A Platform of Truth

Welcome to week two of Finding Stability, which is our women's Bible study through the book of Colossians. And this week we're going to cover chapter 1, verses 3 through 14. And hopefully you wrote out these verses in your journal this week. It wasn't too hard. Paul's message hasn't been too intense. It actually won't get too intense because this is not a letter of correction. This is not like 1 Corinthians or like Galatians. This is a warm letter. It is a letter of warning, however. And in the coming weeks, we'll get to some of those warnings, but he's going to start off before he warns with praying for them. And I just love that. The best prologue to a warning is to establish a platform of truth. And that is what Paul does this week and next week is establish that platform of truth. The pure, simple message of Jesus Christ dying for our sins, being a substitute for us. We call it the gospel of grace. And even for us to take a moment and stand back and pause and focus on that platform of truth. That stable platform is so healthy for us spiritually, so healthy for us emotionally. And so that's what we're going to do. Last week in the introduction, I had mentioned that our culture wants to convince us that nothing is more important than being happy. And what I said last week is that nothing is more important than a relationship with Jesus Christ. The way Paul words it in the verses that you wrote out is that nothing is more important than a transferred life. And this is the way he said it in verse 13, transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son, actually being transferred from being in the domain of darkness into a new kingdom, the kingdom of his son. That is a miracle. That is a miracle in any person's life. This is what we call being born again. And it is the most important thing in our life, being transferred from one spiritual kingdom into another. And so because it is so miraculous, it is not natural, it is supernatural. Paul starts by thanking God that he did this in the Colossians life. So let's start by looking at verse 3. Paul said, we always thank God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. Paul attributed this miracle of transformation to God. And so he opened by thanking and praising God for what he had done in the Colossians lives, what only God could do. Now, clearly they had to cooperate. What do we always say? God chooses us. We have to choose him back. They had to cooperate in order to have this transferred life, but it was God's work. Epaphras had come to Rome where Paul was in prison, told him about his flock, told him about these people who had been transferred to the kingdom of God's son. And when Paul heard the evidence of transformation, it was based on what we just read in verse 3, their faith in Jesus Christ, their profession of faith. But then look at verse 4. There was more evidence. It says, and the love that you have for all of the saints, their lifestyle of loving one another proved their faith in Christ. And then he goes on to say, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, because they understood that they had truly been transformed, their hope no longer rested on a horizontal plane. Their hope was transferred heavenward now, and now their hope was vertically based. So Paul's going to get to these warnings eventually, warnings about untruth. It's going to take us two more weeks, but first, more platform of truth for this morning. Verse 5, look at verse 5.

This is a key subject in this book, the pure, simple gospel, the gospel that people hear, the gospel that people understand, the gospel that people accept, brings forgiveness of sin. It bears fruit, as exampled by what he already said, I see that you're loving one another. That's the one of the evidences of fruit, that it is born. And so I want you, I want to note these phrases that Paul uses to talk about the gospel. The first phrase is the word of the truth. The next one is the gospel, and then he calls it the grace of God in truth. They're just all different ways of expressing the same thing, which I'm calling this morning a platform of truth. So Paul was thankful for what God was doing, even though he wasn't part of it. Here's the apostle Paul. He had gone on all these missionary journeys. He had been an active part in what God was doing, and now things were happening really outside of his scope. But he was still thankful for what God was doing. It was definitely God's work. It wasn't Paul's work. Paul did not go and share the gospel with the Colossians. It wasn't even technically Epaphras' work, even though he did share the gospel. It was God's work in their life. However, Paul mentions Epaphras to give credit where credit was due based on faithfulness. And so look at verse 7.

And it works the same way today. Nothing has changed. God chooses to do his work by including his kids in doing his work, just like he did with Epaphras. We get to do stuff in God's kingdom. And so we need to remember we're not the big deal, okay? We're not a big deal at all. It's God's work, even though he chooses to use us. But I love that phrase that he was a faithful servant. And we'll come back to that in a minute. You know, at retreat, one of our themes for one of the messages was be useful. Epaphras was useful in God's kingdom. And I'll just remind you of this verse from Romans chapter 12. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. This is our purpose. Let us use these gifts. So Epaphras goes to the small town of Colossae. Remember, we said it's a shadow of what it once was. It wasn't a very big deal at all. It was not someplace you would go to maximize your reach or to become popular. But he was faithful to do that. And I think that this is an inspiration for us to be faithful, to practice in small ways, in all the ways that God might direct us that are small and not big and flashy. You know, years ago, someone said to Paul, I would never pastor in a small town. There's just not enough potential there. I'm like, well, if Epaphras hadn't gone to a small town, we wouldn't have this inspiration today. So it doesn't matter if you teach Sunday school to first graders for 25 years and you have three kids every year. It's not the same three. They grow up different three. That would be terrible. You know, it doesn't matter if God's given you the gift of encouragement and he inspires you. Every Monday morning, I'm writing two note cards to encourage someone. And for a decade, you write two note cards. Those are the ways for us to be faithful. So I love how Epaphras was pointed out in the Bible as being faithful. It's a message to us. The key in our life is faithfulness to use whatever gifts, whatever opportunities God has given us, whether they're small, whether they're large, our goal is to be faithful. So in verse nine, Paul says, and so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you. And by the way, speaking of faithfulness, the apostle Paul is now in prison. How can he be faithful in his current situation in life? Well, he's encouraging people who come to visit him, like Epaphras. He is praying. This is his new model of faithfulness, is praying for people and then writing letters. So do you see how his ministry has changed? We should expect our ministry to change as well over time. It doesn't stay the same, but we can still find something, an area that God has given us to be faithful. So 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, 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." Now this is a prayer that he is praying over them. Again, it's great before you start warning somebody, it's great to pray for somebody. But when I get to verses like 9 and 10, and I see all those commas, and I'm like, oh, a list! I love a list! Perhaps I can turn this into something useful for my prayer life, and it is. Perhaps I can turn this into something useful just for my spiritual life, and it will be. So I want to slow down a little bit here on these verses. I'm going to break them into three groups, and we're really going to dissect these and look at what it is that Paul's praying for them. So the first one is the phrase, filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Understanding God's will is something that we are all intended to do as Christians. This is part of our life, our Christian living, is to understand God's will. Again, at retreat, we started off with this. Let me remind you of Romans 12, to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect. A renewed mind leans us toward understanding the knowledge, the wisdom, and the understanding of God in our lives. So let's kind of dig into those words a little bit. Knowledge is possessing important information. That's what knowledge is, possessing important information. And wisdom is knowing how to apply that important information. So they're first cousins, similar but a little bit different. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, and wisdom is understanding not to put it in your fruit salad. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is healthy, and wisdom is understanding it did not turn your pizza into health food. And knowledge is knowing that going to church regularly is profitable for a Christian. It will help your Christian life. But wisdom is understanding that alone will not transfer you from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light. So knowledge and wisdom are something that we need to understand in order to move forward in God's will. It increases our stability in our life. And then the next phrase that Paul had prayed was that they would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him. Now as we study through Colossians, we're going to get particularly to chapters three and four, we're going to have a lot of very useful Christian living statements that are very practical for us. For example, to put away anger and malice and slander, to put on kindness and compassion and patience. But this is just a little prologue to those things. A summary here that says, he prays that they would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord and be pleasing to God, that they would understand who they are, who they belong to, what they are to do, how they are to respond, what they are to say. Don't we need that as well? We need a part of our platform of truth is to understand who you are and who you belong to and therefore what you are to do, what you are to say, how you are to respond, how you are to interact. This is walking in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to God. You know, once in a while someone will come up for prayer after a service and Paul and I, one of us or both will say, well, how would you like me to pray for you? And it's not very infrequent that someone will say, I don't know, just pray. That's fair. Sometimes you just want to hear, like, what is God going to pray over me? And so we do. But think about this list. Aren't these things exactly what we would pray for someone when they say, I don't know, just pray. Well, I'll pray that you would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, filled with the knowledge of God, you know, these sorts of things. So, lastly, Paul says that they would bear fruit in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God. No one wants to be an unfruitful Christian. No one wants to hang around an unfruitful Christian. We should be people who bear fruit for the kingdom. Since we're talking about tomatoes, so again, you plant a tomato plant, it grows to maturity, you know, maybe you've staked it, you've put your cage there, it takes up a lot of space. It takes up a lot of water. It takes up a lot of nutrients. And if you don't get one tomato off of that, that is a huge disappointment. Nobody wants a tomato plant that bears no fruit. And we don't want to be tomato plants that bear no fruit. We want to, we're taking up the space in our timeline. We want to bear fruit for sure. Fruit is one of the purposes of our lives. We worship God, you know, worship, worshiping God is what we're here for. This is our purpose. This is the chief aim of man is to worship God and enjoy him forever. We worship God with our lips. We worship God with what we do. And that can be classified as our fruit of what we do, how we worship the Lord. So if we were to take one week and take verses 9 and 10, and first before we pray these over other people, if we were to take them and just pray them over ourselves, I think after one week we would expect that the Holy Spirit would just be showing us all kinds of stuff. You know, he would say, hey, this part of your thought life is a big distraction. Lean on me to get rid of those thoughts that cause you so much distraction. He would say that person, they always bug you so much. Why are they always offending you? Lean on me so that you don't have to see an offense in everything that they take. You know, this fruit of the Spirit over here, kindness. Lean on me to express that kindness to people who it's difficult to express. I think that God would just show us all kinds of practical things as we pray about walking in a manner worthy of the Lord, being pleasing to him, bearing fruit and increasing in the knowledge of God. So now the next verse in what sounds a little bit like a doxology, Paul summarized his prayer and the benefits that we receive from the Lord. Verse 11,

The implication is that we need power, endurance, patience, and joy. That's why Paul is praying that you would have those things because they are things that we need. Those are words that you circled in green when you wrote your study guide. They're birthrights of someone who has been transferred into the kingdom of God's son. They are things that God will share with us, freely share with us. It seems like a hundred years ago now, but my kids were all home at one point. And I remember those days when it was a gallon of milk a day and, you know, a loaf of bread a day. And I'd go to the grocery store and I didn't really, I still don't love to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but I remember one particular season I'd always come home, put the milk in the fridge, take out the loaf of bread, lay it all on the counter, make it all into sandwiches, cut them, you know, in triangles and put them in this big rubber made thing. And then when the kids were hungry, it's like, it's there, it's in the fridge, help yourself. It was a birthright for my kids. They belonged in my family and there was always the food that they needed. And in the same way, we might not feel like we have endurance or power or, um, or patience or joy, but it is a birthright. And God has a refrigerator of all of those things just waiting for us to come and take. Sometimes we have not because we ask not. And these are important things to say, oh yeah, I, this isn't something that I have to say. I just really need to have more joy in my life. That's the wrong approach. The right approach is to say, if I am joyless, I need to go to God's refrigerator and I need to take from his resources in order to apply that to my life. So the closing three verses now are a restatement of the most important aspect of the life of any human being. And it goes like this, Paul says,

And here we find these three words that you circled in blue, and they're qualified, delivered, and transferred. The green words were the things that God freely gives us, we can go and have access to them. The blue words are the ones that God has done for us, what he has done, because we were unqualified and disqualified, and so God had to do the work. I've always loved the parallel that the Old Testament gives us with the Hebrew nation, they're called the children of Israel as they end up in Egypt, and think about it, what, 430 some years, every single Hebrew that is born in Egypt during that whole time is born into captivity, born into a place that they didn't choose, that they can't leave. And it's such a good illustration for our lives, because as we're born into this world, we are born into sin, because of our ancestors, because of our, because of, by that I mean the original sin of Adam and Eve. We are born into this, and we have no ability to change, to leave this position that we're in, except for Jesus Christ. The Hebrews, you know, it was impossible for them to deliver themselves out of Egypt. They needed a deliverer, and it is impossible for us to deliver ourselves out of the domain of darkness that we're born into as well. We need a deliverer. It was impossible for the Hebrews to transfer, physically transfer themselves from Egypt into the kingdom that God had prepared for them, the land of promise, and it is impossible for us to deliver ourselves as well out of the domain of darkness, and transfer us into the kingdom of God's Son. And yet, God does this for those who hear the message, who believe the message, who accept the message. He does it through his Son, and this is where our Bible study is going next week. It's all about what his Son has done, and so next week we're going to look deeply into, so who is this Son? Who is Jesus Christ? What has been his role in history? What has he done for us? And most important, how does our knowledge of this bring stability into our lives? Because we're all living in some brand of crazy. There's some kind of crazy going on in all of our lives, and it's natural for us to think, in order to bring stability into the crazy in our lives, what I need to do is tidy up the crazy. I need to fix the crazy, whatever's upside down, I need to turn right side up, then I will have stability. Do you know that will never end? You will never find stability that way, and so this reminds us that focusing on the one thing that truly brings us stability is what we need to do, and that one thing is the transfer from the kingdom, the domain of darkness, into the kingdom of God's Son. What a glorious thing. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your words here. So such a big plate full of things that we can apply to our lives on so many different levels, and Lord, we are really looking forward to investigating even more this platform of truth that reminds us of this, of our foundation of stability, Lord. We're not going to right ourselves by trying to correct everything weird in our life, but Lord, we can find a sense of stability by just knowing that you are on the throne, that we have chosen you to be on the throne in our lives, and that you are over all the things that are crazy in our lives. Lord, thank you for this passage, and I pray as we discuss you it at layer upon layer. In Jesus' name, amen.