COLOSSIANS 1:1-14

Morning. I'm Russ. Have a seat for a second. I'll get you back up in just a minute. It is my pleasure to introduce Tom Mayfield, standing next to me.

We are studying. You can applaud for him now if you want. That's good.

Nothing more embarrassing, right? We are teaching and learning through the book of Colossians for the next eight weeks. And so we decided it would be good to have that scripture read over us each Sunday when we gather. Not the whole book, but the section we're teaching on. And so today, Tom is one of us.

Extraordinary, ordinary guy that's part of us. And you may recognize Tom. He hangs out out there in that landing area where all those tables are. And if you're new to the church, that's where you go. You go to that info desk to get to know more about us, get connected.

And if you say that, want to get connected, you'll likely meet Tom somewhere in there and get to have a good conversation with him. But today, he is going to read our teaching passage, Colossians 1, 1 14. And so if you would. If you would stand with me with us for the reading of the Word. And if you want, if you've got your Bible with you, some of you have these huge things that could, like, hold a door, pull that thing out, or pull your phone out.

And you can read along on your own, silently. It'd be weird if we all read it out loud together in different versions, but you can read along as Tom reads the word of God over us this morning.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother to the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. Grace and peace to you from God our Father. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints, the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you all over the world. This gospel is bearing fruit and growing just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. You learned it from Epaphras, our, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, glory growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened in all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. That's good.

You can have a seat. Well done. I wish I had Tom's voice. I can't do it.

That wasn't even close to his real voice.

Before we jump into Colossians and you'll understand why this came to mind as I was reading this week.

It drew my mind back to the beginning of the year, a teaching at the very beginning of the year that happened here that our friend Josh taught. We taught on the fruit of the Spirit in the beginning of the year, in the very first week of that.

He taught through John 15. It's something Jesus said. It's an invitation Jesus has to us. And it's very simple. He says, abide in me and you will bear much fruit.

In other words, really good things like love and joy and peace and patience and kindness will grow up in you when you abide in me. He's inviting us into a kind of relationship with him that is connected. The metaphor is this. Hey, the relationship with me, the one that he wants to have with us, is one that is so connected. It's like a branch and a vine.

And when we, we the branch, he, the vine, the source are connected. All the nourishment, all the good things we need in order for all those beautiful things, the love and the joy and the peace to grow out of us, happen out of this relationship with him that is connected and interactive. Often the language we use is to be in Christ or we'll talk about communing with God. It is being with him as we go about our life. Life.

And I thought about this because we'll see it in Paul and in the writing of this letter. But it also made me think of a couple of things that we're practicing right now. One of them is reading Colossians together. We have invited. We want to do is have a practice together as a whole community of reading Colossians even as we are studying it.

So we're studying it and we're practicing a new habit or an old habit, maybe a renewed habit of reading scripture together. So the invitation is really simple. Let's just read Colossians while we're studying it. And that means if you've got 15 minutes this week, that means 15 minutes a day you can read the whole book. If you've got five minutes a day, you can read a chapter a day.

If you've got two minutes a day, you can read the passage for the teaching week. And I would encourage you to at least read the passage we're going to teach on leading into that Sunday so that already letting scripture work with you. But this is one of the simple ways that we do cultivate and live in that abiding relationship with God. Because we're not, we don't have a relationship with the Bible. We have a relationship with the God behind it, right?

Because the Bible is the way that God is revealing to us who he is and inviting us into that relationship. So we're reading scripture together. I know some of you are doing that. Some of you have chosen, like me, to, to attempt to read it every day. Read all of Colossians every day.

I made it 5 out of 6. I felt pretty good about that. I knocked into Gary here. I know he's in this service. There you are.

Gary is one of us. He serves us here and he does the most important job in this building, the most important job in this church. He makes sure and reloads the toilet paper in every bathroom in this building. Woo hoo.

You're a wonderful man.

But he doesn't know I'm going to talk about him and probably not happy that I am, but I knocked into him on Thursday while he was reloading the toilet paper. And I go, hey Gary, how's it going? And he goes, hold on, can't hear you. And he takes a pot out of his ear and he goes, I'm listening to Colossians. And my little pastor heart grew two sizes.

Does everybody be like Gary? What would Gary do? He would read Colossians. And so we're inviting you to read together so that we can be cultivating that kind of relationship with Jesus. Abiding relationship with Jesus.

Now another thought from that, and that is this. There are some of us or we are praying for people who are not yet experiencing that kind of life with God. The kind of life with God where you can live in fluid relationship with him because they've not chosen yet to step into that relationship. Often. What we just saw, right?

What we just Saw in baptism is that giant step to enter in. Enter into experiencing and enjoying life with God. And I gotta tell you what we just saw. What we just saw was a lady named Mary who jumped into about two months ago to learn how to baptize people. She said, I don't know who I'm gonna baptize, but I'm praying for people.

And here's her friend Arianna. And there they are on the wall, right? Beautiful. And then you just saw three generations, grandfather, father and son. And I know the grandfather prayed for his son for years.

And to see that today, man, it's beautiful, right? And what it is, is. It is that decision. Yeah, it is that decision to enter into life with Jesus. And what we saw as we looked ahead to Colossians, we were like, man, this is going to lead us right up to this point in Colossians 3.

3. We'll get there on July 6th, where we're gonna be able to go, hey, if you've not yet made that choice to step into life with Jesus, today is a day that it can happen. So if you are there and you are God's calling you or working on your. Maybe like a friend a few months ago who got baptized right over there was like, you know, last year, last year, you made an invitation to. And I.

And I just kind of held onto my seat, but I knew I needed to come. And she said, it's time. So July 6th is a day where we're gonna go, hey, the water is ready. We are ready. Anybody who's ready, come on.

And that means you or that means the people you are praying for. Like Mary praying for her friends, right? July 6th. Here's the thing. All over this building, littered all over, right down here, all over this building, are these little cards that say, baptize me.

All the information you need, right? If you need to know more about baptism, you hit this. It'll take you to our website and you'll get more information. If you're interested in being. If you want to raise your hand and go, hey, I'm interested in having a conversation about baptism, hit this.

It'll take you and let you know how to do that. If you want to get baptized, you can do this or you can walk out to that info desk, walk up and say, hey, I heard Russ, I am ready to be baptized. And they would love to hear that. And they will make sure you get into the right conversations. Good.

July 6th, baptism. Be praying towards that day where we can not only celebrate baptisms, but remember and celebrate Our own Good, good Colossians. We're here for that, right? Colossians 1. Colossians 1.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. And Timothy, our brother. Paul's writing this, but Timothy is there as well. It's a communal thing to God's holy people, the saints in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. And then he begins, like he often does, with a blessing, grace and peace to you from God our Father.

Now, if you wrote me a letter today, you would probably put your name at the end, right? Sincerely, Ralph. If your name was Ralph. If it's not, that's weird. But if your name was Ralph.

Sincerely, Ralph. In ancient Roman times, instead of putting it at the end, you start at the beginning. This is Paul writing to the church in Colossa, right? So maybe it'd be good for us to refresh our memories about who Paul is. We find him in the Book of Acts.

So it's Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are biographies of Jesus. The Book of Acts is telling the story, just post Jesus, in fact, same author, Luke, writing the book that carries his name about Jesus. And then he goes, hey, and let me tell you the story of what's going on in the early church. And eventually he's part of that.

He starts to participate in the church. But it's in that book that you find Paul. And Paul doesn't really turn up until after Jesus ascended to heaven and the church began to form. His dad's a Roman citizen. He's got a Jewish mother.

He's this strange mix. This kind of turns out appropriate for the life he's going to live. But he's a smart student, he's a bright kid. And so a very prestigious rabbi chooses him, trains him. And when we meet him, he is a member of the spiritual elite of the day, a Pharise.

And in fact, he views like many of his other comrades as Pharisees and his religious leaders. He views this new Jesus movement as dangerous. It's leading people away from what's true. And he takes this so serious, it says he's full of zeal. It just means he takes it so seriously that this infant church, that he goes about trying to destroy it like he believed they were blaspheming God in the Jewish faith.

So he was imprisoning and killing Christians. In a famous instance from the Book of Acts, there's a young Christian leader named Stephen who gets stoned to death. And that means taking big stones and throwing them at him, hitting him until he dies. He's stoned to death. And Saul, that was his name.

And then he started to go by the name Paul. Paul was in charge of that execution. He was on this path and he has this life changing moment. He's actually on the way to another town called Damascus where he's going to do the same. He's going to imprison and kill and try to eliminate this Jesus movement.

And he's on the way and Jesus shows up on the road in a vision and he says, paul, why are you persecuting me? Not the church Jesus identifies so closely to you and me. Why? Why are you persecuting me? This moment changes his life and direction kind of disappears for a while.

It turns out, you know, if he sticks around, he causes problems, right? There's a lot of energy around him. He kind of disappears for a while, begins to learn. And eventually he's brought in a guy named Barnabas, brings him in kind of off the bench to help him to start to lead the church that is starting in the first city that's not Jewish city called Antioch. And so they begin to cultivate the church there.

And pretty soon they realize, hey, this needs to happen in more cities. And so the leaders of that church come around, Paul and his friend Barnabas, and they lay hands on them and send them off and they go. We can think of like a missionary journey as they start to go out through the Roman Empire, going town to town, city to city, telling the good news, showing and telling the good news. And from that beginning to bring little churches together, right, begin to thrive from town to town and city to city. This is Paul, this is what he does with the rest of his life until eventually a goal for him was to eventually get to Rome.

Let's get to the capital city of the empire. Let's get to the heart of the empire. I want to get to Rome and tell the message there. And he does, and eventually he's imprisoned and he's executed in Rome. Now it was during those missionary visits that he was imprisoned.

He was in jail off and on a lot simply for showing and telling the good news of Jesus. He is in jail when he writes this letter. You will see that at the back end of the letter he's in jail as he writes it. But again, like I mentioned earlier, Paul has this kind of abiding relationship with God. And it's out of that relationship that when he hears about what's going on in Colossae, he wants to respond.

And he responds kind of like a mentor or somebody who's further down the road would he responds with some perspective and wisdom inspired by God. And so he goes on and he says this. We always thank God, the father of our Lord, King Jesus, our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith. We've heard how much you trust in Jesus and of the love you have for all God's people, the faith and love that springs up from what the hope stored in you, the hope of eternity and new creation, a resurrected life, the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you've already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. And in the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing not just where you are, but throughout the whole world, just as it's been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace.

You learned it from. I'm going to call him Epaphras. That's actually not correct. Tom got it right. Epaphras.

I just don't trust myself to say it correctly. And what I want you to do is this. If you're reading this and you're like, I don't know how to do that. Don't worry about it. Get it wrong.

Like, I got it wrong right. You can be like, I got it wrong, like Russ does. Epaphras. Epaphras. That guy, he, our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf and who also told us of your love and in the spirit, he told us of you.

So here's where Colossae comes from. In Acts 19, we see that Paul came to a city called Ephesus, and he stayed there longer than he normally did because there was opportunity and what he wanted to do. He realized, oh, I can start to train people. And this could work its way all over the region. And so he rented.

He rented a space called the hall of Tyrannus. Why did he do that? Well, see, they didn't meet in churches like this. They didn't have separate buildings for church. They didn't have stages or pulpits.

The church would have meant this whole kind of network of small churches meeting in homes all over the city. And they would meet and sit around meals and share meals, and you would get the teaching and you would get all the same kind of stuff, praying together and those kind of things. So it wasn't a space to train. They were meeting in homes. And so he opened up a space to train specifically so people could be trained to go do what he was doing, to go show and Tell the good news of Jesus.

And so they start to meet in the hall. And for two years he trains in this hall. And there were at least a couple of guys who were part of that. One is Epaphras. I'm just going to keep moving in and out from Epiphras to Epaphras just to confuse us all.

How about we do that? That guy Epaphras was there, and he was a student. He was learning and being trained in there. Another guy named Philemon, he's got a book of the Bible too. They're both there, whether they came from Colossae originally or they just said, hey, Colossae is where we're going to go, and we're going to go share the good news.

They go there. As far as we know, Paul never stepped foot in Colossae, but Epaphras had, Philemon had. Once again, over and over and over again, you see this in the Bible. This is another example of all that God needs is for you to be hungry and willing, and he will work with you. Two ordinary guys, one guy's name I cannot say correctly, right?

They go off to a small agricultural town and the gospel works. They just trust God enough that if they show up, they will join in with what he does and he'll work with them to bring the good news, right? So if you want to see God work in your life, in the life of people around you, like Mary and Steve and Steven, what we just saw, you're as qualified as these guys, right? Because all God needs is for you to be humble and willing. Good.

So Paul's happy to hear about the good things happen in Colossae. Paphras has come to him and he's like, oh, tell me all that's going on in Colossae. And he hears about the good work there, and the gospel is working. Paul says it's going everywhere. So here's the thing that it says in Acts 19, from that training in Ephesus, it says he trained for two years.

And then the gospel, like everyone says, all people in the region had heard the good news of Jesus in the kingdom because of what was going on there. Imagine for a moment that there might be a place where we study and practice the good news, and that the end result is that everybody, everywhere, all throughout the region, hears the good news of Jesus. This has happened. Paul says the whole world is hearing about it, it's bearing fruit. And he says, the gospel, the gospel, the gospel.

I'm saying good news. It's the exact thing. What is that good News. What is that message? Let me say it this way today.

And I want you to hear this, to hear it for you, if you've never heard it before. What is the good news? It is that God created the world and you out of an overflow of love. And he created everything. And he created with a purpose.

That means you are here for a reason, for purpose. God wants you here. He's given purpose to your life. And he knows sin has damaged you. He knows it's separated you from Him.

But he's done everything in his power to reconcile you, to put you back together with him, with the world around you, with other people, even yourself. And he's done that as a free gift given through Jesus on the cross.

More than that, even more, he'll put his spirit in you. He'll give you new life, new identity, a new community, a new family, a new future, a new hope. And he will take away your shame. And you will have the power to please him and obey Him. And when this life on this side of eternity is over, you will reign and rule with him as a king or queen, as a priest, in a new heaven, in a new earth and new creation.

That is the good news that they're telling. And everyone's hearing it brought about by two ordinary guys who believed that they could join in with what God wants to do. And Paul just wants to, like, put more fuel on that fire that's going on in Colossae. He hears what's going on and says, tell me all that's happening. All right, now let me respond to that.

But he also knows there are good things and there are also some real threats and distractions taking place. Like most of the Roman Empire, Colossus is a really diverse city. And that means there are people from all over the place, from all kinds of religious backgrounds. And so when they come together and bend their knee to King Jesus, they become. Paul uses this language for what it looks like to become united.

They're coming from all different kinds of ethnicities and religious backgrounds, but they come together. And Paul says, well, we're now citizens of heaven together. We're citizens of the kingdom of heaven. We're united in that identity. We are one new humanity, one new kind of human being together.

This is the kind of language he uses. But here's the thing. They also have baggage from where they came and that baggage. They're wanting to take it out and add it to Jesus. So some of them come from a Greek world.

They have a Greek way of thinking. And for some of Them that means that they're trying to add some kind of special knowledge that there are secret layers of the kingdom of God, as if the Holy Spirit isn't enough.

And so these leaders are saying, you need this super deep teaching, and if you don't have it, well, you don't have enough because Jesus isn't enough. And there are others of them that came from a totally different background, a Jewish way of thinking. And they wanted to add to Jesus, but add something different. They wanted to add elements of their culture and traditions.

Because after all, wasn't Jesus one of them? And didn't he observe the culture and traditions? And so they were telling people, you have to do things like observe the Sabbath, be circumcised, not eat pork. You have to do these things in order to be accepted by God.

So Paul's writing this letter and he wants to remind them of the one thing that matters. Jesus. Just Jesus. Because they're hearing Jesus isn't enough, that it's Jesus, sure, plus something plus special knowledge plus religious practices. And Paul is writing this.

And next week, boy, you keep reading this, all of a sudden it's going to be Jesus like you've never seen him before, right? Because in this passage and what we're going to read next, Paul has this line and is surrounded by all sorts of other beautiful stuff. Come back next week for that. But he says Jesus holds all things together, all things, the universe, down to you and me. He's like, what more do you need?

Jesus plus what? Jesus holds it all together. Jesus plus nothing is everything. And I'm so glad we have this letter because we are prone to adding things to Jesus or trying to add things to Jesus. You know, it's Jesus plus I gotta make sure I do all the right things.

Jesus plus the right job, Jesus plus the right person to love me, whatever it is. And the problem is, anything we add to Jesus limits the life we have in him. It steals our freedom. Jesus wants us to live to the fullest extent of the freedom he offers us. Paul will say another letter.

He will say, it is for freedom. You have been freed. God freed you not so you could be bound up by things again. He freed you so that you could be free.

So reading and studying this together is going to help us rely on Jesus alone plus nothing. And then to live further into the life he's called us into.

Now notice how Paul blurs the lines between his communication with them and prayer. He's already said, hey, I've heard this stuff about you. And immediately he Goes, now I'm thanking God for you. Oh, that's so good to hear. Thank you, God, for what they're doing, what's happening in them.

Again, he has this such a robust inner life. It just kind of pours out into the outer world. Imagine if that's possible, that we too, like Paul, he's just another ordinary guy following Jesus, Brother Paul, that we too could live in that abiding relationship with Christ in such a way that it would just kind of start to pour out, spill out as we knock in to one another.

See, Paul lives in that kind of relationship, this interactive relationship. He says it this way in his instructions to another church. He says, pray without ceasing, which sounds crazy. It sounds like, well, he must live in a cave, like he's a hermit. And all he does all day long is sit in there and pray because he can't talk to other people because then you're not praying.

That's not what he did. He went about a life and he had a full life and he went about it moving and being in connection with God. Love the way Dallas Willard defines prayer, he calls it talking to God about what we are doing together.

Just talking to God about what we're doing together. Here's Paul in prison, in jail. Got some friends around him. They're going, hey, here's what's going on in Colossians. Like, that's so beautiful.

That's so good. Father, what do you think? Hey, write this down. Let's just start to write this letter. Grace and peace to you.

You can see where those lines are blurred. What he knows is this, is that God is at work in the world, in us and around us all the time. There are three things we have to absolutely know and trust about God to make this work. One is that God is here. He's not somewhere else.

He's not distant. He's not away in some other time and space. He is right where we are. The kingdom of heaven is breaking into this moment, this little piece of earth. God is here.

God is able. That nothing is hard for him.

That he is indeed the One who holds it all together. That God is here, God is able and God is good. He is light. And in him there is no darkness at all. And if those three things are true, he is right where I am and he is able and he is good.

Then every minute of my day, we can go about it together. Hey, what do you think about what's next? How do you practically do that? It could be as simple as turning your commute into a little mini revival of prayer and worship that time you've got alone. Or it could be while you're refilling the toilet paper in the church building.

You could be listening to the Book of Colossians. Or like me, you could set a reminder on your phone a few times a day to just stop and set a timer for a minute and then turn to the God who's with me. Take a few breaths, think about what's ahead, and go, hey, what do you think about what's next? Can I join you in what you want to do? Or maybe it's praying while you're doing the dishes, or every time your baby cries or your toddler pulls your leg or your child asks you for something.

Just whatever simple way that you can step, lean into the God who's right there going, just abide with me. We'll do this together.

And like us, like Paul, we can have maybe this start to cultivate this wildly interactive life with him that spills out over onto others. And it spills out in this letter because Paul, all of a sudden, instead of talking about prayer, he starts to pray for them. And once you know how this would work, you'll see later. Another name. This is a fun one.

Tychicus. Tychicus. Bless me. Does somebody want to. Sounds like I'm sneezing.

Tychicus Tickus is the one who takes this letter to the church in Colossa and the other cities around it. But here's how it would have been delivered. It wouldn't have been, here you go, it's yours. It would have been, hey, everybody, he's here. He's going to read a letter from Paul in our house over here and this house over here and this house over here.

And so he would go house to house to house, and he would show up and go, okay, hey, let me read this letter from Paul to you. And it's, hey, everybody, I'm Paul. Grace and peace to you from the Lord God our Father. See how that works relationally? So what I do is we just kind of land is.

I'm going to take this prayer, the one that Paul's praying, because he's praying over the brothers and sisters who gather in Colossae. And you know what you are? You are the brothers and sisters who gather in cleaves, right? And that this prayer applies to them as they follow Jesus, and it applies to you and what Paul's doing. Here's the thing.

There's a way of praying sometimes where when I'm with somebody and I go, I just think I need to pray truth into the back of your skull right now. I need to pray for God to set in you what is already true about you right now. And I kind of want to pray that for all of you in the room, because this prayer is that he's just praying truth right into them. So if you want, you can just sit quietly, or if you want to take a breath and calm your heart. If you want to receive it, you can.

And if you feel like it, you can just kind of put your hands out gently in front of you as a receiving posture for God's blessing on you. Because Paul writes and he says, for this reason, since the day I heard about you, I have not stopped praying for you.

He's continually asking the Father this, that God, fill up every sister and brother here right now. Pour into them all the way to the rim. Pour yourself into them to overflowing. Fill them to the limit with wisdom and understanding of who you are in all the ways that they're prone to get you wrong.

Remove them. Because when they get you wrong, they get life wrong.

So some of you in this room right now, God wants to remove the false beliefs you have about him, that he's disappointed in you, that you are distant, that he is distant from you, that he's uncaring or irrelevant. Father, remove any of that thinking and fill them with the truth of who you are, that you are here with them and able and good in every moment, and that you are a God of grace and peace. And remove any sense that they have to strive to earn those things, that they are a gift and you are offering grace and peace to their spirits right where they are right now, so that they may live this life worthy of you and please you in every way.

May you know right now that you warm your Father's heart.

His desire for you is to live in the way he longs for you to surrendering him and obeying him, but not grudgingly.

May you respond to his love in your life, and may it boil out and Father, kill any sense in them right now that they are obeying in order to earn your love and acceptance.

Hear this in the name of Jesus. You are loved and accepted by the God of the universe. And may that boil up into a good life.

Father, make it so that the lives they live are filled with good work. Taking what they do with you, Father, make it matter. Let what they do in the world be saturated through and through with love and joy and peace and patience, and strengthen them with all power according to your glorious might, Father so that they may have great endurance and patience.

Some of you in the room need to stay at it to not give in to bad thinking about who God is or give in to pressure.

Father Strengthen them so they don't just wait out this life, but they join you in it. Give them active endurance like a runner in a race, refusing to stop when they feel like they can't get enough breath and their body is aching and everything in them says just stop. Be their strength Lord. That keeps them putting one foot in front of the other. Remind them this is not a race.

They run because they have to. They get to and give them the sense of joy of running with you. Give them hearts of joyful thanks to you Father. May they overflow knowing it's you who brought our King Jesus that through King Jesus that you make it possible for them to share an inheritance, an eternal inheritance of royalty in your kingdom of light. 4 Paul says and he turns our mind to our King Jesus.

He King Jesus has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son. He loves.