Introduction to Colossians

I want to welcome you to the first week of our Bible study called Finding Stability. It's an eight-week study through the book of Colossians. And the first thing that I want to do is tell you about the title, Finding Stability. The full title is Finding Stability in a Changing World. And it's really no secret to anyone here that our world is changing. In our culture, our priorities, our morality, our perception of truth and afterlife, it's all been shifting. But yet anyone who has ever lived in the world has experienced a changing world as well. One thing that never changes is that the world is always changing. So that is a relevant thing no matter where you have been placed on the timeline. So like the Colossians, like us, the Colossians were experiencing changing times as well when Paul wrote to them. So this title, Finding Stability in a Changing World, I lifted from Colossians 1 verse 23. And I want to show you this verse on the screen. I also want to point out in your study guide on page four that there are some fill-in-the-blanks. And the first one comes in this verse. From the middle of verse 23, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. This was Paul's heart toward the people he was writing to, that they would become stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel. The hope of the gospel is where we find stability, and it is how we remain steadfast. I've gotten into the knack of looking up words, and I always go to Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, so I looked up stability. I'll show you the definition. It is steadiness, firmness, strength to stand without being moved or overthrown. And I also want to share a snippet of a little email that we got in August, came to the church. And I'm going to quote this person, a sentence, it was so well written. This person wrote to us and said, a while after the world went mad, and good became bad, and bad became good, I yearned for stability. And I turned to the word. I have listened to all your online sermons. There was something in this person that told them, you will find stability in the word. And this person followed that prompt and has gained that stability. I love that comment that came. Now what is instability? Let's look at the definition again from Mr. Webster. Instability is the want of stability or firmness, inconsistent, fickle, changing our opinion or conduct. And he often gives a sample sentence, and look at this. Instability is the characteristic of weak minds. Instability is the characteristic of weak minds. It would be wonderful if more people would look into the word like this person who wrote to us to find stability, but what's gone on in our generation is that most of what has been imparted to us, to our children, are things that do not promote instability. For example, the idea that we are good. We are good enough just the way we are. That loving ourselves has become virtuous. Our heart will always lead us to the truth and that there's nothing more important than being happy in life. Doesn't that sound very familiar? It sounds very familiar to us. So how challenging it is then for a person, how odd the gospel must seem to us and to our culture when the gospel then tells us that we are not good. Our heart is deceptive. In fact, all have sinned and the wages of sin is death. That we need a savior to pay the penalty for that sin and we need to accept that as forgiveness of our sins and our pathway to have a relationship with God. That God alone possesses truth and that we are intended to love God and love others first. And the most important thing that we can do is have a relationship with Jesus Christ, which might in fact lead us into a bit of suffering as we identify with Christ. But those are some of the notions in our culture that create instability. Now imagine when some of those notions seep into the church. If it creates instability in culture, it would also create the same or more inside the church. And I believe this is why the apostle was writing this letter. Why the Holy Spirit prompted him to write this letter. My goal today is just to bring a little bit of a history lesson to launch us into this Bible study. So I want to start with the history of the town itself that this was written to. On page seven in your study guide, there's a map. I'll also put it on the screen for you. And you'll see that Colossae was a town in the province of Phrygia, Asia Minor, today it's modern day Turkey. It was about a hundred miles east of Ephesus. The town of Colossae was once a thriving center of this region, but it had been replaced by Laodicea. And it was only a shadow out of what it once had been at the time this letter was written. Now Paul and I went on a really fun motorcycle ride in June. We went from Boise on up into Idaho City. And so I have some fun facts about that town to compare. Idaho City in 1864 was 7,000 people. It was the largest city in the whole Pacific Northwest. It was larger than Portland, Oregon. It had 200 businesses. It had three dozen saloons and two dozen law offices. So that tells us right there that it was a mining town, right? But it had been replaced over time by Boise, Idaho, and now it's only a shadow of what it once was. The 2010 census says that there was 485 people. Now we don't know why the town of Colossae gave up its success for Laodicea. It might have had something to do with an earthquake that happened about that time that could have been something. But regardless, what I really want to focus on is the third town of Ephesus on the coast because that is where this story honestly begins. There was the Apostle Paul had spent three years there ministering the gospel in the town of Ephesus. There was a young man who Paul probably shared the gospel with named Epaphras. You'll meet him in verse seven when you study this week. And Epaphras was the one who in turn likely shared the gospel with the people in Colossae. He became the founder and then the pastor of the church there. Now Epaphras came to Rome to visit the Apostle Paul who was imprisoned in Rome and was sharing with him the struggles he was having within his church because there were influences and ideas that were coming into the church creating instability in his flock. And he came to the Apostle Paul probably wanting to know what should I do? Can you help me at all? And I think this is when the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write a letter back to them. And that's why it's in our Bible. The question when was it written can be answered by saying it was around 60-61 AD about the same time that the Apostle Paul wrote another letter to the Ephesians. About the same time. What was the main point? The main point of the letter was to warn them about the false teachings that were creating instability. This is what Epaphras likely came and told Paul was happening. So he sent a letter of warning. Rather than the pure, the simple work, simple gospel of Jesus Christ on the cross crucified to pay the penalty of the sins of any who would accept that, it had become complicated. It had become something that people were confused about. And the message now had a mixture of Jewish and Greek and Eastern religious thinking. And I'll just share a little bit about what was going on. For the Jewish element, they were impressing on the believers that they really needed to observe certain days from the Jewish calendar, that they needed to deny themselves certain food, and they needed to follow certain rituals or they weren't really God's children. The pagan element also was teaching them to deny themselves of certain things and it had a weird mix of worshipping angels in it. And then the philosophical element was trying to tell them that there was really a higher mystical wisdom that they really needed to seek out and achieve. in order to really know God. So it was this slurry of weird things that were coming in. You can see how it creates instability in people. It's like, what's true? What's going on? The whole problem can be summarized by the statement I'm gonna put on the screen for you. There were ideas and philosophies being introduced and mixed into the thinking of the church that was causing instability. All these ideas and these philosophies were being mixed in and this was a dangerous situation. So Paul's purpose in this book is to help them eliminate stumbling and return to a place of stability. How would he do this? Well, you're going to find as we begin studying that Paul will do this by focusing on Jesus, who he is and what he has done. This is the most Christ-centered book that we have in the New Testament. And there was gonna be three things that Paul's going to accomplish. I'll number them, one, two, three. The first one is this, to declare the deity and the supremacy of Christ. And we're gonna do that for the first three weeks. And then, number two, Paul is gonna warn against the rules and the ritualism, the philosophy and mythology and the special secret knowledge and he'll call it out and say, this creates instability, don't listen to it. And then lastly, number three, he will lead believers into spiritual maturity. So that's what was going on when the letter was written. Now, what about us? Does this still mean anything to us? Does this relate to us? We're not facing exactly the same mix of instability, the same mix of ideas and philosophies. And yet, we have our own mix. We have our own something for everyone kind of thinking that enters, can enter into the church. And so, plus, the other thing is we have a moral revolution on our hands that also leads to instability that's unique to our timeline of where we live. So absolutely, there will be things in here that are gonna speak to exactly where we're living, when we're living and what's going on in our lives. So what I wanna do is just cover verses one and two and hopefully whet your appetite to launch you into your study. So Colossians chapter one, verses one and two, it goes like this.

to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father. Let's take apart those words and phrases. The first word we have in this book is Paul, the author of the book. We heard about Paul, we read about Paul in the book of Acts, Acts chapter nine. The Jesus appeared to him and he was converted. He understood who Jesus was. And by Acts chapter 13, as he's with the brothers in Antioch and they are wanting to send out missionaries, send out people to share the gospel, Barnabas and Saul, Barnabas and Paul, I should say, are chosen to go out into outer regions. So from chapter nine to 13, we have him actively involved in ministry. It was called Barnabas and Paul, but by the end of the chapter, it's Paul and Barnabas, which shows this, that the Lord had quickly given him this ministry. Paul embarked on three missionary journeys. And it was on his third journey that he landed at Ephesus, which we just talked about. For three years, he was in this town sharing the gospel. And this, like we said, is likely when Epaphras heard this message, understood, became a Christ follower himself. But Paul calls himself an apostle of Jesus Christ. An apostle just means one sent forth. It's attributed to Jesus' disciples and to Paul as well. And he adds a tag, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. Paul became an apostle by the will of God to a specific group, and that was to the Gentiles. I wanna show you on the screen a couple of verses from his own lips that talk about what his ministry was. Acts 22, then the Lord said to me, go, I will send you far away to the Gentiles. And in Romans, he said, I am the apostle to the Gentiles. I make much of my ministry. Sending the message of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles was maybe not what Paul had in mind to do with his life. Even after he got saved, he probably would have just as soon taken this information, this message to his own people. But yet, by the will of God, he became an apostle to the Gentiles. Epaphras, by the will of God, became the founder and the pastor of the church in Colossae. That is what God had appointed for him to do. And when we see those things, I like to look and say, what are you by the will of God? What has God designed for you to do? How has he shaped your life so that he has fashioned you to do, to go, to be what he has called you to do? What am I? How has God led you in your life? How has he redirected you? If I said, did any of you think 10 years ago that you would be serving the way, serving God the way you are today? You wouldn't, or 50 years ago, or whatever. Like, the Lord redirects us by his will. Are you a mother by the will of God? I'm a mother by the will of God. I was not the girl that set out to say, this is what I want to do with my life. The only thing I want to do is just raise a family. Like, it was by the will of God that I became a mother and that he gave me what I needed to flourish in that role. Are you a health care worker by the will of God? Are you a teacher by the will of God? What about some of the spiritual gifts that we see? Are you an encourager by the will of God? Are you a servant? Are you a giver by the will of God? Maybe there's something that you are not by the will of God, something that God has redirected you from. That's one of our discussion questions when you get to group discussion. The next thing that Paul says is, and Timothy, our brother, which tells us that Timothy was also in the vicinity of Romans, so Paul included him in this greeting. But in verse two, now he points, he looks at them, and he says, this is being written to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. I don't think that this is a template greeting. Like, if you're writing to your senator or your mayor, you'll say, to the most honorable or, you know, whatever. It's a template greeting. You might not actually think of that person that way, but it's just what you say. I don't think this was just what Paul says. I think that this is specific. When he said, I am writing to the saints, to those who are set apart for God's kingdom. I'm writing to you. I'm writing to the faithful brothers, which says, I see that you desire to seek God. I think that this greeting says to them, you are seen, you are heard, not just by me, but by the Lord when he calls them those things. And we're looking at this and it's like, well, you are the saints. This letter is being written to the saints. You are those that are set apart. I presume you are faithful sisters as well because you're here. You're wanting to invest in the word. You're wanting to seek God. And it turns out that God has a soft spot for those who truly desire to know him. Those who truly desire to know him, God reaches out and speaks. And this last phrase that Paul says, he says, grace to you and peace from God our father. What they were about to receive was a special message from the Holy Spirit through Paul that if heeded would bring them a great blessing of grace and peace. And in many ways, I think we should have that same expectation as we approach this. What we are about to receive as we approach this study is a great blessing. We are also the saints and God will respond to us as we seek and do our study with his grace, his understanding, and with this peace that we sense of connecting with the Lord. So I'm excited about that. Where do we go from here? How do we start? I wanna give you a little bit of housekeeping. I've only covered two verses, but in the next week you'll cover the first 14 verses. Here's what you need. You need a notebook or a journal, and you could definitely use some colored pencils. You'll find out that I give quite a bit of instruction for colored pencils. It is optional, but I think you would like it, so I wanna encourage you in that. Each of the four days, there's a four-day study, each of the four days, you're gonna read the passage and write out by hand in your notebook or in your journal a certain number of those verses. Many of you have come to me and said, I love writing the scriptures out. It's what makes all the difference, and so I'm happy about that. There's gonna be a small amount of directed questions in your study guide in order for you to answer those, help you engage with what you had just written, and then on the last page of each week's study, there's a page of questions called Questions for Thought and Discussion, and these are questions that you'll likely use in your small group. I want to encourage you not to wait until you've done your four days of study and then do it all in a row and then get to the end and then read them. In fact, you might wanna read them first to kind of get your mind going for, how would I answer this question? Let me go through the word and see. Some of you that are introverts in your group, these questions now can be thought through at home because introverts need time to process, time to think. They don't do well with a leader just saying, what do you think about that? It's like, well, I need time. You have time, so really invest in those, and right now, even though you haven't studied, you will have a group discussion with the questions on page six, but in closing, what I wanna do is I wanna leave us with two verses that we're going to meet this next week because spiritual instability is only one brand of instability that we meet in our lives, and I wanna broaden the spectrum just a little bit in closing because you may be facing instability in your marriage. You may be facing instability in other relationships. You may be facing instability in your decision-making or in your emotional or mental life. There are quite a few areas where we just feel like we don't have direction, we don't have the answers that we need, and I want you to know that in this Bible study, you will find inspiration, you will find stability for all of these areas of our life as we just methodically work through the words that the Holy Spirit sent to an ancient town that had kind of become not much of a big deal, but he still spoke to them because they had seeking hearts. So I'm gonna close with just two verses from next week, verse nine and 10. And Paul said,

Lord, thank you for such a great benediction, and that is what we look forward to, Lord, is to be filled up with the knowledge of who you are, for that to overflow in us and overshadow the horizontal things of this world that feels so shifting and unstable, Lord. But we know that as we know you, as we invest in drawing closer to you, that we find that stability. And so we thank you for this book. We look forward to spending time with you, Lord, and we just wanna tell you that we love you in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.