Introduction
Have you ever noticed that most of the New Testament is addressed to communities of believers rather than to individuals?
Most of the exhortations in the New Testament are plural, not singular.
When it says “be filled with the Spirit” for example, it means “be a Spirit-filled church” more than it means “be a Spirit-filled person.”
Imagine you’ve got a plate of chips in front of you straight out of the fryer, nice and crunchy on the outside, all fluffy on the inside. All they need is a bit of salt.
What difference do you think one grain of salt will make to the taste? What about a good sprinkle from the salt cellar?
Christian loners, who just do their own thing in isolation, are like a single grain of salt on your chips.
Ineffective. It is not God’s plan for us to live out our faith alone. He puts us in families of fellow believers.
Whenever a friend of mine visits another church, I always like to ask him or her, “How did you find it?”
And what I mean by that is not, “what was the building like?”, or “how many people were present?”, or “was the coffee OK?”, or “which songs did they sing?”
What I’m interested in is the spiritual temperature of the church.
In other words, was the atmosphere there full of faith and the Holy Spirit, or was it all religious and otherworldly?
Was the Bible teaching sound and substantial, or just motivational waffle? Was the worship Christ-exalting and passionate, or me-focused and shallow? Was the presence of God there, or did it feel like a club? Was it outward-looking and welcoming, or all a bit cliquey?
What do you think visitors would tell their friends about King’s?
And
I say all this by way of introduction because our passage of scripture today,
from Colossians 1, written to a church, not an individual, is all about these
kinds of issues.
It’s about the personality of the church in Colossae and the impact it had on its town and region.
Let’s read together what it says. As always with Paul, it’s very condensed and tightly packed, with long sentences, so you have to switch on and focus.
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 God’s people – the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which [faith, hope and love] you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world – just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. You learned it from Epaphras, 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. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people 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.
Hearing About What God Is Doing
As far as we know, Paul never visited Colossae.
The nearest he got was when he planted a church in Ephesus, 120 miles away.
But he knew about this church because one of his Ephesian converts, called Epaphras, later took the gospel to his home town of Colossae.
And in all likelihood, the gospel spread from there into subsequent church plants in nearby Hierapolis and Laodicea.
But notice this remarkable thing; Paul never went anywhere near this church and yet he can say in v4, “We have heard of your faith... and your love.
In fact, three times in this short passage Paul says something like; “We’ve heard all about you” or “someone told us about you.”
So, it was a church with influence. There is something about what God was doing there that was newsworthy.
This church was talked about hundreds of miles away. I want to know, what was it about that little church that so impacted the wider region?
Growth and Fruitfulness
In v6 we get the answer; Paul says, “The gospel
is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world – just as it has been
doing among you.”
This the story of AD history in fact.
Let me encourage you about how the gospel has multiplied all over the earth just in the last hundred years.
According to research published a decade years ago, over the last century, the number of people calling themselves Christians in China has increased from 2 million to 67 million. In the Philippines it has gone from 8 million to 87 million. And in sub-Saharan Africa it is up from 9 million to 516 million.
In
all these places, and in many more, the gospel is still bearing fruit and
growing.
As in the global church, one of the hallmarks of a local church, where God is at work, is that there is growth and fruitfulness.
In my experience, the harder a church prays, the more vigorously it grows.
In fact, Paul repeats this expression about fruit and growth in v10 when he prays for more of it.
“We continually ask God”, he says, “…that you may please the Lord in every way, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God.”
God’s design and desire for you and me is that we advance in faith and produce a spiritual crop in such a way that people notice.
Let me ask you a direct question; are you growing in your Christian faith? Not ten years ago, or when you were a new Christian. I mean this year.
Do you have a growing appetite for God’s presence? Are you more able to forgive people who wrong you, as the Lord forgave you? Are you further on in God than you were this time last year? Are you asking God for more love for the loveless, more authority in faith, and more victorious joy in seasons of pain?
Growth and fruitfulness are indisputable evidence of spiritual health.
And by contrast, spiritual stagnation and unproductiveness are indications that something is wrong and needs fixing.
So what’s the secret of spiritual growth and abundant fruitfulness? Is there a kind of Holy Spirit Baby Bio or compost that promotes good spiritual health?
And v5-7 say here that there is.
It says here that when the gospel really makes its mark on a gathering of Christians, they in turn make an impression on their community.
It’s talking about the gospel of grace here. The gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
The gospel is the story of how God has loved you, predestined you, chosen you, called you, given you new birth, justified you and forgiven you.
It’s through the gospel that God gives you the obedience of faith.
And, as long as you hold on in faith, the gospel guarantees that God will unquestionably bring you to eternal joy in his glorious presence.
Your security as a believer is not dangling precariously by a thread over a precipice. It says here in v5 that it’s stored up for you in heaven.
Your eternal destination is dependent on God’s consistency, not yours, so whenever you find yourself wavering in your faith remember that.
This is the gospel. No wonder it means ‘good news.’ You did not initiate it, and you cannot add to it; it is complete and unimprovable. You can only accept it by faith or reject it.
Hear, understand, learn
So, what was it about these Colossians’ collective response to the gospel that meant they were growing and bearing fruit to such an extent that people heard about it hundreds of miles away?
If you read v5-7 carefully you’ll notice that
they reveal a sequence, a progression. Watch closely.
In v5 and v6 (step 1) it says, “you heard the word of the gospel.”
In other words, somebody (probably Epaphras and his church planting team) communicated the good news about Jesus, your ears tuned in and it rang true, so you became interested. That’s wonderful.
But hearing the gospel is only the start. It’s not enough in itself.
I mean, I have heard all about pulsars, quasars, phantom energy, black holes and dark matter.
I have heard that these things in space are actually fundamental to the structure of the universe.
But I don’t really understand what they are. Don’t ask me.
I wonder if some of us here today are at this first stage with respect to the gospel; we’ve heard it and we kind of like the sound of it but we’ve never really understood it.
But a bit further on in v6, Paul says to these Colossians, about the gospel, (step 2) “You truly understood it.”
That is to say, the message of the gospel not only sounded attractive, there was a lightbulb moment.
You put the pieces together and it made all kinds of sense to you.
The spiritual realities of the seriousness of sin and the sweetness of grace came into focus and you said, “Ah, this is wonderful.”
This is why incidentally we work really hard on communicating the Bible here.
2 Timothy 4 says, “Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favourable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching. For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.”
We take that seriously. It’s why we don’t settle for a 5-minute thought for the day on the back of an envelope or a rambling wittering-on about a strange dream I had last Wednesday. We preach God’s word.
It’s why we encourage everyone to be in a midweek group like leadership training, or the Tuesday morning Bible study, or a life group, a home group or Alpha.
We passionately want a community of disciples here, lifelong learners who understand their faith.
But there’s more. Understanding the gospel is not quite enough either.
I understand how planes fly. At least in theory. It’s physics and aerodynamics.
As
long as thrust is greater than drag, producing lift that is greater than
weight, a plane will inevitably get off the ground and stay in the sky.
It may seem improbable when you look at 265 tons of jumbo jet waiting on the tarmac, but it is a mathematical certainty.
I can understand that, even marvel at it, but I have never learned to actually fly a plane.
If you put me in the cockpit of a Boeing 747, this is what you’ll hear over the P.A. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome on board; you are going nowhere today!”
So in v7 we go beyond hearing, and even beyond truly understanding, fundamental though they are.
It says, (step 3) “You learned it.” Paul’s talking about life-related biblical training, not just theoretical theology.
Sound doctrine has morphed into ingrained personal experience. God's word shapes the way we think and speak and act.
That’s where these believers were. They had first heard, then understood, and finally really learned, fully grasped, the gospel of God’s grace.
Where do you think you are on that spectrum?
The truth about you and God’s eternal plan for your life – are you on step 1, (have you heard it and just begun to tune in?)
Or do you think you have progressed to step 2, (do you really understand it now?)
Or have you made it to step 3 yet, (have you properly learned and grasped the gospel so it is an integral part of who you are and affects what you do?)
You see, the difference between step 1 and step 2 is that you go from hearing stuff to knowing stuff.
And the difference between step 2 and step 3 is you go from knowing stuff to doing stuff.
As Kris Valatton says, “The difference between people who do things and people who don’t is that people who do things do things.”
I mentioned Epaphras earlier, this man who first took the gospel from Ephesus to Colossae, and established a new church there.
At the time Paul wrote this letter, he was in prison, and Epaphras was visiting him, bringing practical help and support.
In other words, Epaphras was a man who did things. This is how the early church flourished. Churches sent out leaders and teams, to plant churches or resource churches. They were people of action, who grew and bore fruit where they went.
It’s why we are sending out a team to Brasov, Romania, in a couple of weeks’ time. King’s is blessed with gospel-and-mercy-shaped DNA which hopefully multiplies wherever it goes.
What God has so graciously done among us, is too precious to keep to ourselves. And whenever we give it away, God pours even more back in. Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you – with an added bonus and a blessing.”
Our aim is that everyone here hears, understands and learns the gospel of grace so we are all growing and bearing fruit.
We know that the devil wants nothing more than for us to sit comfortably, get some popcorn and just enjoy the show.
But that is not the kind of church Jesus is building. He’s building a church that is passionate about becoming more like him in his character and ministering more like him in his anointed power.
Knowing
God
There are few things more beneficial in life than knowing about God. But God doesn’t want you to just know about him, profitable as that is.
As many of you know, the New Testament was written in Greek and is translated for us into English.
The Greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge, refers to the kind of knowledge we acquire from experience.
So, if I wear a pair of trousers that causes everyone to point at me and fall about laughing, I know (gnosis) not to wear them again.
Gnosis is the root of words we use in English all the time. Diagnosis (I know what’s wrong with you). Prognosis (I know what the likely outcome of your treatment will be). And agnostic (I don’t know if there is a God or not).
But every now and then in the New Testament, we get the word epignosis, which also translates as knowledge, but it is subtly different.
You usually find it when it’s talking about Christians knowing God.
It literally means over-knowledge. It’s a kind of turbocharged knowing. It means really know.
It’s saying it’s not what we know that brings spiritual growth and fruitfulness but who we know.
And one of the places we find epignosis (twice in two verses) is right here in v9-10.
“We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.”
God wants you to really know his will for you, his calling on your life, and he wants you to really know him.
Ending
So I’m going to end with the oratory of a gravel-voiced, African-American preacher and civil rights activist called S. M. Lockridge.
He
once came up with this magnificent word picture of Jesus. And he kept
challenging his audience; “do you know him?”
I wish I could do the voice because it’s spine-tingling, but I’m no actor I’m afraid.
This is what he said:
My king is a seven-way king. He’s the King of the Jews. He’s the King of Israel. He’s the King of righteousness. He’s the King of the ages. He’s the King of Heaven. He’s the King of glory. He’s the King of kings and He is the Lord of lords. But do you know him?
No means of measure can define His limitless love. No far-seeing telescope can bring into visibility the coastline of His shoreless supplies. No barrier can hinder Him from pouring out His blessings.
He’s enduringly strong. He’s entirely sincere. He’s eternally steadfast. He’s immortally graceful. He’s imperially powerful. He’s impartially merciful.
He’s God’s Son. He’s the sinner’s saviour. He’s the centrepiece of civilization. He stands alone in Himself. He’s august. He’s unique. He’s unparalleled. He’s unprecedented. He’s supreme. He’s pre-eminent. I wonder if you know him today?
He’s the loftiest idea in literature. He’s the highest personality in philosophy. He’s the supreme problem in higher criticism. He’s the fundamental doctrine of true theology. He’s the cardinal necessity of spiritual religion.
He’s the miracle of the age. He’s the superlative of everything good that you choose to call Him. He’s the only one able to supply all of our needs simultaneously. He supplies strength for the weak. He’s available for the tempted and the tried. He sympathizes and He saves. He’s guards and he guides.
He heals the sick. He cleanses lepers. He forgives sinners. He discharges debtors. He delivers captives. He defends the feeble. He blesses the young. He serves the unfortunate. He regards the aged. He rewards the diligent and He beautifies the meek. Do you know him?
Well, my King is the key of knowledge. He’s the
wellspring of wisdom. He’s the doorway of deliverance. He’s the pathway of
peace. He’s the roadway of righteousness. He’s the highway of holiness. He’s
the gateway of glory.
He’s the master of the mighty. He’s the captain of the conquerors. He’s the head of the heroes. He’s the leader of the legislators. He’s the overseer of the overcomers. He’s the governor of governors. He’s the prince of princes. He’s the King of kings and He’s the Lord of lords. Do you know my king?
His office is manifold. His promise is sure. His life is matchless. His goodness is limitless. His mercy is everlasting. His love never changes. His word is enough. His grace is sufficient. His reign is righteous. His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
I wish I could describe him to you! I’m trying to tell you that the heaven of heavens can’t contain Him, let alone a man explain Him… You can’t outlive Him and you can’t live without Him.
The Pharisees couldn’t stand Him, but they found out they couldn’t stop Him. Pilate couldn’t find any fault in Him. The witnesses couldn’t get their testimonies to agree. Herod couldn’t kill Him. Death couldn’t handle Him and the grave couldn’t hold Him. Yes, but do you know him today?
He always has been and He always will be. He had no predecessor and He’ll have no successor. There’s nobody before Him and there’ll be nobody after Him. You can’t impeach Him and He’s not going to resign.
His is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Forever… and ever… and ever… And when you get through with all of the forevers, then Amen!
Let’s stand to pray…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 11 September 2022
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