Have We Forgotten What the Church Is?

Good to see everybody this weekend. If you happen to be joining us online this weekend, maybe you're homebound or just traveling, welcome to you. And then welcome to our church family at Dick Conner. It's a men's prison and Eddie Warrior. That's a ladies' prison. We like to kind of say hello and welcome them every weekend. So could you put your hands together and just say hi. Glad to have you wherever you might be joining us from. Hey, when you came in today, you should have received one of these little compassion offering brochures. I want to let you know a little bit about our compassion offering. It's a fund we started something like nine years ago. These are funds that pass through church on the move. This doesn't go to cover utility bills or administrative costs about really anything around here. This is all just money that goes to missions and charities and churches and benevolence that stuff is just making a difference in our community and around the world. And we have in the last nine years, this is pretty cool. Actually, pretty amazing church on the movers like you over the last nine years have given away something like almost $17 million to this compassion fund in nine years, which is really special. It goes to disaster relief. It goes to cover needs of congregants.

So folks in need in the congregation, we do a lot of work there. But then we help churches that need resources or are being planted just maybe in a difficult part of the world. We partner with missionaries who are digging water wells and planting churches, right? We do a lot of different things. And what you're going to find in this is just some of the kind of highlighted projects for this year, every year we sort of put before you, some new initiatives, new projects that we think are worthy of our support. And that's really what this is. I'm not going to get into it in detail today, but that's what this is for. So if you want to take this home, read through this and just kind of see what we're going to be giving toward this year and maybe pray about being a part of this as we get this year's compassion offering kick started as we kind of come to the end of the year. So anyway, that's what this is about. We'll tell you more about it as we kind of get closer to the end of the year, but wanted to put this in your hands today. All right, if you have a Bible, grab it. We're going to be looking at Colossians, chapter one, as Priscilla said, we are going to be spending five weeks studying through

the book of Colossians and Lord willing Philemon. You might not realize how that those two books are connected, might not even realize they were connected, but they are. And by God's grace, we will dig into that in week five. We're going to spend five weeks in this series, hard to believe, but five weeks until Advent season, right? So that's just around the corner, but we're going to take these five weeks and study through this letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to this church. Today we're going to be looking at the first 14 verses of chapter one. If you have a Bible, you can follow along. If you don't, we'll put the words on the screen and I will begin reading. Paul writes this, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to the saints in faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you in peace from God, our father. We always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints. Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven of this, you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world 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,

just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit. And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. Being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy. Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share and the inheritance of the saints in light, he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. This is the word of the Lord. And we all said, thanks be to God. So what we call the book of Colossians, And we know this because of how Paul wrote it. He wrote it in the style or form of all ancient letters. That is, he began with his name. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus. By the will of God and Timothy, our brother, in the ancient world, when you wrote a letter, you put your name at the beginning. In our world, when you write a letter, let's be serious, no one writes letters anymore,

but when you write an email, you put your name, not at the beginning, but at the end. You put the person you're addressing it to at the beginning, but in the ancient world, it was just the opposite. Your name came first and then who you were addressing it to. So Paul begins with his own name. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, some credentials here, who he is, what qualifies him to even write anything to this church. That'll become kind of clear as we learn a little bit more about the sort of context of this letter. By the will of God, in other words, I'm an apostle, but not of my own making, it's God's will. God chose me, God appointed me. And Timothy, our brother, Timothy was a partner, a protege of Paul's, here they are, together, putting this letter together for the church in Colossae. Now we know this because of verse two. This is where he addresses who it's to, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. Now Colossae was a town in the Roman province of Asia Minor, actually brought a map so you could kind of see where Colossae is located. This is modern day Turkey, but in Paul's day, it was called Asia Minor. We can see here that Colossae is about 100 to 120 miles east of Ephesus. Paul had spent considerable time in Ephesus, lived there for three years, preached the gospel, labored there to get the church planted,

discipling people, preaching the gospel and converting folks to faith in Jesus Christ, training them up, discipling them. He did all of this for three years. Colossae was a town that he had never visited, but it's a town that he's writing to, a church had started there. Now we don't know exactly how the church got planted. We could take an educated guess. In verse seven, we read of this man, Epaphras, Paul mentions, who is a beloved fellow servant. He's a minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit. At the very least, we could say that Epaphras brought the gospel message in some form to the church at Colossae, but there's a good chance that he planted this church. We could kind of guess that maybe Epaphras was converted and discipled by Paul while Paul was ministering in Ephesus. And after he had trained and discipled Epaphras up and Paul leaves Epaphras, maybe goes back to his hometown. We don't know for sure, but maybe he goes back to his hometown of Colossae and plants a church. At the time this letter is written, it's about six to seven years after Paul had left Ephesus. And he's now in a Roman prison, writing in response to tidings that had come to him from Epaphras. Apparently, Epaphras had traveled all the way to Rome

to visit Paul in prison and to give him news of the church in Colossae. So Paul is writing to a group of people that he does not know, a church that he had never met face to face. He'd planted many churches and written many letters to many churches. Interestingly, the letters are named after the places to whom the letters are going and the people there. So the letter to Ephesus, we know as the letter to the Ephesians, right? The letter to Colossae is the letter to the Colossians. If he was writing a letter to us in Tulsa, what would we call it? Tulsons, right? That's how it would work, right? So Paul is writing to these people, but this is a church that he'd never been to and the people that he didn't know face to face. And yet he is encouraged by the report that Epaphras has brought to him. We can see this in verse three. We always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus, when we pray for you, since we heard, he's heard some things about this church in Colossae and he is encouraged. He's writing to them, to encourage them, to strengthen them and to remind them to keep the main thing, the main thing that is Jesus.

Now, that will become increasingly clear as we dig a little deeper into this book or this letter, this series. But for this weekend, we're just gonna focus on the beginning of Paul's letter, his thanksgiving and his prayer. Ancient letters began first with kind of the, Then there would be a Thanksgiving, that's what we're about to read. And then there would be a prayer. We're gonna focus on those two things. It might seem like just sort of introductory small talk, but make no mistake, Paul never wastes his words. Paul is like theological gospel concentrate. You ever have any like cleaners in your home that are like a concentrate, simple green? You know where you're like, you're supposed to mix it with a little bit of water because a little bit goes a long way. That's how Paul's letters are. Every phrase, weighted with meaning, everything that he says connects to so many broader themes and scriptures. So we're gonna do our best. We're not gonna be able to cover everything, but we're gonna do our best to slow down a little bit and just consider some of the things that Paul is talking about here. For instance, what is he thanking God for? He's heard some things about this church in Colossae.

And I think we ought to pay attention to what he celebrates in them because these are really marks of a true genuine Christian community. Remember, Paul had never been to this church. He's writing to a group of people that he doesn't know face to face. And yet he's encouraged by what he hears, by what report of pafras has brought to him of what's happening in Colossae. He's like, oh, I love it. He can be sure that the gospel has taken root. And in this way, I think there's something that we have in common with the church in Colossae here in Tulsa, 2000 years later. And that is that Paul has never been to Tulsa, either. He's never even set foot on our continent. And yet by the very spirit of God, he is writing to us because Paul is an apostle of the first order. What does that mean? It means he was chosen by God to be a vessel, to communicate the gospel to those who would come after him. Paul's words have a special authoritative quality. That's why they are scripture. There would be many other pastors and preachers and theologians and leaders who would follow. Paul and the other apostles, but they don't fit in the same category. This is a unique apostolic calling

and anointing that Paul had to write authoritatively to these churches, which means he's speaking the words of God. And that means those words never fade, never go out of style, never wane. It means they speak to us here and now today. So what Paul says to them, we can also attribute to ourselves, what can we learn, what can we take, how might we be encouraged and challenged by what Paul writes to the church in Colossae here in Tulsa 2000 years later, the spirit is still speaking. So let's consider what is it that Paul has heard and what is it that he is encouraged by? Well, we 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. Here, right away we can identify a common theme in Paul's letters, faith, hope and love. Dick Lucas puts it like this, he says, faith, hope and love make up a familiar triad in Paul's writings, we might also call them, or almost call them an example of apostolic shorthand. When Paul combines these three elements of Christian spirituality as in this context, it is usually to provide a basic and sufficient description of the genuine Christian.

In other words, what Paul is highlighting here, certain qualities are characteristics. In other words, if you wanted to know, what's a real sort of Jesus-centered kind of gospel-focused church? What would be the qualities that you would look for? Some of us, there's certain qualities that we want in a church, so I'm only going to a church unless it's spirit filled. Or I'll only go to a church and let's say, talk about kind of your sort of pet doctrine or your pet theological idea, right? Like we have different preferences. We like a certain kind of worship. Paul doesn't mention any of those things. He mentions faith, hope and love. Let's look at them specifically. What does he say about faith, hope and love? First, faith, he writes this, I have heard or we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus. Let's note first that this is no generic faith. This is more than just a sort of wrought iron F-A-I-T-H sign that you can get a Hobby Lobby and hang in your living room or a little dining room area, right? This is more than just a sort of general belief, a sort of acknowledgement of the big man upstairs that so many of us think is sort of the real deal, which is not, but it's a kind of sort of acknowledgement that God is there, but this is more than that. When he describes a faith in Christ Jesus,

it's more than just an acknowledgement and a deity. It's more than just an acknowledgement that Jesus was a good man or a good teacher. It's even more than an acknowledgement that Jesus is God. Did you know, James, the half brother of Jesus, writes that even the demons believe and shudder? Do you know what that means? It means that even demon spirits fall in angels, those who have rebelled against God, acknowledge that he is God, and acknowledge that Jesus is divine that does not give them, though, a saving faith. What's the difference? A saving faith is more than an acknowledgement of existence, a kind of surface level belief. It is to trust, to put your very life in his hands. Let me illustrate it for you like this. Imagine that you had a terminal illness. You'd been diagnosed and there was no known cure. You'd tried everything. You'd been to see every doctor. You'd tried every treatment. Nothing works. There's no hope and there's no cure. There's only for you to do is just to wait until the end. And then one day, you hear of a physician, an amazing young physician who claims he can cure you more than cure you, he can give you new life. And you're inclined to believe him. There's just something about him

and something about his promise that makes you wanna believe it. There's just one catch, though. The only way to get this new life is to undergo a radical kind of procedure. He's going to have to kill you first. Lay down on the operating table. I'm going to have to kill you. Your heart will stop, but the promise is, I will bring you back. Do you trust him? Do you go through with the procedure? That is faith. You're putting your very life in his hands. Do you understand how this is more than just an acknowledgement of existence? It's a full and complete trust. And that's what it is to be a Christian. That's what we mean when we say introducing people to the real Jesus. A lot of people in Oklahoma believe in the good Lord, believe in the big man upstairs. That does not constitute a saving faith. A saving faith is trusting that Christ can do for you what you cannot do for yourself. And what I find is that a lot of people in this part of the world want just enough Jesus to go to heaven when they die, but just enough sin to have a good time before they get there.

And what they're after is a kind of playing it both ways, an aw shucks faith, a good Lord kind of faith, but not really putting their full trust, hope, and confidence in him. That's what Paul is referring to here when he says, I've heard of your faith in Christ Jesus. It's more than a mere acknowledgement of existence. This is, you've put your trust in him. And I am encouraged that you have. This is where it begins. But it doesn't stop there. Faith then produces love. We've heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints. Now, this was a kind of cornerstone of Paul's message, right? That faith or really any spiritual gift apart from love has no real value. Perhaps you've heard of 1 Corinthians 13. Maybe you have this passage memorized. Maybe it was even read at your wedding. Look what Paul writes. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clinging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but I have not love, I am nothing. And if I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but I have not love, I gain nothing

for Paul a faith separated from love for other people is no real faith at all. Now, this really comes from Jesus because it was Jesus who was asked on more than one occasion, what's the great commandment? See, the Old Testament was filled with commandments. There were a lot of them, 613 to be precise, commandments in the Old Testament. You had to sort of rank order them. You had to prioritize them because you couldn't keep them all simultaneously without one breaking the other. How's that possible? Well, let me give you an idea. Like, how about honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy? Because maybe loving my neighbor might cause me to violate the rules of the Sabbath. So I had to know which one was more important than the other so that I could obey them in their proper priority in order. So Jesus was asked, what's the great commandment? Do you remember how he answered? He always answered the same way. Love, the Lord your God. With all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. This really speaks to the faith that we just talked about. That full devotion, trust, allegiance, that's the first commandment. But then he said, the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Years ago there was a minister who would come around here on Wednesday nights from time to time, Dr. Dwight Pryor, wonderful man. Kind of a loose mentor of mine. He took a liking to me. I don't even know why, he was just so kind to me. He'd always spend time with me to teach me things. He was a guy who understood kind of the Christian faith through the lens of its Jewish history. And it was always fascinating to hear him bring out kind of interesting details of Jewish culture and history that sort of made the Christian faith come alive. And this particular idea of Jesus and the great commandment, he remember him saying to me one time that what Jesus is doing here is using a rabbinic technique. That means this is something that rabbis would do. And what they would do is they would use two verses to kind of interpret one to interpret the other. So when he gives the first verse from Deuteronomy, which is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, that's the first commandment. Then he draws on another passage from the book of numbers. Love your neighbor as yourself. And what he's doing is he's using the second to interpret the first. What does that mean? It means this, how do I know if I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength?

Oh, it's pretty easy. Do you love your neighbor as yourself? Do not tell me that you love God if you do not love people. John, the apostle of love. And his letter says, don't say you love God and you hate your brother, it's impossible. Can't be true. Love for God always produces love for people. So faith here must produce love or else there's no evidence of a real Christian community beginning to take shape. But notice Paul's not just talking about sort of love and the abstract love for all people. It's a specific love. What does he say? I've heard of your love for all the saints. He's talking about the church. Now this started to take on kind of a different dimension for me, a different kind of insight as I began to think about this and meditate on this passage this week as I was studying it. Because what Paul is describing here is a Christian community. I think this is interesting because this flies in the face of the increasing notion that your faith is personal, private and between you and God and you and God alone. I think increasingly in our kind of modern American hyper-individualistic age that we live in

where we need no longer interact with anybody, we can just stay at home, click a button on our phone, food will be delivered to us and anything else we need we can just get from Amazon. Leave it on the front porch. I don't need to talk to anybody. Need not interact with anybody. I don't need to be in a community. I can just have life tailored to me. Do you know the billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that are being spent to tailor services to your preferences? It's a dangerous world that we live in having everything increasingly tailored to our own desires. You having all of your desires met is not good for you. You don't know what's best for you. And us meeting all of our own wants and needs we think is for our best, but it isn't. We're not wired up like that. We're followers. We're meant to follow and to receive from our father. And one of the things that our father apparently tells us that we need is community. And yet increasingly what I'm hearing and maybe this trend is slowing down by God's grace. I hope that it is. But increasingly I've heard of people who just seem to think that they can relate to God on their own and they don't need any of this. And what I'm referring to here is you,

the body of believers, not necessarily even the institutional church. Some of you are going to hear this and think that, oh, here's pastor with another desperate mega church pastor trying to get people to come to his church. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm talking about is the community of believers. We've lost the essential quality of the community of the saints believing that really the church is nothing more than a purveyor of spiritual goods and services, something like a Christian Costco. whatever it is, like something that we have that you need. When in reality, we are a family, a body of believers being joined and knit together who will spend eternity together forever. This is what the Lord has always wanted, a people. We're more than a crowd, we're a people, we're brothers and sisters in Christ. It used to be that people in churches called one another brother and sister. We don't do that too much anymore. It might be good if we brought that back a little bit. Why? Because it would remind us who we are. We're not just a nameless, faceless glob of people that sort of show up to the same place at the same time every week, hoping that somebody else doesn't take my favorite and preferred seat in the auditorium, we're brothers and sisters in Christ joining together to worship the Lord, to grow in our relationship with Him. And I have to be honest, and I'm holding my hand up here as a representative of the institutional and let's say capital C church, I think we pastors are in large part to blame for this. Because I think we have trained you to think that the church is a place where you come to get spiritual goods and services because much of what pastors do these days is just promote, promote the next thing that they want you to be a part of.

You got to come to church, it's going to be awesome, got a great word, always getting on social media telling you the next thing, got a new worship album dropping, got a new book about to come out, got a new thing that I need you to be a part of. It's always just the next, the next, the next, the next, and I get it, I get it, I'm a pastor myself, I fell into this trap for some time. I remember having to do social media promotions for COTM when I first became pastor, trying to hype people up to show up at church that week and I hated myself for doing it. Because I hate what it is, the church is not a marketing campaign and it's more than a brand and it's more than a photo opportunity and it's more than a merch drop and it's more than a new worship release, it is the very people of God. And I think there's a lot of people, young people especially, you're just getting disenfranchised with this whole thing where church is someplace that you show up and you look cool and the pastors, the coolest person of all with his expensive super cool clothes on, sort of preaching a neat talk to you and then you go out in the lobby and there's a really cool branding and you get a picture with your family. It's just more than that, I'm not against taking pictures in the lobby. We do it but that is not what makes this place special, it's not what the church is. It is a living, breathing community of people who ought to know one another and let's be honest, like I don't know everybody here and you don't either. But the idea is that we ought to have a community within this church with whom we are pursuing Christ together and I think that's what people are hungry for, is give me something real. I'm tired of the fake, I'm tired of the show, I'm tired of the slick, I'm tired of the polish, I'm tired of the performance, give me a real community of people because I'm hungry for it. It's more than just a shared communal experience. You're hearing, I'm not trying to dog my brothers in Christ who pastor churches but you're hearing that you've got to be in the room now, you've got to be in the room, there's just something special about being in the room. I get it, we're victims of the culture that we've created and so we're desperate to try to get people to come and so what we do is we create.

This is essentially how most marketing creates, you're going to miss out and let you fill in the blank and with churches that you're going to miss out and let you hear this weekend because it's going to be amazing and I got a word from God and you just got to be here. And so that's kind of what happens but it's more than just a shared communal experience. So I'm one of those weird people who likes to still go to the movie theater, especially unlike opening night, I like it. I like when the theater is full, some of you are like you're hoping to be the only person in the theater I want there to be other people there because I like the shared communal experience. I like to laugh together, I like to get scared together if it's that kind of movie, I like to cry together, like I love that. It's feeling kind of the synergy of the room and the people in the room, it's fun. I enjoy that but this is not what Paul is talking about here. A shared communal experience falls woefully short of I have heard of the love that you have for all the saints because when I walk out of the movie theater, I do not love the people that I sat there with. It's not that I hate them, I just don't know them, these are strangers to me, we just happen that does not constitute loving them. I'm not getting names and phone numbers and saying, "Do you have any needs that I can meet this week? How could I pray for you?" Like, "That's not happening. We just watched a movie together. That's a whole different thing." But a church is a group of people who know one another, who are actually involved in one another's lives. And friends, I hear this over and over and over again. I mean, every single time when I run into church on the movers who are going through crisis and crisis comes, the overwhelming refrain that I hear from them was I had no idea the kind of support structure.

I cannot imagine us trying to do this alone. Too many people are living life alone. My wife Heather was a hospital chaplain, voluntary hospital chaplain for about a year here in the city. And one of the things that she told me was so many people who are dying alone. They have family, they're not there. They'll talk your ear off. You go into the room, it's hard to get out. You know why? 'Cause they're lonely. They've had no one to talk to. What do they need? They need what the Lord has provided in His church, a people, a community. That's why I hear in just a few weeks we're gonna do advent. Part of why we're going to remember what Christ did in His incarnation. That is what Christmas is really all about. But we do this in community together. We gather in homes. We eat meals together. We pray for one another. And there is something so meaningful in this. Do you realize God shapes you in a community? I often like to say it like this. How are you gonna learn patience unless you're in a community that tests it? You having apps that tailor everything to your preferences,

having it your way isn't gonna make you more patient and it's certainly not gonna make you more loving. It is only being around other people that we can grow in these things, that we can develop. And so Paul is encouraged both by their faith, that is their devotion to Christ, but also by the love that they have for each other. This means then that to really have a gospel, Jesus-centered kind of work going on, there must be more than just right belief. There also ought to be a community that practices it together. It's more than just you and God. It's you and God's people together. And then he concludes in verse five that all of this, your faith and your love are because of the hope that is laid up for you in heaven. Now this is interesting because of rooted in that, in other words, faith and love spring from this hope. What does that mean? Remember what I said? Paul is theological concentrate. We have to think about this for a while. What is he talking about here? Dick Lucas puts it like this. He says, "Hope and Paul's vocabulary has to do with the ultimate future." Where are we going? What's the end of the story? Where are we headed to?

It is that confident assurance and expectancy of the vaster blessings in store for believers in the life of the world to come. Now what does that mean? Well, William Barkley, I think does a good job of putting it in a bit more plain English. He says it like this, think of it this way. Loyalty to Christ may, and I would go so far as to say will, involve us in all kinds of loss and pain and suffering. There may be things to which we have to say goodbye. The way of love may seem too many to be the way of a fool. Why spend time in selfless service? Why not use it to get on to achieve personal gain by the world's standards? Why not push those who are weaker out of the way? The answer is because of the hope that is set before us. In other words, the Christian is someone whose ultimate hope is not in this life. Our ultimate hope is not even in an escape to heaven one day. Too many Christians don't know the end of the Christian story. The end of the Christian story is not us escaping up to heaven. It's heaven coming down to earth. Did you know this? It is a new heavens and a new earth, a new creation, a new resurrected body. That is the future, us dwelling with the Lord, him dwelling with us.

All that we have suffered and all of the evil that has been done on this planet for the thousands and thousands of years will be undone. Everything sad will become and be untrue. That is what the Lord will do. And that is what our hope is in. Now why does that matter? Because it provides an anchor for me in the here and now. Why? Because life is hard. And sometimes things don't go the way that I want. What do I do in those moments? What do I hold on to it? with a rocking chair? Is that going to get you through a cancer diagnosis? What do you hold on to when it feels like the things that you've worked your whole life for are being taken from you? You hold on to a hope that is unshakeable. It's why Hebrews calls it an unshakeable kingdom, something that this world and the circumstances of this world cannot touch. And friends, if we have no hope that can't be touched by the circumstances of this world, we are subject to everything that's going on just like everybody else says. But if we have a hope that no circumstance can touch them, we can have joy even in the midst of our suffering. We can endure with a different kind of strength and peace. Why? Because we know this is not the end. Whatever I may face in the here and now, and whatever I may lose in the here and now, it doesn't have the final word because I've read the end of the book. I know how this story goes. This is what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4 starting in verse 16.

So we don't lose heart. Why don't we lose heart? He says, "Oh, our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day." And now he begins to unpack it. For this light, momentary affliction, you know what Paul's calling a light momentary affliction, beatings, imprisonment. I mean, stuff that probably none of us have ever faced, and yet this is what Paul is talking about being light about, falsely accused. Paul was stoned, beaten multiple times, shipwrecked. I mean, the guy's life was hard. He calls it a light momentary affliction. Why? Because it's outweighed by the weight of glory that is still to come. It's eternal. This here and now is momentary. The pain you're in, what you've suffered may seem like it will never end. I've got news for you. It does end. More than that, it will be defeated and destroyed. This thing called death, it doesn't get the last word. Christ does. That's what we're looking forward to. That's what we hold on to. Paul says this is light and momentary. Ever held a plank in a gym? Do it for 30 seconds. Do it for a minute. It feels like an eternity. My trainer often has me do planks. I tell you, a minute of a plank is like, it's hell on earth.

It feels like it's never going to end. You ever been doing a workout like that? It's like you're trying to hold something and you're like, oh man, I've surely been doing this for like two minutes. You look down. It's been 10 seconds. Time moves so slowly when you're in pain. I get it. It doesn't last forever. It's a light momentary affliction. And look at how Paul words it here in verse 18. We look, we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. Why? Because what I see is transient. It doesn't last. It may look permanent. It's not. It will not last in the end. I look to the things that are unseen. Those things are eternal. Now friends, this is why this hope is called an anchor for the soul. Because what else are you going to hold on to when life falls apart? What else are you going to hold on to when you get the phone call? What else are you going to hold on to when it feels like your world has been upturned upside down? You need something that circumstances cannot touch. That's not money. That's not your intellect. That's not the capability of your body. That's not your physical condition.

That's not your beauty. That's not a health and wellness routine. Friends, this is something that is beyond what is seen in the realm of the unseen. That's why Paul calls it a hope laid up. It is stored in a place that circumstances and the decay of the here and now cannot touch. And that's what you need in order to be able to get through life. So this is Paul's thanksgiving, his introduction. I told you, Paul is theological concentrate. Then he does what most ancient letters do and that is he begins to pray. Letters would begin with initial greeting, then a thanksgiving, then a prayer. Paul is praying for them, but this is no ordinary prayer and this is not just Christianese passing the time filled with spiritual sounding phrases. This is Paul praying the very will of God for the church and colossae, but also for us. Look at what he prays. And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you. What is he asking for? That all your needs be met? No? What does he pray for? And all spiritual wisdom and understanding, I discovered this prayer some years ago and made a point to memorize it. I wanna challenge you this week. It's a great thing to do over the next five weeks as we're in this series. Memorize Colossians 1, 9 through 14. Pick a translation, you've got translation that you probably prefer, memorize it. But more than memorize it, begin to pray it. I pray that I be filled with the knowledge of His will

and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened in all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified me to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has transferred me from the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of His Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. I pray this for myself, I pray it for my kids. I pray it for you because you know what you need? You need to know what is the will of God. That's where it starts. You need knowledge, wisdom, not according to the world's wisdom, but according to God's wisdom, because how many of you found God's wisdom supersedes the wisdom of our present day and age? You need a wisdom that goes beyond your own wisdom, your own feelings, your own preferences. You need to know the knowledge of His will. William Barclay says it like this, the great purpose of prayer is to know the will of God. We are trying not so much to make God listen to us, but to make ourselves listen to Him. We are trying not to persuade God to do what we want, but to find out what He wants us to do.

You know who you are, you're a servant. You're a follower, Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. We're all followers. We're following the Lord together. So how do you follow? You need to know where He's leading. Lord, where are you leading? I need to be filled with the knowledge of your will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Lord, help me to hear your voice. Let me listen to you. What is it that you would have me do? And what this is is you're applying God's will to the specifics of your situation. That's what happens in verse 10. Notice again in verse nine. He's asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, but look at this, so as to walk, that means to live, to live it out, to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing you have bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. Do you know you'll never be able to do verse 10? You'll never be able to live in a manner worthy of the Lord until you go through verse nine, which is to ask what the will of the Lord is. How can you honor the Lord if you don't know what He wants? So your first step in prayer is Lord, what is your will? I wanna do it, I wanna obey you,

help me to fill me with the knowledge of your will. Life is complex, knowing how to apply God's will to every situation matters. I got three adult kids. One of them is married, gonna have a kid early next year. Another is not married yet and would like to be and then my youngest son, yeah, he's my youngest son, but he's the middle of our five. But he's got a girlfriend, they wanna get married and they're trying to figure out how to make all that work while they're still in college. Do you know what they need? The knowledge of God's will. - Amen. - What step do you need to take? What's the next step in this whole? Everyone, they're each dealing with the complex situation for their own situation, right? That's the idea. And so what they need is God's will. This is what I pray for them. This is what you oughta pray for yourself. It's what you oughta pray for your family. It's what you oughta pray for your church. What you oughta pray for the people that you care about is Lord fill us with the knowledge of your will. And then he prays that they would be strengthened with all power, because how many of you have learned that knowing is not enough? Have you found that you've sometimes known what to do,

but been powerless to do it? Have you ever said the age old saying, "I knew better, but I did it anyway?" We all have. This is what we lack is not knowledge, what we lack is strength. And it's amazing here that Paul prays that they be strengthened not just with some, not even with most, but with all power. How is all power even possible? Ah, because it's available according to his glorious might. This is not you mustering up your own will, power, and strength. Do you know how good God is? He not only gives you his will, here's what I want, but he gives you the strength to do it. How cruel would God be if he says, "Here's the standard," knowing that none of us could ever measure up. Yet he doesn't do that. He puts his spirit on the inside of us. This is what it means to be born again, to have a new nature. It has to be built. it has to be cultivated, but the very power of God, the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead lives in you. You can draw on the very spirit of God living on the inside of you. How do I do it?

I think prayers are a great place to start. Lord, I need your strength right here, right now, 'cause I'm gonna kill these kids. (congregation laughing) Right? Come on, you've been there. Lord, I feel like saying something so cruel to my wife right now, help me. Hold my tongue. How about this in the midst of lust? Wonder how many of us even feel like we can pray when we're feeling those lustful thoughts and temptations. I think a lot of us think that when we're in the throes of temptation, that God's somewhere up in heaven with his back turn to his nose plug, 'cause he doesn't want anything to do with this right then, but do you know that? I think that's when he might be most eager to step right into your situation. Lord, I need help resisting this temptation here and now. He will do it. He will give you strength to resist. It has to be developed, but this is something that you can draw on. You can draw on the Lord's strength. You're not doing this in and of yourself. You are not on your own. The very spirit of God lives on the inside of you. You have been strengthened with all power according to his glory. It's might for all endurance and patience with joy.

This kind of power makes it possible for you to face the difficult circumstances of life, the temptations that come against you. Why, you've been strengthened with the very power of God to live out the life of God. You have both his will and his power to live a life pleasing to the Lord. And then Paul ends in typical Paul fashion with some kind of flourish of Thanksgiving. Paul really can't go more than about two sentences before he just has to break into some hymn of praise for God's goodness and majesty. And here in verse 12, that's exactly where he goes. Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you. Who qualified you, church? The Father. The Father who qualifies you to stand in his presence. He's not you, he's done it. If he's qualified you, who can unqualified you? Can you unqualified yourself? Can you unqualified yourself with your sin? He 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 out of the kingdom of darkness, out of the kingdom of guilt, out of the kingdom of shame and sin and death and hell. And he has transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. Do you know in the ancient world when one king would conquer another?

They would go into their territory and they would conquer them. When they won the battle they would go and they would take their people and they would take them back with them to their kingdom. Do you realize that's what Jesus has done? He has plundered the kingdom of darkness. You belong to darkness. You belong to Satan. You are a part of his kingdom. But he won a battle. He went into enemy territory. He defeated the enemy. He pulled you out and he's transferred you and now you are a citizen of the kingdom of light. That's where you reside. You belong to him. And this is the place, the position of where we live, being in Christ. Faith, hope, love, wisdom and knowledge and power. I pray these for us. We need them as a people. Lord, let them be present in our congregation. Would you bow your heads? Close your eyes and let me wrap this up today. Father, thank you for these words. Your word preserved through the centuries. I think about men and women who had great risk to themselves. Some were martyred, burned, killed,

just for having these and daring to distribute the scriptures to your people. We have them today because of their sacrifice. Thank you Lord for preserving them through the ages so that we might read this and be blessed and encouraged today. Father, I pray for your people. As Paul prayed for the church at Colossae, I pray for these right here. A church on the move and those online at Dick Conner and Eddie Warrior, I pray that they be filled with the knowledge of your will. And all spiritual wisdom and understanding so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. Fully pleasing to you, O Lord, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in their knowledge of you. Being strengthened with all power, Giving thanks to you, O Lord, for you have qualified them to share in the inheritance of the saints and light. You have transferred them out of the kingdom of darkness and put them in the kingdom of your Son in whom we all have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Thank you, Lord. Help us to walk this out, to live out these qualities of Christian community, faith, love, and hope. Help those to be present in our homes and in our church, in Jesus' name we pray, all God's people said, amen. Hey, as we close today, if you have a prayer need,

our prayer team will be down front, right down here, where I'm standing on the floor, they'll be facing that way. We would love to be able to pray with you. Remember what I said, we're not a nameless, faceless crowd of people, but we bear one another's burdens. That means praying for you when you have a need. So our team will be down front. And if you have questions about a relationship with Christ, what does that look like, how do I start that? Or how do I restart that, right? We have this book here, we'd love to be able to resource you with this. It's just called, "What does it mean to be saved?" We put this together, it's free, no strings attached. If you'll come forward and just say, like to get one of those books that Pastor Whit mentioned, you can come grab one of these. Can't even be for a family member, a son, daughter, husband, wife, whatever, we'd love to be able to resource you with this, all right? Stand to your feet. (gentle music) We're gonna close with this blessing out of Numbers chapter six. We like to say it out loud together. So we'll put it up on the screen and you can join along with me. Here we go. The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you. I love you. We'll see you next week, you're dismissed. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching this message from Church on the Move Tosa. We really hope it encourages you to take a step toward Jesus. Church on the Move is a family of churches in Northeast Oklahoma, each with its own in-person pastor. We love our Bibles, learning and community and taking steps toward Jesus. If you live in the area, we would love for you to join us in person. For more information, check out our website at churchonthemove.com or we've got a few videos we think you might like. Check them out here. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)