty clothes all the time. They were used to wearing these clothes, so they didn’t bother them as much, but they need to remember that they used to live this way. He wants them to remember. He wants us to remember.

Not only does he want them—and us—to remember how nasty that lifestyle was, or even how lacking it was in producing fruit in our lives. He actually wants us to remember something more powerful than that. He says, “On account of these the wrath of God is coming.” (Colossians 3:6, ESV). It’s not just that these sinful actions and sinful lifestyles don’t bear any good fruit, but it also dishonors and angers God. These sinful lifestyles result in the wrath of God coming. That’s how serious sin is in our lives and in the lives of other people.

I think it’s so important for us to be reminded of this on a regular basis. Sin isn’t just foolish, it angers God. Sin isn’t bad simply because it’s bad for us—which it is—it’s bad because it angers and dishonors God to the point where his wrath comes. Sin is so serious that God couldn’t just overlook it or ignore it, but he had to pour out his wrath on Jesus Christ so that our sins could be forgiven. So, if you want to see the seriousness of your sin, you can look at Jesus Christ, beaten, bruised, and hanging the cross. You can see Jesus crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, ESV). That’s how serious sin is.

He goes on to remind us that when we look to Jesus Christ in faith and we put our trust in him for the forgiveness of our sins, something happens in our life. There’s a decisive change in our life. He says, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self…” (Colossians 3:9–10, ESV). That’s one example. Basically, he’s saying don’t keep on sinning and living in sin because Christ has taken off your old, stinky life and has cleansed you and has now given you a new life. Something has changed in your life now. Now you know what it’s like to be clean and you don’t want to go back to that old lifestyle anymore. You are a new creation. You’re a new person. You don’t do those things or live that way anymore.

It’s actually stronger than that. The ESV translates verse 5 as saying, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you…” (Colossians 3:5, ESV) but I think the NASB gets it closer. It translates verse 5 as: “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality…” (Colossians 3:5, NASB95). It’s basically saying that once you’re in Christ, you look at your old lifestyle and say, “You’re dead to me.” In Christ, you are now dead to all of the sexual immorality of your past, to all of the substance abuse of your past, to all of the anger and malice and lying of your past. That life is now dead and gone. You can honestly say, “That’s not who I am anymore!”

I want to take a moment to make sure you see how this is connected with last week’s passage. If you remember, the point of last week’s passage is that since you’ve been united with Christ and are seated in heaven with him, you are to seek and set your mind in heavenly things. That was the point of last week’s message. This week’s passage is building on that by saying that not only are we to seek and set our minds on heavenly things, but we are to consider ourselves dead to all of those earthly things—earthly ways of living and thinking. We’re dead to those things because we’ve been raised to new life and made new creations in Jesus Christ.

So, when we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, there’s this decisive change in our lives. However, there is also an ongoing renewal that happens in our life. It’s the tension in this passage. On the one hand Paul says, “…you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self…” (Colossians 3:9–10, ESV). That’s talking about something that has already happened. However, he immediately goes from talking about something that has already happened to saying, “…you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed…” (Colossians 3:9–10, ESV). Being renewed is an ongoing process. It carries this idea of something that is continually happening throughout the rest of your life. So, yes, there is a decisive change in our lives when we first put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, however, we’re not fully renewed in that moment. The rest of our lives will be this process of living into the reality that we’ve died to that old life and been given new life in Jesus Christ.

One of the best illustrations of this comes from a practice in the monastery. I can’t remember which order of monks does this practice, but it’s good nonetheless. When they join the monastery, they enter the monastery with an old, tattered, worn-out robe. In the process of being welcomed into the monastery and becoming part of the fellowship, they are given a clean, new robe. However, they don’t get rid of the old, dirty robe. Instead, when they wake up each morning, both robes are hanging next to each other—the old and new—and the monk has to make a choice not to put on the old robe, but to put on the new robe each morning.

That’s kind of what Paul is talking about in this morning’s passage. In Christ we have this new identity and are new creations with a new life, but we continually struggle with the temptation to fall back into all of our old sins—to fall back into our old lifestyles and habits and sins. That’s why he says, “But now you must put them all away…” (Colossians 3:8, ESV). He’s talking about your sinful lifestyle and actions. Not only do you need to consider that life dead to you, but then throughout the day you need to continually kill it—put it to death. Or to use his other analogy, you have taken off that old lifestyle and thrown it to the side, but throughout the day you will be continually tempted to put it back on and you will need to continually fight that temptation and continually throw that old lifestyle off over and over and over again. As we’re all very aware, the old man dies, but he doesn’t die quickly or easily.

All of this reminded me of a famous quote by a Puritan named John Owen. He famously said, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.” It’s this powerful reminder that sin isn’t neutral in our lives. It’s not okay for us to simply try on some sinful behavior and wear it around for a while—or to be aware of some sinful actions in our life and simply try not to think about them or ignore them. Those sinful actions and desires are literally trying to kill you. That’s their only goal in your life. So, you need to be actively seeking to kill them in your life or you will be killed by them. You need to be actively seeking to throw off any sinful actions that are hindering you from following Christ and becoming more like him.

That’s the ultimate goal. Paul says, “…you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” (Colossians 3:9–10, ESV). This is really powerful in so many ways. This brings us all the way back to the beginning of the bible, to the very first chapter. When God creates man and woman we read, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26–27, ESV). There’s a lot I could say here, but I’ll keep it basic for now. Humanity was created in the image and likeness of God. It’s the epitome of how we were created to live and function in the world. Yet, when Adam and Eve sinned, that image was distorted and messed up. It didn’t disappear, but it was messed up. So, what we’re being told here is that through Jesus Christ—who IS the image of God (if you remember that from a few weeks ago)—we are not only forgiven, but we’re also being renewed into the image of God. We’re being renewed and restored to live the life we’ve been created to live. And, since Jesus IS the image of God, our lives are being renewed to look more like Jesus Christ.

This is the goal of our salvation—that we would be forgiven and set free so that we can be renewed into the image of Jesus Christ. That’s why we put to death everything that is earthly in our lives, because we want to become more like Jesus Christ and live the life we’ve been created to live. That’s why we put away all of our sinful actions and desires, because we no longer want to anger and dishonor our God and Savior, and because we want to put on our new life—which is Christ.

That’s also why Paul ends with this beautiful statement: “Christ is all, and in all.” (Colossians 3:11, ESV). Christ is everything for us, which means he must be central to everything we do—he is in all that we do—because we are being renewed to become like him. That’s also why Paul connects this to the fact that, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” (Colossians 3:11, ESV). His point is that those are all earthly distinctions that don’t matter anymore. We could keep adding to that list for sure, couldn’t we? We come up with so many different ways to divide ourselves up. But Paul says that those are all earthly things that don’t matter any more. Christ is all and in all and we are in Christ. Keep your eyes on him and follow him.

Don’t get so caught up in all of these earthly realities and lifestyles and ways of thinking. Rather, you’re now dead to those things and are alive in Christ. Don’t forget that you’re dead to those things. And continually focus on killing those aspects of your life that dishonor God and destroy you. Continually focus on throwing them off and putting on the new life you have in Christ as you are slowly and steadily renewed to become more like him.

[Read Colossians 3:1-4]

This morning’s passage asks a difficult question, one that most people don’t really think about often. Most people just go through life from one thing to the next just doing the next thing. That’s not actually a bad thing, but it’s also helpful to take a step back sometimes and ask some important questions. This morning’s passage is forcing us to ask the question, “What is the central ,driving motivation for everything I do?” Why do I get up in the morning? Why do I go to work each day? Why do I do my job the way I do? Why do I go to church on a Sunday morning? Why do I spend my money the way I do? I could keep going on because this question is about what is central to everything you do—everything. 

Even if you’ve never really thought about that question, you still have a central, driving motivation—it’s just what has come natural to you. Most likely you picked it up from your parents because it was their central motivation and so it became yours. Sometimes it’s because of the people you hang around with often, they’ve rubbed off on you so that their driving motivation has become your driving motivation. Maybe you’ve found your driving motivation from someone you look up to or respect—you want to be like them, so you try to live and act like them. 

Everyone has to have a reason to get up in the morning. For many it’s because they want to care for and provide for their family. For some it’s because they want to climb the social and economic ladder. For some they get up and go to work everyday because they want to have the weekends off—they’re working for the weekend. For some their central motivating reality is the approval of those around them. For some it’s trying to prove something to themselves. There are a ton of different options for a central, driving motivation in life. 

This morning’s passage encourages us to dive a little deeper than any of the options I’ve already given. Actually, our passage tells us to look a little higher. We’re told, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above…Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:1-2, ESV). It’s calling us to seek things that are higher than this earth and to set our minds on things that are higher than this earth. All of the central motivations I’ve mentioned would be considered earthly realities—not necessarily bad, but earthly. This passage is telling us that we need to have central, driving motivations that look higher than these things.

Just to take a step back for a moment, I want to make sure that we see the connection to last week’s message because this is simply building on that reality. Remember last week’s message was all about these false teachers who were leading people astray by giving them all of these practices that would make them super-Christians. Paul reminded them that all of those practices actually had no value in drawing them nearer to Christ and killing sin in their life. They only resulted in puffed up, prideful people. Now, this week, he’s building on that and saying, “All of those things—all of those practices—are earthly. I want you to seek things that are higher than that.” 

So he tells the church to do two things. First, he says “…seek the things that are above…” (Colossians 3:1, ESV). The word “seek” has some urgency and intentionality to it. It doesn’t portray an image of someone aimlessly wandering down a path and accidentally stumbling upon something cool. No, in order to seek something you know what you’re going after, you create a plan to find it, then you begin intentionally seeking that thing. It’s not passive, but very active. So, he tells the church that they need to actively pursue things that are above—heavenly things, not earthly things. 

Second, he says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:2, ESV). That’s different than seeking. This is about your mind, what you think. Actually, back when Paul wrote this, the mind referred to more than our brain or what we think, it also included our affections and desires and priorities. So they’re told to set their affections and desires and thoughts and priorities on things that are above—heavenly things, not earthly things. Again, this is something that is active, isn’t it? If you are going to set your mind on something, it’s an active task. It involves wrangling all of your wandering thoughts in a particular direction. It takes intentional action on your part.

So, the image that we’re given here is that as Christians we’re to actively set our minds on heavenly things, then pursue those things with intentionality and purpose and focus. 

Paul gives us a few reasons why we’re to do this. He says, “…your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3, ESV). There are a few possibilities of what this could mean, but everyone agrees that this is referencing our union with Jesus Christ. As we’ve been talking about throughout this series, one of the major themes of Colossians is being IN Christ—being united to him, which means we’re united to everything he’s done and to where he is right now. The image here is that we’re so united to Christ that we’re enfolded into him and hidden in him.

So because we’ve been united with Christ, we experience what he experiences. That’s why Paul also says, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3, ESV). Since Christ died, and you are united to Jesus Christ, you also have died. Again, this flows from last week’s passage, with an additional nuance. Last week he reminded them that they had died to all of those old practices and the old way of things, which is why they don’t need to follow them anymore. This time he’s saying that they need to stop seeking and setting their mind on earthly things because they’ve died to those things in Christ. 

Not only did we die in Christ, but we’ve also been resurrected in Christ and ascended into heaven in Christ. That’s how he starts this passage off: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” (Colossians 3:1, ESV). Christ rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven where He is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Since we’re united to him, we’re also united to him in his resurrection and ascension. That means, in Christ, we too are seated in heaven at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And Paul says that’s one of the reasons why we’re not to set our minds on or seek earthly things—because we’re in heaven with Christ. 

Now, I wanna take a moment to help us understand what this means because it’s hard for us to get our minds around, isn’t it? What does it actually mean that I’ve died with Christ? What does it actually mean that I’ve been raised with Christ and ascended into heaven with him? It shouldn’t surprise you that I think the Heidelberg Catechism does a really good job of helping us understand what this means on a daily, practical level. It asks the question, “Q89. What is the dying-away of the old self? A. To be genuinely sorry for sin and more and more to hate and run away from it.” So, what does it mean that we’ve died with Christ? It means that our old, sinful nature has died with Christ, and needs to keep dying every single day of our lives until it’s completely dead, which will happen when we die or when Christ comes again. Then it asks, “Q90. What is the rising-to-life of the new self? A. Wholehearted joy in God through Christ and a love and delight to live according to the will of God by doing every kind of good work.” So, rising with Christ means that our new life is springing up and growing and slowly taking over our life, and that too will keep happening over and over again, every day of our life until we die or Christ comes. This is what the Christian life looks like. It’s a daily process of the old self dying away and the new self rising to new life. 

Now, here’s how all of this connects together. I want to spend quite a bit of time looking at what this means and looks like on a practical level. What does it mean that you are not to seek or set your minds on earthly things because you’ve been united to Christ in his death, resurrection, and ascension? There are a lot of thoughts and opinions on this. There are people who would say that this means you shouldn’t really focus on your job or food or money—any of these “earthly” things—we should transcend these things and think only of heavenly realities. There are some who would get really frustrated about this kind of language and say that there are too many Christians who are too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. They go through life with their head in the clouds and ignore all of the suffering and pain and hurt on this earth. So, what does all of this mean?

I think we can understand much of what Paul means by looking at something he says in this passage. He uses this little phrase, “…Christ who is your life…” (Colossians 3:4, ESV). Christ IS our life. Now, there’s a few ways to understand what he means by this. I think it means two things at the same time. On the one hand, it means that we find life in Jesus Christ—resurrection life in him. That’s a result of being united to him in his resurrection. This is the reason why we’re able to die to our old selves and rise again to new life. We can do this because Christ IS our life. 

However, I think Paul is getting at something more than that in this passage, especially when you consider the context. When he says that Christ IS your life, it also makes sense to understand that this means your life now revolves around him. He is your life. Another way of saying this, to connect it back to what I was saying at the beginning of the sermon, is that Christ is now your central, driving motivation of your life. That’s true because you are united to him. That’s true because you’re dying to your old self and rising to life in him. And because Christ is now the central, driving motivation of your life, you set your mind on him and you seek him with all of your might in everything you do. 

Think about how Paul talks about this in his own personal life. He famously says this in Philippians: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21, ESV). That sounds a lot like someone saying that Christ is now the central, driving motivation of their life. If they are going to live, their life is going to be focused on Christ. He set his mind on these things and he sought them.

To understand how this connects to the contrast of not setting our minds on earthly things, Paul also helps us out later on in Philippians. It’s a longer passage, but I think it’s really helpful in understanding what it means not to seek and set our minds on earthly things, but to seek and set our minds on heavenly things. Here’s what Paul says about himself: “I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:4–11, ESV). This is what Paul is talking about in this morning’s passage. Setting our minds on and seeking heavenly things over earthly things means looking higher. It means not taking all of these earthly realities so seriously. Paul says that he did all of the earthly things and would throw them all away to grow closer to Jesus Christ. Knowing Christ is greater than all of these earthly things. 

Now, does that mean we don’t focus on these things? Is someone more spiritual if they ignore all earthly things and only focus on spiritual things? That’s a trap. That’s the trap of last week’s passage. The trap is to be soooo spiritual that you neglect your body and all of the earthly things—that’s how you become a super-Christian. That’s not what Paul is saying here. Remember, the man who just told us that we set our mind on and seek heavenly things did many earthly things. He continued to make tents throughout his ministry. While on a ship that was going to sink, he did pray, but he also told everyone that they needed to eat. So, by following these commands, we are not to neglect or ignore earthly things. 

So, what are we to do? We’re to make Christ—who is our life—the central, driving motivation in all of these earthly endeavors. The idea is that as you go about your earthly life—doing earthly things—you are continually setting your mind on and seeking heavenly things. The answer to all of those questions I asked at the beginning is Christ. Why do you get up and go to work every day? Ultimately, the answer needs to be Christ. You go to work every day because you want to honor Christ in everything you do. You do a good job at work because you want to honor Christ in everything you do. You spend your money in certain ways, ultimately, because you want to honor Christ with the resources He’s given you. Why do you want to care for and provide for your family? Because you want to honor Christ. Why do you come to Sunday and worship? Because you want to honor Christ. His IS your life. And because that is true, you set your mind on him in everything you do, you meditate on his Word day and night, you pray as you work, and you seek him in everything you do at all times. Jesus said something very similar when he said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33, ESV). Seek the heavenly things first, above all else, and all those other earthly things will fall into their proper place and position. 

This is what I’m talking about when I talk about worshiping Christ in all of life. I end every service reminding us that we leave worship and head out into the world to continue worshiping Jesus Christ wherever we go—whether at the grocery store or the pickleball court or in the home of our friends. How do we worship him in all of these places? By keeping Jesus Christ as the central, driving motivation in each of them. As we hang out with our friends, we’re going to enjoy time with them, recognizing they are gifts from Christ to us. As we play on the pickleball court, we’re going to thank Jesus Christ for giving us bodies that can move and opportunities to use them and opportunities to fellowship with other people. As we buy groceries we’re going to be thanking Jesus for the abundance he’s provided and the variety of tastes and flavors and textures. When we make Christ the central, driving motivation for everything we do, we bring glory and honor and praise to him in everything we do. 

This is what it means to set our minds on and seek the things that are above. Ultimately, it’s being reminded of “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Philippians 3:8, ESV). That reality not only helps us to lose all of these earthly realities with joy, but it also enables us to properly and rightly enjoy these earthly realities, knowing that Christ is worth so much more than any of them. That’s why we want him at the center. 

So, leave this morning setting your minds on the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord and seek—with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength—to know these things and to live out this reality in everything you say and do. 

[Read Colossians 2:16-23]

There are some really good books out there with good intentions, but can cause some problems. It was probably about twenty years ago that I first read Francis Chan’s book, Crazy Love. The main gist of the book was that God loved us with a crazy love and he deserves nothing less from us than a crazy love—a love that’s willing to do things the world thinks are crazy. That’s true and I needed to hear that at that point in my life. I had fallen into a go-along-to-get-along Christianity, unwilling to do anything that really set me apart from the rest of the world. He was calling us to be the salt of the earth and the light to the world as we live out our faith. 

It was a needed rebuke for me, but I took it too far. The more I read the book and decided to live into this Crazy Love, the more I desired to become a super-Christian—a Christian who REALLY lived out his faith, not like all of the other “Christians” in the world. I wasn’t satisfied doing a “Read the Bible in a Year” devotional plan, I started doing a Read the Bible in 90 Days reading plan. I wasn’t satisfied just beginning to implement some of the spiritual disciplines in my life, I needed to be crazy in my implementation of these spiritual disciplines. I didn’t just begin to fast occasionally, I had to do a 30 day fast. And people were really impressed. They would see my bible with 12 different book marks, showing the 12 chapters I read every day, and they would be impressed and feel a little guilty about their own devotional life. They were impressed that I was doing a 30 day fast and looked to me like I was super spiritual—kinda like a modern day monk. Now, of course God worked through all of that to shape me in powerful ways. I’m thankful for his grace in all of that. But as I look back on those days, all of the “crazy” stuff I was doing wasn’t really about killing sin or becoming like Jesus Christ, it was more about proving myself to others and even to God. I wanted THEM to see how crazy I was. Really, the primary thing it ended up doing in my life was stirring up a bunch of pride. 

That’s really what Paul is addressing in this morning’s passage. If you remember, he’s addressing some false teachers in the church who are presenting a bunch of plausible arguments and trying to take the church captive with empty philosophies. The core of their teaching is a Christianity Plus. There are the regular Christians, then there are the Crazy Love Christians. He’s been hinting at this for a bit, but he gets much more practical in this morning’s passage and helps us see some of the particular things they are teaching. 

It’s important to recognize that when you begin to view Christianity in a hierarchical way, that there are some super-Christians out there who are better than everyone else, someone will necessarily come up with practices and steps and methods in order to become one of those super-Christians. That’s what Paul is fighting back against in this passage. 

The first practice he talks about is in regard to food. He says, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink…” (Colossians 2:16, ESV). There’s a little uncertainty about what he’s exactly referring to here, but most commentators recognize that there must be some Jewish influence here. It seems like some were teaching that if you wanted to be a super-Chrisitian, you would continue to submit yourself to the old Jewish food laws. Sure, you don’t have to follow those laws anymore, but if you are a Crazy Love Christian, who is going to do “crazy” things, you’re not going to eat like everyone else, you’re going to do the hard thing and keep following those laws. That’s how you become a super-Chrisitian. 

The second practice he talks about is more general he says, “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism…” (Colossians 2:18, ESV). This is a broader application of what he was talking about in regard to food. Fasting, or only eating certain types of food, is a form of asceticism. Asceticism is all about depriving yourself of things—whether food, fellowship, or any of the comforts we have in this life. Many of the monks were ascetics, seeking to deprive themselves in drastic ways in order to draw nearer to God. This was the way to become a super-Christian. It wasn’t just being taught during the monastic movement, this was being taught during Paul’s ministry. Many people are impressed by this level of commitment, but Paul says don’t let anyone judge you according to these things or try to disqualify you—trying to say you’re not a “real” Christian unless you do some of these things. 

I do want to step away a moment to make sure we understand a few important realities in connection with what he’s talking about. As is always the case, you can run into a ditch on either side. As I’ve been mentioning, there is a real danger of actually dishonoring God through asceticism. I typically explain this in terms of a Christmas gift from a parent. No parent gives good gifts to their child and then is impressed by their child’s unwillingness to use those gifts. It’s actually dishonoring to the one who gave the gift. In the same way, God gives us good gifts in food and drink and sleep and fellowship. He’s given those gifts to us to enjoy and to use in ways that bring praise and honor and glory to him. That’s a good and beautiful thing. 

However, it’s not beautiful to use those things in a lustful, gluttonous manner. That’s not pleasing to God, either. It’s the image of the kid who gets a good gift from their parents, but is never satisfied with the gift, always asking for more, more, more. That’s not honoring to the gift giver, either. So, there’s balance in here of using the good gifts God has given us and using them in a way that he has designed them to be used for his praise and honor and glory. That’s why Paul says, you don’t become a super-Christian by rejecting the gifts God has given you. On the flip side, you don’t become a super-Christian by indulging in those gifts either. 

He adds a third practice that was supposedly going to help people become super-Christians. He says, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you…with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” (Colossians 2:16, ESV). Again, this seems to have some connection with the various Jewish festivals from the Old Covenant. It seems as though people were teaching that if you wanted to be a super-Christian you needed to continue celebrating all of these old festivals and holidays. You needed to celebrate the Passover, the Feast of Booths, etc. If you weren’t doing these things, you may be a Christian, but not a very good one.

He also opens a bomb-shell by referencing the Sabbath. There have been so many controversies over the Sabbath over the years. Really, I think the controversies have all stemmed from a real desire to honor God with their life. Much of it comes down to the question of what can you do on a Sunday? Back when my dad was in high school, his church would hold a Sunday worship service at a local State Park on the shore of a beautiful lake, but you could not fish—that was not allowed on the Sabbath. There are some who say you can walk, but not ride a bike. There are some who say none of this matters anymore, do whatever you want to do. I’m not going to get into all of the fine-details of this debate this morning because I don’t have time, but also because that would begin to fall into the very trap that Paul is talking about. In the midst of all these controversies, there was a real temptation for people to say something like, “Our family doesn’t do these things on a Sunday, which means we’re better Christians than your family,” and Paul basically says: Knock it off!

Then he gives the fourth practice that would supposedly make someone a super-Christian. He says, “Let no one disqualify you…going on in detail about visions…” (Colossians 2:18, ESV). There were people in the church saying that if you wanted to be a super-Christian, you needed to have these miraculous and spectacular visions. This is most likely connected to much of the ascetic practices he was talking about earlier. There are records showing that people would fast and refuse to sleep as a way of “preparing” themselves for spectacular mystical visions. If you wanted to be a super-Christian, you needed to be doing these things. 

I kinda laughed as I studied this week because it brought me back to my youth ministry days. After being in youth ministry for a while, I noticed a very clear pattern that happened on every youth retreat. It’s been such a clear pattern that it has become widely known in youth ministry circles as “Cry Night” and it typically happens on the final night of a trip. And there are many youth leaders who continually look at these cry nights as being a movement of the Holy Spirit—or even try to manufacture things so that students begin to cry on these nights to “help” the Holy Spirit move. Now, I have experienced some legitimately powerful movements of the Holy Spirit over the years, but I also began to recognize that it wasn’t a coincidence that after a week of sleep deprivation, students would be worn out and emotional and it was easy to make them cry. That wasn’t necessarily a movement of the Spirit, just a physical reality. 

I also want to take a moment to make sure we realize how tempting it is to see people who have these visions and mystical experiences as super-Christians. All it takes is a little searching on YouTube to find numerous people who are going into detail about their visions and mystical experiences, and you can tell right away that they are doing this in order to be seen as someone who should be listened to. People should pay attention to them because they have had these visions. What they don’t say, but is often insinuated, is that because they’ve had these mystical visions they are a little higher up the ladder than everyone else—they’re really a super-Christian that should be listened to. Paul tells the church not to fall for that. 

The point being made is that there are no super-Christians. So, stop falling for those who try to lure you in by claiming they are super-Christians and stop acting like you are a super-Christian. That’s not what this is all about. Don’t let someone pass judgment on you for not being “crazy” enough in the way you live out your faith, just keep your eyes on Christ and follow him. Don’t let anyone disqualify you—or claim you’re not a true believer because you don’t do the things they think you should do. I like the way FF Bruce sums this section up by saying, “If a Christian decides to abstain from certain kinds of food and drink, or to set aside certain days or seasons for special observance, commemoration, or meditation, good: these are questions to be settled between the individual conscience and God. Concerning such questions Paul writes in another letter: ‘Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God’ (Rom. 14:5-6).” (Bruce, 114).

I think Paul gets at the heart of it all when he says this: “These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (Colossians 2:23, ESV). They appear to have value. It seems like these things will work. It seems like in a world full of gluttony, doing a long fast will make you more spiritual and bring you closer to God. It seems like if you continue to practice all of the old festivals, and celebrate all the time, and do all of the things, that you will necessarily become a super-Christian. I could go on and on and on. All of these things SEEM to make sense, but none of them actually have any value for killing sin in our lives and bringing us closer to Christ. He says that they are of NO VALUE in accomplishing those things. None. 

Actually, what Paul says is that not only do they not have any value for killing sin in our lives, they actually do a really good job of fueling on particular sin: Pride. He says that these people are “…puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind…” (Colossians 2:18, ESV). They are puffed up with pride because they’ve created—what Paul calls a self-made religion—and are the best ones at it. And because nobody else is as good at following their self-made religion, they are better than everyone else. They are the super-Christians and they know it. That’s called pride and self-righteousness. 

But, most Christians know that they should not be prideful. They know that humility is part of the Christian life. So, it’s all much more subtle than that. John Calvin points out, “And observe, that those are said to be puffed up who insinuate themselves under a show of humility. For it happens, as Augustine elegantly writes to Paulinus, by wonderful means, as to the soul of man, that it is more puffed up from a false humility than if it were openly proud.” (Calvin, 198). This is what we would call today the Humble Brag. It’s a show of humility that is full of pride underneath. Here are a few examples: "I feel so convicted that I can only manage to read through the Bible twice a year now. I used to do it every 90 days, but life just gets in the way of real devotion." OR “I don't want to sound legalistic, but I just can't bring myself to do anything on Sundays except worship and pray. My family thinks I'm extreme, but how can I dishonor the Sabbath?" OR "I don't mean to criticize anyone's priorities, but our family just feels so blessed since we stopped buying unnecessary things and gave that money to Kingdom work instead.” That’s all pride being masked as humility and it’s everywhere in the church. 

Paul corrects this by reminding them of one important reality. He starts off by saying, “These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” (Colossians 2:17, ESV). He’s reminding the church that all of the food laws and all of the festivals and all of the rituals and practices were shadows. They weren’t the end goal but were all pointing forward to Christ. That was their goal. That’s why they've been fulfilled in him and we don’t practice them anymore. We have the real thing.

When you think about it, it’s a really crazy way to view things. Calvin says, "it is the part of a madman to take hold of empty shadows, when it is in his power to handle the solid substance" (Calvin, 193). Think about it for a moment. You are out on a date with your spouse or significant other. Is it more romantic for you to spend your time snuggling with and talking to their shadow? Does that make you a super-spouse? No. The fact that you’re so focused on their shadow means that you are ignoring THEM! That doesn’t make you better, it means you’re being a fool. So, stop focusing on the shadows from the Old Covenant, and focus on Christ who is right in front of you. 

Second, Paul says, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings?” (Colossians 2:20–22, ESV). He’s reminding them that in Christ we died to the old world and all of its regulations. Now that we’re in Christ, we’re actually living in a new world—so to speak, or a new kingdom—with new rules and principles, new ways of living and following Him. 

One commentator helps us understand this by reminding us of the point of all of the rules and regulations in the Old Covenant. He pointed out that all of the rules and regulations were about people cleansing themselves in order to enter into the temple to worship God. But we are cleansed in Christ, through his life, death, and resurrection, we don’t need those things to enter into his presence and worship Him. He’s already accomplished that for us. So, what you’re actually doing by adding all of these rules and regulations is saying that Christ’s sacrifice was not enough. You’re actually acting like the child who has been given a beautiful gift and saying, “That’s not good enough. I want something better.” There’s nothing super-Christian about rejecting, or being unsatisfied with, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for our sins. 

Instead Paul tells us to make sure we’re “holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.” (Colossians 2:19, ESV). This isn’t about creating our own rules and regulations—creating our own ladder to climb to Christ, or building our own Tower of Babel. It’s about holding fast to Jesus Christ, trusting Him, resting in his sacrifice for you and his promise that he is at work in you shaping and molding you into his image, and keeping your eyes on him.

I also think it’s about being satisfied with the tools God has given us to mature in our faith. Throughout the history of the church these tools have been called the ordinary means of grace—because these are the ways that God ordinarily works in the life of his people. They are the Word of God and the Sacraments, some add prayer. These are the tools he has given us to use as we mature in him in this life. We don’t come up with our own. We don’t add to these as if they are not enough. We trust Christ that he has given us everything we need for life and godliness. 

Finally, Paul reminds us of one important reality. He talks about how the body “…grows with a growth that is from God.” (Colossians 2:19, ESV). All of those other methods and practices are really about growing yourself in your own strength and wisdom. If you are hardcore enough, you too can be as super of a Christian as I am. Yet, it’s not about you. It’s about Christ in you, the hope of glory. It’s about God at work in you to grow you with a growth that comes from Him. This isn’t about proving yourself to those around you, or about trying to prove yourself to God. It’s about looking to him, trusting him, following him, knowing that he will take care of you and provide you with everything you need for life and Godliness. 

[Read Colossians 2:6-15]

A while back I came across a really great quote from a puritan named Thomas Watson. He said, “When the devil cannot destroy the church by violence, he endeavors to poison it.” (Watson, The Art of Divine Contentment). That’s such a powerful insight because I think many of us are ready for the frontal assault—to some degree. If someone comes up to you and says, “Deny Jesus Christ!” most of us are ready to say, “Absolutely not!”. So, we’re often ready for the frontal attack—or even prepared to suffer at various levels for the name of Jesus Christ. 

Satan knows that we’re more prepared for those attacks, so he takes a much more subtle approach. He poisons the church. He sends false teachers into the church with a tainted, poisoned message. These false teachers don’t outright lie or teach false doctrine, but they taint it and twist it enough, that it’s poison. And that poison begins to spread throughout the church. 

Last week we looked at the way plausible arguments continue to undermine and weaken our foundations, putting us in a position where we’re tossed around by every wind of doctrine. However, this week the Apostle Paul gives us much stronger language. He says, “See to it that no one takes you captive…“ (Colossians 2:8, ESV). This is very strong language. FF Bruce says that it could be translated along the lines of “Don’t let anyone kidnap you” or “Don’t let anyone carry you off as plunder.” It’s the image of a foreign army coming in, conquering a village, then hauling the people away as slaves and captives. The picture is one where there are people actively coming after you—seeking to enslave you and capture you and lead you away from Jesus Christ. And he says, “Don’t let it happen.” 

He helps us see some of the ways people will try to take us captive and lead us away from Jesus Christ. He says, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit…” (Colossians 2:8, ESV). These are not two separate things, but empty deceit is clarifying what he means by the word philosophy. He’s not saying that you shouldn’t read or study philosophy—as we would talk about it today. I know many great, solid pastors who have Masters degrees in philosophy. He’s warning the church that there are many philosophies out there that are nothing but empty deceit. He’s talking about these ideas that have been created by humanity and promise to answer all of our deepest questions and longings, but are actually completely empty and full of deceit. The world is full of these philosophies and they’re not neutral. People are actively using them to take you captive and lead you away from Jesus Christ. Paul says, “Don’t let it happen.” 

Then he shows us another tool being used for these same purposes: “See to it that no one takes you captive…according to human tradition…” (Colossians 2:8, ESV). It’s not just philosophies that are actively seeking to take us captive but also human tradition. There are two sides to this coin. On the one hand, this is talking about one of Jesus’ primary issues with the Pharisees. He told them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” (Mark 7:9, ESV). In some ways, this is connected to the empty and vain philosophies, but it’s dressed in Christian clothes. They come up with all of these traditions and rituals that morph and develop to the point that they contradict God’s Word and end up taking people captive and leading them away from Christ himself. That leads to the other side of the coin that can simply be explained by the well-known phrase, “This is how we’ve always done it…” Both of these things are human traditions that can take us captive and lead us away from Christ. Don’t let it happen. 

Here’s the final one: “See to it that no one takes you captive…according to the elemental spirits of the world…” (Colossians 2:8, ESV). What in the world does that mean? There are two options that are possible—or a combination of both. Many commentators believe Paul is simply talking about elementary principles—or basic principles—things we would describe as the ABCs. The idea would be that Christians become held captive by these basic principles to the point that they never mature, they never grow up, and remain like children for the rest of their lives—which eventually results in them being led away from Christ. The other option is that these elemental spirits are hostile spiritual forces in the world who are actively at work desiring to take you captive and lead you away from Jesus Christ. The Greek word could mean either of those things. 

I think the best option is to recognize it’s both. I believe this passage is talking about hostile spiritual forces who are at work seeking to lead Christians away from Christ by actively working to keep them immature and focused on aspects of their faith that will hold them in their immaturity which will make it much easier for them to be led astray and taken captive. 

Let me give an example that I heard this week in another poll. Last week I shared a poll that showed 50-66% of all self-professing Christians have rejected the idea of absolute truth. Here’s the poll I heard this week, “27 percent [of Christians] consult astrology such as horoscopes at least once or twice a year, Pew Research found, with 9 percent turning to tarot cards and 6 percent to fortune tellers just as frequently. And while many respondents said such activities are mostly a fun pastime, 25 percent of Christians believe the astrological positions of the planets and stars impact their lives.” (https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/pew-a-fourth-of-christians-eye-astrology-tarot-cards-fortune-tellers-most-for-fun/). Of course there’s a lot I could talk about in that, but I’m pointing to this because I think it’s a perfect example of what Paul is warning us about in this passage—people looking to “spiritual” things, thinking they are diving deeper into “spiritual” things, but instead they are diving into things that will keep them immature and things that will eventually lead them away from Christ. Paul says not to let this happen. 

We are to make sure that we’re not to be taken captive by anything that is not of Christ. That’s what we’re told in this passage: “See to it that no one takes you captive…and not according to Christ.” (Colossians 2:8, ESV). Do not be taken captive by philosophies that are not according to Christ. Do not be taken captive by human traditions that are not according to Christ—or elemental spirits/principles that are not according to Christ. The only one who you are to be taken captive by is Christ himself. Anything that isn’t rooted in him, or derived from him, or centered on Him is a threat to your spiritual security and freedom. 

Here’s why that’s the case. We read, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” (Colossians 2:9–10, ESV). This is very close to what we’ve been talking about the last few weeks, so I won’t spend much time here. We are to look to Christ for everything because he is fully God and because he has all power and authority over all creation. He is also in you, which means that you have everything you need in him. Calvin says that if you do not believe that Christ is enough for you, and if you start looking anywhere else apart from him, you are desiring something better than God himself. Not only is that blasphemous, but it’s also impossible because there is nothing better than God himself. So, why look for anything outside of and apart from him?

He also reminds us what he’s done for us. He begins by reminding us where we were apart from Christ. He says, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh…” (Colossians 2:13, ESV). You were dead in your sin and your sinful nature. He also mentions that we had this “record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” (Colossians 2:14, ESV). So, not only are you dead but you are completely overwhelmed by a debt that hangs over your head. You were born in debt because of your sin, and every single sin you’ve committed throughout your life has increased that debt more and more. It’s a hopeless picture—dead, overwhelmed by debt, and completely unable to do anything about either issue. 

In that state, God does two things. First, we’re told, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him…” (Colossians 2:13, ESV). Notice, that you didn’t bring yourself to life. God did this. God looked at you and said, “Get up” and brought you back to life from the dead. And then we’re told, “God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13–14, ESV). It’s not like he brought you back to life and then made you responsible for paying off your debt—now that you are alive. No. He brought you back to life and then marked the balance sheet “paid in full,” then tore it up completely so that you don’t have to be reminded of it. That’s the picture we’re given in this passage. That balance sheet was nailed to the cross right alongside Jesus Christ and it died with him. Gone. 

That’s not the end. After all of that, he works in you to transform you into his image. It’s not stated that way in this passage, but it’s saying the same thing in a different way. We read, “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” (Colossians 2:11–12, ESV). There’s a lot here, and I don’t have time to work out all of the details. So, I’m just planning on hitting some of the highlights.

Paul is connecting a bunch of themes and concepts in this passage. Notice the overarching themes of this passage. It talks about circumcision—a spiritual circumcision—and it talks about baptism. It talks about the dying away of the old self and the rising to life of the new. It also talks about faith—which is central to it all. Let me connect some of these dots.

We know that the physical circumcision of the Old Testament wasn’t the end goal. Repeatedly God told the Israelites things like, “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:6, ESV). The physical circumcision was a sign and seal of a spiritual reality. In many ways you could say that it was there to signify the dying away of the old self and rising to life of the new so that they would love God and follow him and serve him. That’s basically what this passage says. 

Paul is saying that has happened to each one of us when we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. We were circumcised in that way. Our old self was cut away and we were raised to new life in Christ so that we could love and serve him all the days of our life. So, as we’ve been reminded over and over again throughout this series, not only are we forgiven and receive eternal life, but we’re also being transformed to follow him. 

I also think it’s important to point out that Paul also shows us that baptism has replaced circumcision. When you cut out a bunch of the other stuff we read, “In him also you were circumcised…having been buried with him in baptism…” (Colossians 2:11–12, ESV). You could ask the question: When were you circumcised? And the answer would be, when you were baptized. I don’t plan on getting into all of the nitty gritty with this, but this is one of the reasons our church continues to baptize infants. It references this verse in the Heidelberg Catechism when it says, “Therefore, by baptism, the sign of the covenant, [infants] too should be incorporated into the Christian church and distinguished from the children of unbelievers. This was done in the Old Testament by circumcision, which was replaced in the New Testament by baptism.” (HC 74).

After all of this, Paul reminds us of one more thing Christ has done for us: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” (Colossians 2:15, ESV). Like I mentioned last week—or a couple weeks ago—these rulers and authorities are spiritual forces. We’re talking about Satan and demons here. Notice that Christ didn’t just defeat them in his death on the cross. He humiliated them—he put them to open shame. He disarmed them and took away all of their power. The language also points to the idea that he stripped them naked and paraded them through the streets. This is total humiliation for Satan and demons. It’s a reminder to God’s people that they no longer have any power over us. They’ve been defeated and humiliated by Christ. 

I also want to point out that they’ve been disarmed—which means their weapons have been taken away because of what Christ has done on the cross. One of their primary weapons is accusation and guilt and shame. That’s one of the ways Satan and demons try to take us captive. We make a mistake and they hold it over our head, remind us, rub it in, make us feel guilty and shame for it. Yet, that weapon has actually been removed from them. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Who is going to condemn you? Nobody. So, tell them to be quiet. The proper response to falling into sin is not to beat yourself up and wallow in guilt and self pity. That’s some weird attempt to atone for your own sins that’s only going to lead to you being enslaved. Rather, the proper response is to repent, seek forgiveness, and follow Christ.

That’s why Paul begins this passage this way, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,” (Colossians 2:6, ESV). The word walk is in a particular tense that really has the connotation of “keep on walking”. It’s not a one-time deal. It’s not based on a single decision where you receive Christ and then nothing more happens. After you receive Christ, then you need to keep on walking in him. 

And the idea is that you can keep on walking in him because of all the things I’ve already talked about in this sermon. You can keep walking in Christ because he has brought you from death to life, he’s forgiven you, he’s transformed you. And, to add to all of that, you can keep on walking in him because He has defeated, shamed, and disarmed the hostile forces who are attacking you. Because of all those things, keep on walking in him. 

What’s interesting is how he describes keeping on walking. Really, it seems like he’s actually describing what it takes to keep on walking. Or to say it another way, he’s describing what it takes to make sure you’re not kidnapped and hauled off away from Christ. This is deeply connected to last week’s passage, so I won’t spend too much time here. But basically he says the same thing this week as last week. If you want to make sure you can keep on walking in Christ, and not be kidnapped and hauled away from him, you need to make sure you’re “rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught…” (Colossians 2:7, ESV). Another way of saying that was in last week’s message. If you want to stand firm and to keep on walking you need to mature in Christ—that’s what roots you and establishes you in the faith. 

I do want to take a moment to point out something additional that comes in this passage—another tool that helps protect us from being taken captive. Paul uses one specific phrase that means more than you get at first glance. He says, “…as you received…as you were taught…” (Colossians 2:6–7, ESV). The phrase “as you received” is a very particular phrase that is typically used to describe something that was passed down by tradition—or what we could call creeds and confessions. It shows us that even in the very early church they had certain teachings and traditions that they considered essential to be passed down through the ages. I don’t want to spend too long on this but these creeds and confessions are some of the tools God has given us to prevent us from being taken captive and led astray. They root us and ground us in the historic church. Every generation is tempted to run off into some new teaching, but the creeds and confessions ground us in the teachings that have been passed down for centuries and millennia. 

Finally, Paul gives us another important aspect of the Christian life that helps us be rooted and established so that we’re not taken captive and led astray. It’s something that many people will overlook. He says, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him…abounding in thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6–7, ESV). This isn’t just a throw away phrase and it’s not disconnected from everything else we’re talking about. As we continue walking in Christ, we are called to be continually abounding in thanksgiving to him for every blessing and gift that comes from him. 

I think we know that’s true, however, we don’t often connect that to everything we’ve been talking about in this passage. Being someone who is abounding in thanksgiving actually roots you and establishes you so that you’re not taken captive and led astray. Let me say the opposite to make sure you understand what I’m talking about. Someone who lives their life ungrateful and unthankful will be much more easily manipulated and much more easily taken captive by a variety of philosophies, traditions, and hostile spirits. Ingratitude is a breeding ground for being led astray in a variety of ways. So, another aspect of living a life that is rooted and established, and not easily led astray, is to be continually abounding in thanksgiving. 

There’s nothing more powerful in the battle against Satan and all the empty philosophies of this world than to be thankful. They will work so hard to steal your thanksgiving. But they’ve been disarmed. How can you not be thankful? Christ has died for you and saved you and brought you back to life and transformed you! So, let them throw accusations at you and try to lead you astray. You will keep your eyes on Jesus—who he is and what he has done—and you will joyfully abound in thanksgiving as you seek to grow up in him. That’s how you will continue to walk in him and stand firm. 

[Read Colossians 1:24-2:5]

We all know the numerous benefits of technology that we experience on a regular basis, but we’re also increasingly realizing some of the significant drawbacks and dangers as well. It’s really great that we have access to so much information right now. We can figure out the answer to most of the questions we have immediately by pulling out our phone. We don’t even have to type things into it but simply talk to Siri and she will give you the answer. That’s only going to become more effective as AI continues to develop and grow. So, it’s a good thing to have access to all of this information. 

However, it’s also a dangerous thing. Along with all of this information comes innumerable opinions and ideas and theories. Our passage this morning talks about the concept of “plausible arguments,” which seems to be extremely relevant in our current cultural situation. It’s not that we simply have access to tons of information, but we’re also being fed plausible argument after plausible argument—ideas that sound like they could possibly be true, but we don’t know for sure. The more we hear arguments like this, the more we lose our footing and our foundations are shaken little by little. 

This week I heard about a recent poll that said “The research found that 66% of American adults reject or doubt the existence of absolute moral truth…Among non-Christian faith adherents, 67% deny absolute truth. Among those with no faith, the figure is 77%, up from 68% in 2020. Even among mainline Protestants and Catholics, rejection of absolute truth stands at 61% and 69%, respectively.Notably, the report found that only one segment saw meaningful improvement: theologically-defined born-again Christians, among whom rejection of absolute truth declined from 57% to 49%.” (https://www.arizonachristian.edu/2025/05/01/awvi-2025-report-5-americans-abandon-christianity-moral-truth-barna/). That’s not good news. Two-thirds of all adults reject the idea of absolute truth—including mainline Protestants and Catholics—and only fifty-percent of born-again Christians believe in absolute truth. That’s insane. I think the reason is because we are constantly being flooded with plausible arguments that continually undermine the reality of absolute truth. We no longer know what to believe any more. So, we reject the idea that there is any standard of truth—even self-proclaimed Christians. 

Now, this is obviously not the first time Christians have struggled with this throughout history. Paul is warning the Colossians about this very thing in this morning’s passage. He says, “I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.” (Colossians 2:4, ESV). These plausible arguments work toward deluding or deceiving people. And to make sure we recognize where all of this comes from, who is the father of lies and deceit and delusions? Satan. When you find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what to believe about anything because there are lies and plausible arguments everywhere, you can be rest assured that Satan is behind it. He hates the truth and is actively doing everything he can to undermine it.

The dangers of this undermining is that we lose our footing as we go through the world. Paul talks about this same thing in the book of Ephesians, saying that he is working “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:14, ESV). Picture your life as a boat in the lake of culture. The moment you untie yourself from the dock, you are unmoored and floating around wherever the wind blows. You’re like a little boat in a raging sea being tossed about all over the place. You have nowhere to turn. No place to tie off. It’s an extremely frightening place to be—really. And that’s where the vast majority of culture is right now and it’s the result of plausible arguments slowly removing the foundations from underneath our feet, slowly untying the knot, slowly pushing our boat out into the middle of the ocean. 

What we see in this morning’s passage is that the core of Paul’s ministry is fighting against this tendency—working hard to ground people in the absolute truth of Christ and the gospel—and he has suffered for it. He begins by saying, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings…” (Colossians 1:24, ESV). Paul is suffering so that he can defend the church against these plausible arguments that keep destroying the church. He is suffering in prison as he writes this. Yet, remember what God told Paul when he called him into the ministry, he said, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” (Acts 9:16, ESV). Paul’s call to ministry was a calling to suffer as he fought against plausible arguments that continually infected the church.

Now, there’s a line in here that causes some confusion because Paul says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,” (Colossians 1:24, ESV). People immediately react to this passage and say: What does he mean that he is filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions? Is he saying that Christ’s death on the cross wasn’t enough, that Paul is adding to those afflictions through his own suffering? I’ll just answer the question by saying, NO, that’s not what he is saying. He says the opposite of that in numerous places. So, we know he’s not saying that here. 

So, what is he saying? The best way to understand what he is saying is based on the context and based on something Christ said to him when he called him to ministry. Remember what Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascus? He said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4, ESV). Paul wasn’t physically persecuting Jesus. He was physically persecuting the church. Yet, Jesus so identifies himself with his people that you could say—you mess with the church, you mess with Jesus. When you understand that, and then look at the context of this passage, you realize that Paul is not talking about filling up the afflictions of Christ himself, but filling up the afflictions of Christ’s people—the body of Christ, the church. 

This brings up a point that we don’t often like to talk about—the church is called to suffer. We serve a savior who suffered throughout his life right up to the end. That means that if we are going to follow a suffering savior it will result in our suffering as well. That’s why Paul says in Philippians that he strives to “know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…” (Philippians 3:10, ESV). Suffering is not just the calling of Paul in his work to build up the church, but it’s the calling of everyone who follows the suffering Savior. 

As I keep mentioning throughout this series, we are not to suffer begrudgingly, but with joy. Notice what Paul says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake…” (Colossians 1:24, ESV). Paul isn’t suffering and frustrated about it, or suffering and bitter about it. He is suffering and rejoicing as he suffers. How is he able to do that? Because he knows he is suffering for the sake of God’s people. He knows that his suffering is not in vain. He knows that his suffering is going to bear fruit in the life of the church. We all understand that to some degree. Pointless suffering is one of the most excruciating things we have to face. But we are willing to suffer if we know something good will come out of it. We are willing to work hard and get blisters—even find joy in it—when we see the fruit of our labors.

Paul also points out that he is willing to suffer on behalf of the church because God has given him this calling. He says, “I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known,” (Colossians 1:25, ESV).   God made him a minister and gave him something to steward—it was the Word of God. And part of that stewardship involved making sure the Word of God is made fully known. If Paul would have done anything else besides focusing on making the Word of God fully known, he would have been a poor steward and not fulfilled the task God had given him to do. 

That’s why later on Paul gives us a glimpse into what he does as a minister. He says, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” (Colossians 1:28, ESV). This is what God had called him to do—to proclaim Chris, to warn those who are being led astray by plausible arguments, and teach them with all wisdom laying a foundation that will not be undermined by plausible arguments. Remember his prayer from earlier in this chapter: “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 in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,” (Colossians 1:9, ESV). He is following the advice of Saint Benedict who said “Pray and work.” Paul prayed that they would be filled with a knowledge of his will, then worked to make that happen. He warned those being led astray and taught them with wisdom. 

And he really did work. Notice how he describes his ministry: “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:29, ESV). Again in the very next verse he uses the word “struggle” again to describe his work for the church. The Greek word for struggle is agonizomai—which is where we get our word agonize. He says that he agonizes over the work God has given him for the church. He toils and works hard to preach and teach and warn the church against the plausible arguments that continually come in, attempting to undermine the foundation of their faith. 

Yet, also notice the way he talks about this hard work. He says that he struggles with HIS energy—God’s energy—that is powerfully at work within him. So, this isn’t an opportunity for Paul to brag about how hard of a worker he is, or about how he’s a guy who gets things done. Rather, he points out that the only reason he is able to work this hard and toil and struggle in the work of the church is because God is the one who is strengthening him to do the work. If it relied on his strength, he couldn’t get it done. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians as well saying, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” (1 Corinthians 15:10, ESV). I worked harder than anyone, but it wasn’t me, it was God who was strengthening me to work. 

I’ve often thought about what it looks like to live this way. What does it look like to live in a way that works harder than anyone else but isn’t about relying on your own strength. It’s really hard because we immediately and often begin to rely on our own strength. Also, it’s hard to actually know whether someone is doing this on the outside. I could spend a long time talking about this, but I’ll just mention one practical reality, that connects to something I said earlier. It follows the same concept of “Pray and work” from earlier in the sermon. You pray about what God is calling you to do, you pray that he would give you the strength to do that thing, then you trust him to give you the strength to do that thing, and then you do that thing. That’s the closest I’ve gotten to what this looks like on a very practical level. You pray for God to lead and guide you, asking him to help you understand what he wants you to do and where he wants you to go, or what he wants you to say. He leads you into something you don’t think you can do in your own strength. So you ask him to strengthen you to do that thing, and then you step out in faith, trusting him to strengthen you to do that thing. 

For Paul, God had called him to make the Word of God fully known to his people and he was going to do that with all of the strength that God supplied. Look at the way Paul describes that word: “…to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:25–27, ESV). He talks about this mystery that has been hidden for ages and generations. When Paul talks about this being hidden, he’s not talking about it being completely hidden so that nobody could see it at all. Rather, he’s talking about what other books of the Bible call shadows. Throughout the Old Testament there are many things that served as shadows—mysteries—that have now become much clearer. This mystery is at the core of Paul’s message and it has three layers to it. 

The first mystery that has been revealed is Christ himself. Of course, God’s people had promises throughout the Old Testament that a Messiah was coming. As I like to remind us, that promise came already in Genesis chapter three. We see figures throughout the Old Testament that serve to point us to Christ. We see shadowy references throughout the Old Testament to a Messiah and to a Suffering Servant and to God’s Son and a variety of other shadows. However, because these were all shadows, God’s people didn’t see it clearly. It was a mystery to them. However, when Christ took on flesh and dwelt among us, the mystery was revealed to God’s people that He was the Messiah—their Savior—and Paul says that is the core of his message. 

But there’s another layer to this mystery. The mystery is not just Christ himself BUT—something almost unimaginable to God’s people at the time—“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27, ESV). Can you imagine the people standing at the foot of Mount Sinai, seeing the power of God so strongly that they were afraid to go to the mountain, so they send Moses up there. Can you imagine them being told that God himself wouldn’t just live among them but IN them? They wouldn’t believe it. It would completely baffle them. Yet, this is what we’ve received in Christ. He not only took on flesh and dwelt among us. He not only lived and died and rose again, but for all those who have put their faith and trust in him, they are in Christ and he is IN you. And we completely take it for granted. Isn’t that wild? The God who created the universe with a few words lives IN you. That’s a mystery—and Paul says that’s also a core part of his message. 

The final aspect of the mystery is the fact that “God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery…” (Colossians 1:27, ESV). Again, this was pretty baffling to God’s people. THEY were God’s people and the other nations were not. It was this shadowy reality throughout the Old Testament that he would bless his people and through them the nations—the Gentiles—would be blessed. Yet, because of the shadowy nature of it, this was a complete mystery to God’s people. Yet, in Christ, this mystery had now been revealed powerfully to God’s people that “There is neither Jew nor [Gentile]…for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” (Galatians 3:28–29, ESV). This was a mystery to them—and Paul said this was another core aspect to his teaching. 

Why? When Paul says that God had given him a task to proclaim, to warn, and to teach God’s people, why is the center of that work Christ? Why is Christ the center of his work to make sure people are not deluded by plausible arguments? He tells us: “…the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:2–3, ESV). In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Of course there’s a lot here, but let me point to one important reality. Since all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ, then they are not in these plausible arguments. They are not found apart from Christ. So, when we center our lives and minds and hearts on Christ we build stronger foundations that withstand the attacks of the plausible arguments all around us. So, we need to stay connected to Christ. We need to keep our eyes and hearts and minds on him. 

The reality is that Paul’s entire goal in his work is that God’s people would be mature. He says this, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:28–29, ESV). He says this is what I’ve devoted my life to, working hard so that God’s people would mature in Christ. That’s why he proclaims, that’s why he warns, that’s why he teaches, that’s why he struggles, that’s why he toils.

Notice how he describes this maturity later on: “…that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ…” (Colossians 2:2, ESV). Notice that maturity isn’t just a bunch of knowledge—which isn’t a bad thing, but doesn’t equate to maturity. Maturity is hearts that are encouraged, being knit together in love with the rest of the Body of Christ, and full assurance of understanding and knowledge of Christ. This is a whole package deal. Maturity involves knowledge and understanding. Maturity also involves encouragement and love and assurance. True Christian maturity involves hearts and minds and lives that are increasingly rooted in Jesus Christ. 

Now, this isn’t directly addressed in this passage, but I think it’s a direct application. So far, Colossians has been emphasizing the fact that the goal of our salvation is sanctification and maturity in Jesus Christ. It would be a wrong application to walk away from this passage and say, “Whew! I’m thankful that Paul worked so hard for my maturity” or that pastor works so hard for my maturity or my elders. Rather, the direct application should be a realization that Christ saved you and lives in you so that you would have the power to mature in Him. And that means you should walk away saying something like Paul “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:29, ESV). Walk away with this commitment to work hard in the process of your sanctification and your maturity in Christ. Word hard with all of the energy that Christ works within you because he is IN you. 

Finally, I want to bring this back to the center of this passage, which is defense against all of the plausible arguments. How do you stand firm in the midst of all this? You do it by working hard in the process of your sanctification and maturity in Christ—doing it in the strength that he supplies. You stand firm by growing in knowledge and understanding and assurance of God’s Word. You stand firm by having your heart encouraged and strengthened and transformed. You stand firm by being part of a community that is being knit together in Christ. When all those things are happening you will not be deluded with plausible arguments but there will be “rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.” (Colossians 2:5, ESV).  

[Read Colossians 1:15-23]

Whenever I get a Sunday off and am out of town, I typically like to check out a different church—not a CRC church but something a little different. It helps get me out of my bubble and experience the broader Body of Christ. A few years ago we did that in a town that will remain unnamed. We picked a small church in the area. As we drove to the church we joked about a bunch of the other churches we passed with names like Adventure Church or other names like it. However, when we showed up at the small church we chose for that Sunday we walked in and there was a canoe on the stage and things were set up to somewhat mimic what we expected to see at an Adventure Church. 

Now, I don’t want to be overly critical of the church because there were some good things there. However, there was a clear attempt being made to make the church “fun” and “exciting” and they were not doing a good job. In their attempts it just felt awkward. It felt like a bunch of people who hadn’t graduated from youth group—trying to make Sunday worship feel more like a typical youth group. I spent much of the service asking myself, “Why are they doing this? Why do they feel the need to do all of these things?” There are a whole host of answers to those questions, but one underlying answer is that they were doing these things because they believed they needed something more. 

I’ve not only seen this in this church but in a whole host of churches. You don’t have to look far to find videos of pastors riding roller coasters across the stage or coming up with a variety of shock and awe gimmicks to get the attention of people. Why? It’s because they don’t believe the basic things are enough. They don’t believe that singing faithful songs is enough. They don’t believe that faithful preaching from the Bible is enough. They don’t believe that faithfully participating in the sacraments is enough. They need something more. They need more excitement and energy. 

What typically ends up happening is that they don’t end up adding anything—they simply replace it. They replace faithful singing with rock concerts and smoke and lights. They replace faithful preaching with gimmicks and motivational speeches. All in the name of needing something MORE. As a result, they lose the core of who they are and what God has called them to be…and the church dies. Why is the church dying throughout the western world? I think a major reason is because they got bored with the things God had told them to be doing and thought they needed more. 

Although it’s different to some degree, this is what Paul is dealing with throughout the book of Colossians. Most commentators believe that Paul is writing this letter to the Colossian church to address a heresy that had infiltrated the church—a heresy that basically said Christ wasn’t enough and the things he said and did weren’t enough and the way he told the church to function wasn’t enough. They needed something more. They needed special knowledge. They needed special interactions with angels and spirits. What’s powerful is that Paul doesn’t go piece by piece through their argument, tearing it apart. Instead, he paints a glorious picture of Jesus Christ—probably the most magnificent in all of scripture—to show them how ridiculous it is for them to think Christ and what he commands is not enough. 

He begins with a powerful line, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” (Colossians 1:15, ESV). There’s so much to unpack in that verse. What does it mean that he is the image of the invisible God? I think you naturally have to think back to Genesis 1, don’t you? God says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27, ESV). God created humanity in his image, but in the fall and because of sin they messed that image up. The image didn’t disappear, but it’s been beaten and bruised. Yet, Colossians tells us that Jesus IS the image of God, which points to the reality that Jesus is the one who fully lived out the life God created us to live. He is the one who is truly human.

Yet, there’s also a sense where this is saying even more. There are various places in scripture that talk about the fact that nobody has ever seen God. But look at John 1, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” (John 1:18, ESV). You could say that nobody has ever seen God, but Jesus has made the invisible God visible. He is the image of the invisible God. Jesus himself said that if you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the Father. This is saying more than simply that Jesus lived so in line with God’s character that if you saw him, you saw God. Rather, this passage adds, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,” (Colossians 1:19, ESV). That’s not the description of someone who is just a human. No, the fullness of God dwelt in him. This is pointing to the divine essence of Jesus Christ. When you hold these two realities together, you can begin to see how the church has repeatedly said that Jesus was truly God and truly Man at the same time. 

But what about that little phrase in the first verse? The phrase that called Jesus “…the firstborn of all creation.” (Colossians 1:15, ESV). Isn’t that saying that Jesus was created? That’s what Arius thought. He believed that Jesus was the greatest of all created beings, but that he was still created. There are many different ways to prove this point, but let me give you two. The first is to point out that in biblical terms “firstborn” does not necessarily refer to the first created but can either simply refer to something that came before other things or often refers to something being the first in authority or rank. This passage later clearly states: “And he is before all things…” (Colossians 1:17, ESV) which, at a minimum, clarifies that this is simply talking about the fact that Jesus existed before creation—not that he was the first created. 

Then, a much more compelling argument comes from the text itself when it says, “For by him all things were created…” (Colossians 1:16, ESV). The logic is pretty simple here, if all things were created by him, then he can’t be created. 

The argument being made here is the exact opposite of saying Jesus was another created being, but rather HE created it all, which means he is high above everything that has been created, which reminds us, not only that he has authority over all things, but that he is enough because he is greater than all things. 

And when this passage talks about all things, it means all things. Look at the way it talks just to make sure you understand that all things means all things: “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:16, ESV). Not only does he mention “all things” twice to make sure that you understand that he means ALL THINGS, but he also expands that just to make sure you get the point. All things means everything on earth AND everything in heaven. All things means everything that you can see and everything that you cannot see. That means he created everything. 

This also means that there are things out there in the world that you cannot see, but were created by Jesus. We all know that there are small microbes and organisms and atoms that we cannot see that exist in the world—that’s kinda crazy—but this is talking about more than that. There are spiritual realities in the world that you cannot see that Jesus created. One of those spiritual realities is your soul. You cannot see it, but it was created by Jesus. The other spiritual reality that people talk about are angels and demons. They exist. They are invisible, you cannot see them, but they exist AND they were created by God. I don’t have time to get into the weeds of this at the moment, but most likely this is what Paul is talking about when he talks about thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities. He’s talking about angels—and most likely including fallen angels (demons) in it as well.

The point being made here is the reminder that all of these were created by Jesus—they are created beings who fall way beneath the power and glory and dignity of Jesus. So, the Colossians aren’t missing out by staying away from weird angel worship or by overly focusing on “spiritual” things. Christ is so much higher and more powerful and more glorious than any of those things and they have the ability to enter directly into his presence. To focus on those other things is not to go “deeper” or get “more” but to settle for something that is far lower than Christ himself. 

Paul even goes further. He says, “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17, ESV). Not only did Jesus create all things he also holds all things together. You may have heard him described as the creator and sustainer. That means that he didn’t simply create these things then turn them loose on the world. It doesn’t even mean that he created these things and is still in control of them while they operate on earth. It says that they hold together in him. That’s incredible. The very fact that the molecules of this pulpit are firm enough for me to lean on is because Jesus Christ is holding it together. If we were to withdraw his hand, it would completely fall apart. The very fact that I have strength and breath and a heart beat right now to speak to you, is because Jesus Christ is holding me together. If he were to withdraw his hand for a moment, not only would I die, but I would literally come undone because he holds me together. And the same thing is true for every other created reality whether visible or invisible. 

That makes it even crazier for people to look anywhere else outside of Christ—even to other spiritual realities. Not only have these other spiritual realities been created by Jesus, which means he’s greater and more powerful than he is and that he has authority over them, but their very existence still depends on Jesus. All Jesus would have to do is withdraw his hand and they would be completely undone because he holds them together. Why in the world would you look to them for your hope and comfort in the world? Why in the world would you think that by going to them you would experience something greater and deeper than what you get in Christ?

He takes it even one step further. He says, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:16, ESV). Notice the three prepositions in this passage: BY, THROUGH, and FOR. Everything was created by Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus. I don’t plan on getting into the technical details of what each of these propositions stand for and the nuance of the difference between things being created by Jesus and through Jesus. I want to focus on the last one—the fact that everything was created FOR Jesus. As you leave worship and look around at the sun and the sky and the trees and the fields and the mountains and the seas, they were all created for Jesus. That also applies to the invisible created realities. They were also created for Jesus—their purpose is to glorify and praise Jesus too. So, why in the world would you settle for worshiping or trusting in them, when their entire purpose in the world is to point you to Jesus. 

All of this is pointing to the simple reality that “…in everything he might be preeminent.” (Colossians 1:18, ESV). Jesus Christ is preeminent—he is higher than all created things. Or as the title of my sermon, he is supreme. That means he is enough—he’s more than enough—and that you need not look anywhere else outside of him. 

It also means that since he created it all and it was all created for him, he owns it all. Last week we read from Psalm 50 that the cattle on a thousand hills are his and the fullness of the world is his. He owns it. Or to bring the famous quote from Abraham Kuyper into the mix, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!’”. 

Here’s what is powerful about that. It’s been made clear that Christ is supreme over all things—he created them, he owns them. So, what does he do with that authority? We read, “and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:20, ESV). He takes that power and authority and ownership he has over all things—in heaven and on earth—and uses it to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven. In reality, this also is a reminder that he is the only one who can truly do this BECAUSE he is the only one who has the authority and power to do it. You cannot reconcile all things and there are no spiritual realities that can do this. It’s only Jesus Christ who is preeminent over all created realities. 

Notice how he brings this reconciliation to all things, “…by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:20, ESV). He does it through the cross. That’s how he brings reconciliation to all things. You can also say it’s through the gospel. Notice the connection to later in the passage: “…the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven…” (Colossians 1:23, ESV). He reconciles all creation by his blood as the gospel is preached throughout all creation. 

Let me answer one more question before I answer the elephant in the room. What does this reconciling look like? What does it mean that he will reconcile all things to himself? He tells us what this looks like, which helps us understand how the gospel brings this about. He says, “…making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:20, ESV). The reconciliation of all things is about peace being made. At its core, it’s about making peace between all of creation and its creator. Because of sin, all of creation is groaning. FF Bruce says, “The universe has been involved in conflict with its Creator, and needs to be reconciled to him: the conflict must be replaced by peace.” (Bruce, 74). The only way for that peace to happen—that reconciliation—is through the gospel and the blood of Jesus Christ. 

Here’s the elephant in the room: Is this saying that everyone will be saved? That everyone will be reconciled to God? Is this saying that every spiritual reality will be reconciled to God? The answer to that is no, because scripture clearly tells us that there will be people who are not saved and angels that are not saved. So, that’s not what he’s talking about here. However, think more along the lines of the end of the book of Revelation, after everything is sorted out and those who rejected Christ and the fallen angels are thrown in the lake of fire, the image we’re given is that in the new heavens and the new earth, there is no longer any hostility against the creator, everything has been reconciled to him and there will be peace for eternity. That’s the “all things” that he’s talking about. 

It’s also important to recognize that he’s in the process of doing that right now. Right now, Jesus Christ is at work reconciling all things to himself, making peace through the blood of the cross. This is what we’re praying for as we pray, “Your kingdom come…” But guess how that happens? How does he reconcile all things to himself and make peace through his blood? He does it one person at a time. That’s why our passage ends saying, “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,” (Colossians 1:21–22, ESV). On the one hand this is a reminder that nobody is too far gone that the preeminent Christ is unable to save them. If he is able to reconcile all things to himself, you are able to be reconciled. 

However, it’s also a reminder about how he does this. He reconciles all things to himself by reconciling people to himself through the gospel and then transforming their lives. He saved you to present you holy and blameless—to purify you. That’s what we’ve been talking about for so long now. As your life is increasingly reconciled to God—and you increasingly become less hostile to God—you begin to shape the world around you to become less hostile to God. It’s my favorite saying at work that changed hearts change lives, which change families, which change churches, which change businesses and communities, and nations—all things in fact. Christ reconciles all things by reconciling hearts that overflow on the world around them. 

Yet, there’s something in here that may serve as a warning to some. We read, “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard… (Colossians 1:23, ESV). The IF should serve as a warning. Christ has reconciled us to himself IF we continue in the faith. There’s a dual reality in scripture that is often overlooked. Some people like to say the phrase, “Once saved, always saved,” and that’s a true statement. However, it doesn’t fully explain the fullness of God’s teaching. Rather, the reality is “Once saved, you will continue in the faith—you will persevere to the end.” That means that those who said a prayer at a camp somewhere, but their life never changed and never bore fruit and they didn’t persevere were not actually saved. That also means that those who may have gone to church for a couple decades, but eventually walk away and leave the church, were not actually saved. I realize there is some nuance in this and that there is some room for a backsliding believer. However, scripture also clearly says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.” (1 John 2:19, ESV). 

But here’s the beauty in all of this: The preeminent Christ is the one who saves you and reconciles you through his blood. The Canons of Dort say this beautifully: "Because of these remnants of sin dwelling in them and also because of the temptations of the world and Satan, those who have been converted could not remain standing in this grace if left to their own resources. But God is faithful, mercifully strengthening them in the grace once conferred on them and powerfully preserving them in it to the end." It’s through his power that your heart is changed and your life as a result. It’s also through his power that you will persevere to the end and finish the race. 

The one who created all things is the one who holds you to the end. He’s enough. Don’t look to yourself and your own strength. Don’t look for other spiritual realities to help you. Don’t look for deeper knowledge. Don’t look anywhere other than Christ. He is enough for everything you need so that you will finish the race. 

[Read Colossians 1:9-14]

I think there is often a faulty assumption that people who know a lot of things are necessarily prideful, arrogant people. People immediately begin to picture the person who walks around with their nose a little higher in the air, looking down upon all of the ignorant people around them—or the person who doesn’t have time for the frivolous, pointless conversations of the common-folk. Yet, I don’t believe that is the reality of the situation. 

I’ve mentioned this before, so I will only briefly mention it here, that I noticed a massive difference between two types of dock customers that I served. There was the customer that had massive amounts of money and there was the customer who wanted everyone to think they had massive amounts of money. The customers that had a lot of money and didn’t feel the need to flaunt it, were some of the greatest, most down-to-earth people I dealt with on a regular basis. My worst customers were the ones who didn’t actually have that much money but wanted everyone else to think they did. They were so insecure that they always felt like they had to prove something. 

I think the same applies in regard to knowledge. There are people who know a lot and don’t feel the need to prove how much they know and there are people who want everyone to consider them an intellectual, and are very insecure about it, and as a result come across as very arrogant. You can see this in a well-known statement from Albert Einstein, where he said, "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.” That doesn’t sound like a prideful man, does it? It actually sounds like the more he learned, the more he knew about the world, the more he was humbled. In contrast to that, I came across this quote by John Calvin a while back, ”It is a common fault, that ignorance is closely followed by obstinacy.” (Calvin, Commentary on John, 57). I realize pride and obstinacy are different things, but they often come off in similar ways—and maybe pride is always hiding beneath obstinacy. 

I begin this way because some of this faulty thinking has bled into the church in various ways. I’ve heard people say that they don’t want to study the bible too much because they are worried that it will stifle their faith and love for God. A little less aggressively, some have said that if we study the bible too much, we begin to over-intellectualize the faith, and move everything away from our heart and into our minds. There is also a that goes around in some pastoral circles that say things like “Seminaries are cemeteries.” 

And yet, when we come to this passage, and the Apostle Paul is informing the church about his constant prayer for them, what is he praying for? “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…” (Colossians 1:9, ESV). That should get our attention. The Apostle Paul thought it was so important to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, that he continuously, ceaselessly prayed that it would happen in the church of Colossae.

Notice that it’s connected to last week’s passage as well. This passage begins with “And so…” which points backwards. Last week Paul was thanking and praising God for the report that the Colossians had believed in God and were growing in their faith. As a result of that, Paul has been ceaselessly praying that they would be filled with a knowledge of God’s will from the day he heard. 

What does it mean to be filled with something? I think people typically imagine an empty cup being “filled” with water, but that’s not exactly what is being talked about here. GK Beale says, “The word "be filled" does not refer to some kind of spatial filling of the Christian, but it figuratively indicates that by which one is characterized.” (Beale, 54). You could almost say that this is talking about being filled to the point where you are overcome and every part of your life is now characterized by a knowledge of God’s will. It’s who you are. 

I do think it’s important to take a minute to talk about God’s will—what is it and what does it mean? People talk about this all of the time. How do I know what God’s will is for my life? Is it God’s will for me to marry this person, go to this college, take this job? So, most people think of God’s will in terms of his daily leading and guiding us. However, the Bible uses the term differently. Throughout history, pastors and theologians have often talked about two different ways the Bible talks about the will of God. I call them God’s will of decree and his will of desire. God’s will of decree is what he decided and planned before the foundations of the earth—those things that will happen because God wills that it will happen. God’s will of desire are those things he wants us to do—think Ten Commandments. These are also spoken of as God’s will for our life.

When you understand these distinctions, it becomes clear that the Apostle Paul is not praying that God’s people will be filled with an understanding of what God has decreed from before the foundations of the earth BUT that they would be filled with a knowledge of what God desires for their life—that their lives would be characterized by what God desires for their life. And how do we know what God desires for our life? How do we learn the will of God in this way? Calvin says this, ”The knowledge of the divine will, by which expression he sets aside all inventions of men, and all speculations that are at variance with the word of God. For his will is not to be sought anywhere else than in his word.” (Calvin, 142). We’ll come back to this later. 

As he prays that the Colossians would be filled with a knowledge of what God desires for their life, he adds one important clarification. He says, “…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,” (Colossians 1:9, ESV). I’m not going to say a lot here, but to point out that he mentions that this is spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. It’s Paul’s way of pointing out that it is the Holy Spirit who works with the word of God to bring about this knowledge of God’s will in us. We can’t do it on our own. We need the Holy Spirit to do it in us as we come to the Word of God.

Why is this such a big deal to Paul? Why has he been continuously praying this for the Colossians since he heard about their faith? He tells us, “…so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him…” (Colossians 1:10, ESV). The result of being filled with a knowledge of what God desires for you is that you live a life—walk in a manner—that is worthy of the Lord. Now, this is NOT saying that you are earning your salvation or living in a way that makes you worthy of your salvation. The “worthy” in this instance means something more like appropriately or suitably. It should make sense to us that if you have been filled with a knowledge of what God desires for your life to the point that your life is characterized by what God desires, then you will naturally be living a life that is in line with what God desires. Then, when you’re living a life that God desires, he will obviously be pleased with that life. 

Here’s what this is telling us. If you are studying God’s Word so that you can increase in knowledge and prove to everyone around you how smart you are—you are doing it wrong. This is the “knowledge that puffs up” that Paul talks about elsewhere in scripture. That is not the goal of studying God’s Word. The goal is that we would live a life that pleases and glorifies God. The goal is that we would be so filled with the knowledge of God’s Word that it would completely overtake our lives and shape everything we say and do—that it would overflow out of us wherever we go. That means when you’re coming to God’s Word to study it, you are constantly seeking to understand more deeply and more effectively who God is and how God desires you to live in the world because you want to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21, ESV).

Then Paul goes on to describe what that life looks like. Some people break it into 5 categories, some break it into 4 categories, I’m going to break it into 3 categories. The first one is, “so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work…” (Colossians 1:10, ESV). So, if we’re going to be walking in a manner worthy of the Lord—living a life fully pleasing to God—then we need to be increasingly bearing fruit in every good work. Now, we talked about this a lot last week, so I’m going to spend a lot of time here now, but I do want to point out one small thing here. Each of the three aspects I’m going to talk about have the essence of continually connected with them. So, this is continually bearing fruit. It points out a couple realities: 1) this is something that grows and increases over time. It starts as a bud, that grows into an unripe fruit, that turns into a ripe fruit. Often, it’s a long slow process, but it needs to be continually happening. 2) That means it requires patience. I’ve grown fond of the term “plod” lately—not sure why. But I think we could say that we are to keep “patiently plodding” in a manner worthy of the Lord, just putting one foot in front of the other. 

After this, Paul seems to repeat himself by saying, “so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him…increasing in the knowledge of God…” (Colossians 1:10, ESV). Didn’t he already say that he was praying for this to happen? Kinda. He prayed that they would know God’s will. Now, he’s praying that they would know God. Of course, these are connected with each other. The more you know God, the more you know what God desires, the more you know how God would have you live. And many of the commentators pointed out that is one of those upward spiral situations, where the more you know God and his will, the faithfully you walk in a way that pleases him, and the more faithfully you walk in a way that pleases him, the more you begin to know about who God is and what He desires for you. And the spiral keeps going round and round in a way that draws you closer and closer to God and builds you up. 

I want to take a brief moment to show you how scripture connects these two realities. Here’s a passage I mention all the time. It says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16–17, ESV). Notice all of the connections to what we’ve been talking about. If we want to live a life pleasing to God we will be bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. That all comes through God’s Word. It teaches us and trains us so that we can increasingly grow in knowledge of God and what he desires. It corrects us and trains us for every good work—so that we continually bear fruit in every good work.

The third aspect of patiently plodding in a manner worthy to God and living a life pleasing to him is much longer, but I believe it’s all connected. We read, “so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him…being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father…” (Colossians 1:10–12, ESV). This only adds to the concept of patiently plodding because part of this is about enduring with patience—keeping on keeping on. And, don’t miss the fact that we don’t do this in our own strength. Actually, the only way we can keep on patiently plodding is as we are strengthened according to God’s glorious might. The only way we endure is by the power of God. If we rely on our own strength we will fail. So a central aspect of living a life pleasing to God is living a life that is patiently plodding in the strength that God supplies all the way to the end of the race. 

Notice, though, that we’re told the way in which we are to patiently plod. We are called to patiently plod—to endure—with JOY and Giving Thanks. This is an important clarification because there are different ways to endure—and different ways to plod. Even the terminology of plodding probably brings up an Eeyore type of an image—of the sad donkey slowly making his way down the road with his head hung low. That’s not what we’re saying. There’s also a type of endurance that isn’t joyful and isn’t giving thanks. The image I get here is those Christmas drives on icy roads and blizzards, where every part of your body is tense, you’re holding on for dear life, you’re hating every moment of it, but by-golly you are going to endure—you are going to make it to grandma’s house. That’s not what we’re talking about either. The image is more like a little girl walking down a treacherous path, but singing and smiling as she goes, seeing the beauty around her, thankful for the chance to walk the path, sometimes she’s tripping and falling and skinning her knees up, but she simply gets back up and keeps joyfully walking down the path. That’s more like what we’re talking about—enduring to the end with joy and thanks to God. 

What’s beautiful about this passage is that all of this is grounded in the reality of our salvation. We read, “giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in 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.” (Colossians 1:12–14, ESV).

First off, I want you to notice who has been acting throughout this passage. God is the one acting. At the beginning Paul prayed that they would “be filled” (Colossians 1:9, ESV) with the knowledge of God's will, not that they would fill themselves. Who is doing the filling then? God is. When Paul talked about them about endure he said they were “being strengthened” (Colossians 1:11, ESV), not that they were strengthening themselves. Who was strengthening them? God. Now, he even points out another reality from earlier. Remember when he talked about living a life worthy of God? Well now he says, “…the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” (Colossians 1:12, ESV), not that you qualify yourself or make yourself worthy. God is the one who does that. He goes on and says it all outright, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son…” (Colossians 1:13, ESV). God is the one who does all these things. He delivers you. He transfers you from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God. He qualifies you. He fills you. He strengthens you so that you will endure to the end. God is the one at work in your life. You do not save yourself. God does—from beginning to end.

Now, some begin to misunderstand and misinterpret this and say things like, “Well, if God is the one doing all these things, I guess I don’t have to do anything.” That’s a statement by someone who does not desire to live a life pleasing to God, or to walk in a manner worthy. Rather, scripture tells us to have a completely different view, saying, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12–13, ESV). Work out your salvation because God is working in you. So, the logic isn’t, “Great, since God is doing the work, I don’t have to” but “Great, since God is doing the work, I can do the work.” 

Like I mentioned earlier, this is the ground and foundation for everything we’ve talked about in this passage. It all flows from the reality that God has saved us. That is the reason why we desire to walk in a manner worthy of him and to live a life pleasing to him.

Think about it for a moment. God came into your life and saved you from all of the foolish mistakes you were making and forgave you for the sin in your life. He rescued you from death and destruction, and brought you out from the kingdom of Satan, and placed you in his kingdom. Would any one in their right mind say, “Awesome, now I can long to go back into the death and destruction as often as I want!” Not a chance. Rather, you say, “Thank you God! You delivered me from that mess and saved me. I don’t want to go back there. I want to live in the light. I want to follow you all the days of my life. I want to live the life you’ve created me to life—a life that pleases you.”

Then, because you want to live the life that pleases him, and because you grew up learning how to live in the kingdom of Satan, you need to relearn how to live. You need to better understand who God is and what he desires for your life. You need to read his word and study it. You need to hear it preached from the pulpit. You need to hear his word spoken to you from the lips of faithful friends. You’re not doing this so that you can appear smarter than everyone else but because you want to live a life that God has saved you to live. 

It’s also why we can confidently endure with joy and thanksgiving. God is the one who has delivered us. He has overcome the world. Nobody will snatch us from his hand. So, we can have confidence in the midst of every trial and difficulty that we will make it through because God has already delivered us and will bring us to the end. We will finish the race. And because we know we will finish the race, we’re not running it all tense and worried, but we’re free to enjoy it and thank God for the opportunity to run the race, knowing that we will finish and spend eternity with him. 

[Read Colossians 1:1-8]

The people that have had the biggest and most impact on my faith, the way I live the Christian life, and my calling as a pastor were not ordained pastors. Of course the people who had the greatest impact on my faith were my parents. However, there was another man who mentored me and discipled me for a long time who was not a pastor. For most of the time I knew him, he worked at Walmart. Yet, was a faithful, godly man who prayed regularly, who read and studied God’s Word regularly, and took every opportunity he had to share the gospel. When I was entering seminary, I knew I needed someone to walk alongside me and support me and guide me, so I asked him to mentor me because I believed he was more biblically and theologically knowledgeable than my pastor—which was true—and he mentored me throughout my time in seminary. I had the privilege of having him preach in this church at my ordination service. 

I wanted to begin this way because when many people hear the phrase “faithful minister” they immediately think of a full-time pastor. Yet, for many people—most people?—the person who has impacted their faith was not a full-time, ordained pastor. It was simply the people around them—parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, etc. These people have never gone through seminary or been ordained in the church. They are simply faithful Christians doing what faithful Christians do, having a tremendous impact on the lives of the people around them. I’m sure that each of you have names and faces popping into your mind as I say these things—which is good. I want you to remember those faithful ministers who’ve shaped and invested in your life. However, this morning I’m wanting you to consider something else: Who are you being a faithful minister to? Or Which people has God placed in your life, who you could faithfully minister to if you were just a little bit more intentional? Then, underneath those questions is another question: What types of things do you need to start doing in your life that will equip you and enable you to be a faithful minister in the lives of the people around you—bible reading, church attendance, prayer, study, etc.?

In this morning’s passage we hear about a faithful minister named Epaphras. We don’t know a lot about Epaphras for sure, but based on what we know about him, we can make some educated guesses. His name comes up three times in the Bible—twice in Colossians and once in Philemon, who lived on Colossae. So, Epaphras was definitely connected to the church in Colossae and the Apostle Paul says this about him: “just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf” (Colossians 1:7, ESV).   This church learned some things from Epaphras who is a fellow servant with Paul and is considered a faithful minister. Based on these things, many have made the educated guess that Epaphras planted the church in Colossae. 

However, most likely, he was involved beyond the church in Colossae. Colossae is closely located to two other cities in what is called the Lycus River Valley—Hierapolis and Laodicea. If you look at this map, you can see how close they are to one another. Yet, maps don’t always help you recognize how close these cities were, so I wanted to show you a couple of pictures from when I visited the Lycus River Valley. Colossae is a pretty uninteresting visit at the moment, because they haven’t excavated it yet. You can see in this picture that it’s just a mound of dirt at this point but it’s up in the hills on one side of the valley. Laodicea is on a hill right in the middle of the valley. I wish I could take the time to show you all of the pictures from there, but we don’t have the time this morning. I wanted to show you this picture of a theater because if you look closely in the top left of the image, you can see a white cliff. That’s Hierapolis. If you look way off to the right of the image on the hills, that’s about where Colossae would be. So, you can see how these three cities would be connected. Here’s a picture from Hierapolis that not only shows you those white cliffs, but also helps you get a view of the valley a little bit. Because of the geography, and the close proximity of these churches, many assume that Epaphras was a traveling pastor who oversaw the ministry of all three of these churches. 

Now, I realize the most likely Epaphras was a full-time or part-time pastor, which would seem to undermine the way I started this sermon. However, as I read through the description of Epaphras and his work—which is the description of a faithful minister—I couldn’t help but think to myself, “You don’t have to be a pastor to do any of these things.”

Look at the ways he is described. First, we read this: “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you…” (Colossians 1:5–6, ESV). How did the word of truth—the gospel—come to the people in Colossae? It came to them through Epaphras. He brought it to them. He was willing to get up and go somewhere to bring the gospel to them. You don’t have to be a pastor to do that. You  just have to do it. 

Then, when he came to them with the gospel he talked to them about it. They heard the gospel from Epaphras. There’s a couple things I could point out in that statement, but I’ll simply point out that Epaphras didn’t follow the saying, “Preach the gospel, use words if necessary.” I understand, and even appreciate, the sentiment of that statement, however it can easily undermine the importance of actually using words to share the gospel with people. Of course, you can be a witness through the way you live your life—and that’s essential—however, scripture is also very clear that: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17, ESV). So, if we want people to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, they will eventually have to hear the gospel from us. That’s part of being a faithful minister and you don’t have to be a pastor to do that. 

Another aspect of Epaphras’ ministry was teaching. We read this: “…the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf” (Colossians 1:6–7, ESV). In order for someone to learn something, they need someone to teach them. They need someone to answer their questions and to show them the things they don’t even know they don’t know. Now, of course, one of the primary roles of a pastor is teaching, however, you don’t have to be a pastor to teach someone. On some level, all you need to be is further down the road than they are. Someone who has been a Christian for a year or two, can easily teach someone who has been a Christian for a week or two. Some would even say they have an advantage because they can remember what it’s like to be a new Christian better than someone who has been a Christian for 30 years. However, I would even take this to another level and say that all you need in order to teach someone is different experiences in your life. If you have had to wrestle with your faith in different circumstances and situations, you have learned some things that other people haven’t learned, which means you can teach people a few things. So, you have something to offer and you don’t have to be a pastor to do that. 

The other aspect of this that I really appreciated is this little line in the middle—one that can easily be missed or ignored—“Of this you have heard before…” (Colossians 1:5, ESV). They heard all of this before—it wasn’t the first time. It points out the fact that people don’t believe or understand anything the first time they hear it. Often, it takes a lot of repetition and reminder for us to finally grasp something, and especially for us to embrace and believe something. So, a faithful minister repeats themself often and continues to remind people who God is and who they are over and over again. So, this means it takes diligence and perseverance to keep going to people, talking to people, and teaching them about the gospel. That’s what it means to be a faithful minister—you don’t have to be a pastor to do that. 

The beautiful thing is that when we do these things in the lives of the people around us, we begin to see fruit and eventually we see people understand and believe. That’s what we see in this passage, as a result of Epaphras’ faithful ministry in Colossae we read, “since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus…Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you…since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth…” (Colossians 1:4–6, ESV). Their faith came from hearing the gospel from the mouth of Epaphras over a period of time, which slowly they understood, and then eventually embraced and believed. 

I want to make sure to emphasize this a bit by looking at the Heidelberg Catechism. It asks an important—vital—question: “What is true faith?” and it gives us this answer, “True faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in Scripture; it is also a wholehearted trust, which the Holy Spirit creates in me by the gospel, that God has freely granted, not only to others but to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and salvation. These are gifts of sheer grace, granted solely by Christ's merit.” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A21). The point I want to emphasize this morning is that true faith requires some knowledge—you have to know something about yourself and God. We cannot have faith in something we know nothing about. Or, as this morning’s passage points out, you have to be taught and understand some things before you truly believe. Then, as you begin to see and understand your own sinfulness more and more, and the beauty and glory and forgiveness of God more and more, then you begin to give your life to Him more and more. 

It’s also important to notice another little phrase that comes at the beginning of this passage in the introduction—a phrase that could easily be missed. It’s this little phrase “To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae” (Colossians 1:2, ESV). That phrase “in Christ” is extremely important and will become increasingly important as we go through the rest of this book. It’s explaining our relationship to Jesus Christ after we put our faith and trust in Him. When we do that we are united to him. Now, there are entire books written on our union with Christ, but let me give you the overarching concept of it. Being united with Christ means that we are united to everything he has accomplished and united to his present exalted state at the right hand of the Father. In him, we have both died to sin and been raised to new life, seated with him in the heavenly places even as we remain on earth—we share in his heavenly life, reign, and ongoing intercession.

There are a lot of practical applications to that reality, but let me show you one of them directly from this morning's passage. We read this, “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you…is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth…” (Colossians 1:5–6, ESV). Notice that he says the gospel has been bearing fruit and increasing in their lives since the day they heard it and understood it. That means that from the moment the Colossians put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, something began to change in them—their hearts and minds and souls and lives began to change. The fruit of the gospel is the process of sanctification—being made holy, being made more like Jesus Christ. That began to happen the moment they put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and has been increasing—growing in their life—from that moment on. 

To connect that to what I was saying earlier, this MUST happen because we’ve been united to Jesus Christ. This is the point that the Apostle Paul repeatedly makes. Here’s one example: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” (Romans 6:5–6, ESV). Since we have been united to Jesus who died to sin and rose to new life, that process HAS to be happening in us. It is a necessary result of true faith in Jesus Christ that we will be continually dying to sin and rising to new life, every single day. That’s the necessary fruit of the gospel. 

Our passage even helps us by showing us some examples of what this fruit looks like. It actually gives us three words for the fruit of our salvation that many people will be familiar with: Faith, Hope, and Love. Although, I’m going to present them in the slightly different order of Faith, Love, and Hope. 

You might think that I’ve already been talking about faith being the entrance into our salvation and the process by which we’re united to Jesus Christ. How can I also talk about it as a fruit? I always like to make sure people understand that putting our faith and trust in Jesus Christ is not a one-time deal. It’s not that you do this one time and then you never have to do it again. That’s actually not a true faith. True faith is actually trusting God with all of your life—which means that you will continue to live and walk by faith every single moment of every single day. That means one aspect of the increasing fruit in your life will be our faith. The longer you follow Christ, the deeper and stronger and richer your faith will become. 

We’re also shown this fruit of our union with Christ: “since we heard…of the love that you have for all the saints,” (Colossians 1:4, ESV). Another fruit of a true faith—or fruit of being united with Christ—is a true love for God’s people. Some of you know that there are different Greek words that can be used for the word love, and this is the word agape—which is an active, self-giving, self-denying love. Again, this is the fruit of a true faith, that must be increasing and deepening in your life when you’re united with Christ. 

And we’re told that faith and love are rooted in a hope laid up for them in heaven. We read, “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.” (Colossians 1:3–5, ESV). This answers the why questions. Why do they continue to grow in their faith and trust in Jesus Christ? Because their hope is laid up in heaven, where Christ is. That’s why they trust him. Why do they love God’s people with a self-denying love? Because their hope is laid up for them in heaven, where Christ is, along with everyone else who is united to him. John Calvin says, “For the hope of eternal life will never be inactive in us, so as not to produce love in us. For it is of necessity, that the man who is fully persuaded that a treasure of life is laid up for him in heaven will aspire there, looking down upon this world. Meditation, however, upon the heavenly life stirs up our affections both to the worship of God, and to exercises of love.”(Calvin, 138-139). The hope that is laid up for us in heaven is what stirs us daily to faith and love. 

Then notice something powerful that comes up in this passage. I’ve been emphasizing the fact that the gospel necessarily bears fruit and increases in the life of those who believe, but this passage says more than that. It says, “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing…” (Colossians 1:5–6, ESV). The gospel is not only bearing fruit and increasing in the lives of those who believe, but it is bearing fruit and increasing throughout the whole world. The fruit of the gospel never remains contained. It always spreads like leaven through a batch of dough. This is why I always remind us that the gospel changes hearts, which then changes lives, which changes families, and changes churches and communities and states and nations and the world.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying the expansion of the gospel in the early church. Think about it. It started off with such a small group of people, then exploded a little bit to a few thousand after Pentecost, which eventually took over the world. I mean, look at this map. The purple is where the prevailing belief of that country is Christianity—and for those that are not purple, I can pretty much guarantee you there are Christians there. How did it happen? How in the world did the gospel bear so much fruit and increase in such a way? Was it because the church had such a great marketing plan? No, they were being killed and many of the nations were trying to stamp them out. Was it because the church was really good at creating and hosting outreach events? No, that wasn’t a thing. So, how in the world did the gospel spread so quickly and effectively throughout the world? One writer said, “We cannot hesitate to believe that the great mission of Christianity was in reality accomplished by means of informal missionaries.” (Harnack in Green, Evangelism in the Early Church). Another way of saying that is that the great mission of Christianity was not carried out by pastors, but by faithful ministers who followed Christ in their everyday lives—who lived by faith, loved God and his people, and kept their eyes on the hope laid up for them in heaven.  Faithful ministers who work at Walmart or drive a truck or care for their family. Faithful ministers who did their work and shared the gospel where they went. Another writer says, “They did most of their evangelism on what we would call secular ground. You find them in the laundries, at the street corners and in the wine bars talking about Jesus to all who would listen.” (Green, Evangelism in the Early Church).

This is such an important reminder as we long to see people come to know Jesus Christ. If we want to see that happen more and more—if we want to see the gospel bear fruit and increase throughout Beaver Dam—we don’t need to come up with a marketing plan or come up with a creative outreach event. Step one is to pray that the gospel would bear fruit and increase in our own lives. Then, as that happens, we live as faithful ministers in the world, bringing the gospel with us wherever we go, spreading it generously in the world, trusting that God will give the growth and provide a harvest.

[Read Micah 7:8–20]

There’s this haunting moment in the gospels that always stands out to me. It’s after Jesus’ death, and these two disciples are walking down the road talking about what just happened and they say, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” (Luke 24:21, ESV). It’s this devastating line because they had hoped he was the answer to all of their problems and sorrows. They had hoped that he was going to come and fix everything. Yet, in that moment, they thought that all of their hopes and dreams had just been crushed and taken away. And you see these two guys walking down the road, with their heads hanging low in despair, wondering what the future holds for them. 

What’s incredible is that, even though we don’t get a clear picture of this side from the Gospels, we can imagine that not everyone was despairing at this moment. There were also people who were celebrating and rejoicing in the death of Jesus. They had been working for this moment for a long time. They had crafted the perfect plan and strategy and carried it out to perfection. For them, this was the time to revel in what they just accomplished—to celebrate their victory. 

God’s people in this morning's passage were experiencing similar feelings. However, their despair was the result of experiencing the punishment of God against their sins. God had repeatedly reminded them what he required of them, and they had repeatedly chosen to do whatever they wanted to do and walk away from Him. Now they were experiencing the consequences of those actions. If you can imagine what’s going on in their mind, you can imagine them saying things similar to those two guys walking down the road: “We had hoped this would be different. We had hoped that we would remain in the Promised Land forever—that we would continue to prosper and grow and that our descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Now look at us.”

It doesn’t matter who you are, you either have—or will eventually—find yourself in a situation like this. You will find yourself saying something like, “We had hoped this job was going to be the answer to our prayers, but it doesn’t look like that anymore” or “We had hoped this treatment was going to take away the pain or make life easier” or “We had hoped that this move or this house or this…” So, we’re all going to find ourselves in a situation like this at some point, the question is: Where do you turn in those moments? How do you respond when what you had hoped, didn’t come about?

The answer to that question can come in a variety of forms and it all depends on where you are in relationship with God. If you’ve found yourself in a position where you have turned your back on God and walked away from him where do you turn? You will turn to friends and family and most likely, you will turn to yourself and rely on yourself to figure things out. Some want to think that’s a comforting place to be, but it’s not as comforting as you would think, especially in that situation. Because when you’re in a position where what you had hoped didn’t come about, and you’re honest with yourself, you realize that you just figured out that you couldn’t get the job done. You were not able to fix the situation. So, why would that give you comfort for the second chance, or the third chance, or the fourth chance? So, it’s not as comforting or strengthening or hopeful as you may think. It’s actually a place where you end up spiraling deeper and deeper into despair. 

What we see in this morning’s passage is how you can respond when you are in a relationship with God—when He is your God and you are His people. Then, things change and things change even if you’ve messed up along the way. Remember, everything we’re about to read in this morning’s passage is in the context of God’s people being disciplined for messing up and disobeying God. They’re being punished. They even admit it in this passage and say, “I will bear the indignation of the LORD because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me.” (Micah 7:9, ESV). So, they are recognizing that they have messed up and sinned and they are owning up to their sin before God. They basically tell God that they understand that they are going to be punished for messing up and they are ready to accept that punishment. 

Yet, also notice that they are not hopeless in the midst of this. There’s an incredible confidence coming from God’s people even in the midst of their punishment. They say, “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me.” (Micah 7:8, ESV). That takes some real confidence, doesn’t it. Their enemies who have been ravaging the country and the cities are rubbing it in. They are mocking them. They are saying, “Where is the LORD your God?” (Micah 7:10, ESV). Can’t your God save you? Where is he? Is he sleeping? Is he too weak? Look at you. And in the midst of that mocking and rejoicing, God’s people stand up and say, “Keep on mocking me, but know this, I may be down right now, but I’m not going to stay that way. I may be sitting in darkness and despair right now, but eventually I will be brought out into the light.” Do you see the kind of confidence and hope they had in the midst of utter despair and turmoil?

I want to make sure you realize where that hope and confidence come from. Because in some ways, that sounds like a line out of a movie, doesn’t it. You can imagine someone saying, “It doesn’t matter how much you knock me down and push me out, I will keep coming. You will never take me out.” Yet, the person saying that is relying on themselves and their own strength. That’s not where God’s people are getting their hope and confidence. Their hope and confidence come from their God. They say, “He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.” (Micah 7:9, ESV). They are able to stand up to their enemies with confidence and hope because they have put their hope and trust in God—a God who has proven himself over and over and over again. That’s why they can say that it doesn’t matter what things look like now, they have confidence that eventually, God will deliver them and bring about victory over their enemies. 

That’s what it talked about in the New Testament when we read, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” (2 Corinthians 4:7–10, ESV). How are they able to endure all of these things? Because of the surpassing power that belongs to God, not themselves. 

And because they have this hope and confidence in God that he will deliver them, they cry out to him and ask him to deliver them. Don’t forget that they are being punished. They’ve messed up. But that doesn’t keep them from crying out to God and asking him to deliver them. They say, “Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your inheritance, who dwell alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land…As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, I will show them marvelous things. The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might…” (Micah 7:14–16, ESV).  In the midst of being punished, they ask God to deliver them like he did back in Egypt so that God would show his power and might to the nations—so that God would be exalted over their enemies. Not only are they asking to be delivered, but for God to lead them and they will follow him. 

It’s such a beautiful picture because I know of so many people who say things like, “I’ve messed up to much to ask God to help” or “I’ve done too many bad things in my life to cry out to God” or “You don’t want to know all the things I’ve done that keep me from turning back to God.” The reality is that it doesn't matter. There is nothing—other than yourself—that can prevent you from turning to God, seeking to be delivered, and having this kind of confidence and hope. 

Ultimately, this is what Easter Sunday is all about. On the one hand, it’s this reminder that God can bring tremendous victory out of what seems like a total defeat. That’s what everyone thought happened on the cross. They thought it was a total and complete defeat, that all of their hopes and dreams had disappeared. It looked like the enemies had won as they rejoiced and mocked God’s people. 

Yet, as we celebrate today the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, it’s a reminder that what seemed like a total and complete defeat was actually a total and complete victory. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the beginning of his victory march over all of his enemies. It’s Jesus’ victory march over sin and death and Satan. It’s his reminder to all of these enemies that they better stop rejoicing and they better stop mocking because he has defeated them and is bringing about complete and total victory.  

Because of Christ’s victory over sin and death and Satan, anyone who looks to Jesus Christ in faith will be forgiven, set free, receive eternal life, and enter into his family. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve failed. It doesn’t matter how bad you’ve been. It doesn’t even matter if right now you’re struggling with punishments from God himself. None of that prevents you from turning to him, crying out to him, and asking him to save you and deliver you. If you haven’t done that yet in your life, now would be a great time to do that. Give you life to him and be saved. Don’t let anything hold you back. 

And when you do that, you’re not only forgiven of your sins, set free from your sins, and receive eternal life, but God looks at you and says, “You are mine and I am yours.” And because that is true in your life, you can now live with an amazing amount of hope and confidence. You can live with this confidence that God has your back and He will never leave you nor forsake you. That no matter how dark things get, or how bad things get, or how hopeless the situation seems, you can have confidence that it will not always be this way. God will eventually deliver you. You can have that level of confidence because you’ve watched God do it over and over again. You’ve watched God take the seemingly hopeless defeat of Jesus on the cross and turn it into complete victory and your own salvation.  And because you’ve watched God do it before, and because you now trust him with your life, you know that he can and will do it again and again and again. 

When you give your life to God and follow him, you also have this amazing privilege to worship him. That’s how this entire book ends. It ends worshiping God. It says, “Who is a God like you?” (Micah 7:18–20, ESV). The answer to this question is: there is no god like Him. Obviously, there is only one God and there are no others. However, even among the false gods we create and worship, there’s none like him. Not even close. 

I mean, take a moment to think about all of the false gods of all of the false religions out there. Are any of them like our God? Have any of those gods been raised from the dead? Are there any of those gods who have taken a moment of complete defeat and turned into absolute victory? No. 

Actually, more importantly, this passage tells you to look at all of the other false gods and see if any of them has shown their power and their glory and their might through the forgiveness of sins. It says, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?…He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” (Micah 7:18-19, ESV). No other false god functions like this. No other god makes this the core of his being—the central point of history. No other god has sent his son to bear the weight and punishment of our sin so that he could cast our sins into the depths of the sea. No other god will actually cleanse you and forgive you like this. They can’t. There is no other god like this. 

It goes on: “Who is a God like you…He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love…You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.” (Micah 7:18, 20ESV). Is there another god that we’ve created, or another god from a false religion that acts this way? No. All of the false gods are capricious and selfish and angry and bitter. But our God, the one true God, actually not only forgives and shows mercy, but he delights in steadfast love. He delights in sticking with his people through thick and thin. There is no other god like this. Our God showed steadfast love to deceitful Jacob and lying Abraham and to the many sinful fathers throughout the Old Testament. God actually wears his steadfast love and faithfulness as a badge of honor. There’s no other god like that. Every other false god will throw you out like a used up dish rag the moment they don’t need you. Our God—the one true God—will stick with you through the ups and downs and the highs and lows. He will never leave you nor forsake you. And ultimately will lead you to complete and total victory. There’s no other god like that.

As we remember and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ this morning, it is a clear reminder that there is only one true God: the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that reality forces every single person to make a decision. Who will you worship and follow? Will you give your life to a god that is not really a god—to something made up by mankind? Will you try to rely on yourself—making yourself a god—and live the rest of your life without any ultimate confidence  or hope? 

OR will you give your life to the one true God, who delights in sticking with his people through thick and thin, who bears your curse, forgives your debt, and throws your sins into the depths of the sea? Will you give your life to the God who has proven over and over and over again, that he can turn hopelessness and despairing situations into total and complete victory for those who love Him?

[Read Micah 7:1-7]

It doesn’t matter how often you hear the story of the crucifixion, the brutality and wickedness of it all is always shocking. We see the complete wickedness in the fact that Jesus was continually mocked throughout the entire situation. It didn’t matter how beaten and bloodied he was, they continued to mock him: Prophesy! Hail King of the Jews! This guy thought he could rebuild the temple and can’t even save himself! If you are really the Christ come down from the cross! If you want us to believe in you, do a miracle now! Even the men hanging on the cross on either side of him mocked him. The entire story reeks of evil and wickedness. 

It only gets worse as we hear their screams of “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” That even shocked Pilate, causing him to question them, “Why, what has he done?” They didn’t even have a good answer for him, they just screamed louder, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Wickedness and Evil. It gets even worse, I think, when they cry out “We have no king but Caesar!” and not only reject Jesus, but blatantly reject their God and Father. Wickedness and Evil. 

It makes you wonder how they got into this position. What led them to  the place where they could unashamedly mock an innocent man who was beaten and bloodied, hunger for his death, and reject their God? There are a variety of ways to answer that question, but I want to point out that Micah sees a similar level of wickedness and evil in his day. He says things like, “The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind…” (Micah 7:2, ESV). Not only have the godly disappeared, but he says, “Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well…” (Micah 7:3, ESV). It’s not just that the godly have disappeared and there’s malaise in regard to righteousness—or an apathy toward it—but they are skilled at doing what is evil. They have honed and perfected it to the best of their ability. It’s become an art-form to them. 

Not only that but Micah says, “…they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net.” (Micah 7:2, ESV). They are hunting one another. All they are worried about is themselves and what they can take from those around them. So, they lurk and stalk the people around them, calculating how much they can take from them—even their life if necessary. 

Doesn’t that sound like the scene leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion? People who have perfected wickedness and evil, people who have greased the wheels of justice so that they can get done what they want to get done, people who have stirred up false testimony and applied pressure on the judges and politicians. They have perfected evil. And they are hunting those around them, looking for blood, crying out “Crucify! Crucify!” We see this situation in Micah’s day, in Jesus’ day, and sadly we continue to see it in our own day. The question is, how do we respond in the midst of it?

Micah responds by crying out, “Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.” (Micah 7:1, ESV). Now, we’ve transformed the “Woe is me” language into something that is geared more toward self-pity. It’s something we tell our children when they complain about having to do a chore around the house—don’t be so “woe is me” about this. However, when you see the broader context, that’s not what is happening with Micah. He’s not complaining about how bad things are around him. He’s also not angry and bitter about how bad things are. Instead, he says that he is like a vineyard that has been emptied. He is lamenting the wickedness he sees around him. He’s weeping and weary over it. 

Jesus responded to this rampant wickedness in the same way. Jesus looked out over wicked and evil Jerusalem and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate.” (Matthew 23:37–38, ESV). When Luke tells us this story, he fills in what Jesus was feeling, “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it,” (Luke 19:41, ESV). Jesus wept over the city that he knew was about to kill him. 

This is such an important reminder for us as we live in the midst of a culture where we look around and it seems like the godly have perished, and we’re surrounded by people who have perfected evil and wickedness, who are hunting the people around them seeking to take advantage of them. It’s easy to become very angry—and that is not entirely wrong. It’s easy to become very bitter. It’s not always our natural tendency to weep. To weep over the destruction that we see happening throughout the culture. To weep over the destruction that we see happening in the lives of these people. Both Micah and Jesus remind us that we are called to weep and lament when the godly perish from the earth and when we’re surrounded by evil and wickedness. 

Yet, we’re not called only to lamenting and weeping. We’re called to live. As he lives in the midst of a wicked generation he says, “But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” (Micah 7:7, ESV). When Micah says, “But as for me…” he’s taking a bold, counter-cultural stand in the face of the culture. It doesn’t matter if they have perfected evil and are hunting people down, he is going to live differently. He is going to shine like a light in the midst of the darkness. He is going to do what the Lord requires of him—do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with his God. He says that a little differently here. He’s going to look to the Lord, wait for the Lord, knowing that the Lord will hear him and be his salvation. It didn’t matter how unfaithful the culture was around him; he was going to be faithful to his God. 

We see the same out of Jesus as he enters Jerusalem and as he begins the long, suffering path toward the cross. You can almost put these same words in Jesus’ mouth, can’t you? In the midst of all of the wickedness that Jesus faced on that night he said, “But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” (Micah 7:7, ESV). He looked to the Lord in Gethsemane and cried out, “Not my will but yours be done.” He waited for the Lord and didn’t defend himself before his false accusers and didn’t fight back. He knew his Father would hear him as he cried out to him on the cross, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46, ESV).

It’s no coincidence that the world went dark in the midst of Jesus’ death on the cross. It truly was a dark day when the light of the world was put to death. In the midst of the evil and wickedness, in the midst of the darkness, Jesus remained faithful and trusted in God to the point of death—and beyond. 

This night—Good Friday—the night we remember the death of Jesus Christ, is the epitome of darkness. It’s the epitome of a situation that seemed like the darkness had overcome the light, like those who had perfected evil had won, and that everything was hopeless. And if the story ended here, that would be the case. 

Yet, we know that Sunday is coming. And because we know that Sunday is coming, we also know that we can have hope in the midst of our deepest darkness. Because we know that Jesus overcame the darkness, and defeated sin and death and Satan, we have confidence that we will overcome as well. 

Therefore, as we live in the midst of wickedness and evil, we should cry out and lament the destruction we see all around us. We should also live and act and speak with a “But as for me…” mentality. As we live our lives surrounded by darkness, we must not get angry and bitter with God, but we must look to God and watch for him and trust him with our lives. We must live and act and pray like we KNOW he is our God and we KNOW that he will hear us. Ultimately, we must wait for God. Because we love and trust our God, and we know he doesn’t work on our timelines, we wait for him and trust him in the midst of it all. We can do all of these things—and have this kind of faith and hope in the midst of darkness and evil and wickedness—because Jesus Christ was faithful to the end, died on the cross for us, was buried, and after three days overcame it all.