Amen. Our passage for this morning is from the book of Colossians. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Colossians chapter 1. We'll be looking at a few verses, verses 21 through 23, but I'll begin reading back in verse 15. The Apostle Paul is speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ when he says, He is the image of the invisible God. The firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. and you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him." If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. Thus, by the reading of God's word, may he bless it to us. Please be seated. And let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do praise you. We praise you for your word. We thank you that your word is powerful, and we ask that as we read and as we hear your word this day, you would open our eyes to see your glory, to see your beauty, open our ears to hear your wisdom, and cause us to understand your truth and your will for us. By your spirit, open your word to us that we may know you, love you, and serve you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. When was the last time a stranger has knocked on your front door? I think that practice is getting more and more uncommon. This day and age, folks are immediately suspicious, aren't we? If anybody is at our doorstep, we're kind of uncomfortable and untrusting of anybody who would show up on our porch. Why are they here? What do they want? Rarely is it assumed that they're there for anything good. And then add to that, when was the last time you've had someone knock on your door wanting to share with you some heresy? I mean, genuine heretics, those denying the Trinity, those who don't believe in the deity of Christ, when was the last time they knocked on your doorstep? I mean, that's kind of an opportunity, isn't it? You see it as an opportunity to share the gospel? Or do we kind of run away? Do we not answer, right? Do we ignore them and their lies? Or do we confront them and their false teachings? Or do we have a chance to share Christ with them? I mean, here's someone on your doorstep that wants to discuss spiritual matters. That should be kind of an opportunity, I think. We should be grateful for those kinds of opportunities. And while such brief conversations rarely result in immediate fruit, at least it's an opportunity to plant seeds, to plant the seeds of faith. It was many years ago, I recall one conversation. A couple of women came to our door, and they thought they had the best news in the world. that they wanted to share with us. They really wanted to tell me the good news of Jesus. And what was it? What was this good news? Well, the good news was that He came to give us an easier law to fulfill. He did away with all those ten old commandments and replaced them with just two. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and just love your neighbor as yourself. Really? Really? Loving God is easier? What if my heart is wicked, right? And I brought up then that issue of the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man. I asked, right, how can a vile sinner ever be reconciled to a holy God? And their response was, oh, you're not that bad. And God's not that judgmental. You just gotta try. Just do your best. Does that break your heart? Does it break your heart knowing that so many people trust in either lowering God's righteousness or elevating us and our abilities, that I'm basically okay and God doesn't really care anyway? My friends, that is not good news. And so be grateful that this is not what we find in our passage this morning. In fact, whenever you can direct those conversations back to the words of Scripture, that's a win. God's Word is powerful. Here, notice what Paul is doing, right? The Apostle Paul beautifully reminds us. He reminds us about the good news of the Gospel and why it really is good news. The hope of the Gospel, for it rests in Christ's work and not our own. Here Paul describes the power, he describes the sovereignty of Christ. As we read, he talks about Christ creating, upholding, sustaining all things. He is in charge both over creation and over the new creation. He is the head of the body. He's the head of the church. He's made peace by the blood of his cross. And now in our passage he draws us into that peace that he has created. What does this mean for us as the body of Christ? It means starting with the reality. the reality of who we are in our sin. It means starting with who we were apart from Christ. Right, that's kind of the bad news. We start with the bad news before we get to the good news. Earlier, Paul spoke generously and generally about the glorious truths about Christ, his relationship to the church. He's the head of the body. But now he continues by addressing you and who you were. and who you were apart from Christ. Look at verse 21, and you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. Now Paul doesn't tell us who we're alienated from, but it's easy to see from this passage and others that we were alienated from whom? From God. We see such language throughout the Scriptures. This is what sin results in, this alienation, this estrangement. Paul says likewise in Ephesians chapter 2, remember you were at that time separated from Christ. Or in Ephesians 4, darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance in them due to their hardness of heart. You see the same kind of language even in the Old Testament. The book of Isaiah, chapter one, verse four, they have forsaken the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are utterly estranged. These are the results of sin, alienation, estrangement, separation from God. As the prophet Ezekiel says, estranged from me through their idols, who separates himself from me, taking his idols into his heart. And so, first and foremost, in our sin we are alienated from God, from our Creator, separated from the Holy One. But the Scriptures point us also to another kind of alienation. I mean, think back to the Garden of Eden. When sin entered into the heart of man, taking root and corrupting mankind, Adam and Eve were exiled, sent away from the righteous and holy presence of the Lord. And yet included in that is another kind of separation, another kind of estrangement. What did sin do to that relationship between mankind and the creation? God tells them, cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. And so that because of sin, right, pain and toil and futility now defines so much of our lives. Though we were created in harmony with God's creation, now there is hostility and striving against this cursed land. And we see another kind of estrangement, another kind of alienation that Paul mentions in the book of Ephesians. He describes how Gentiles were strangers, were aliens to a people, to the covenant's people, the people of God, the people of Israel. Paul addresses Gentiles who had no connection to the promises, to the words, to the oracles of God. They were strangers from God and from His people. And now while our estrangement from our Lord is the most foundational, that alienation The alienation that is most frequently confronting us, day to day, the alienation that is most frequently before our faces, before our eyes, is the hostility that exists even between people. For we are also alienated from one another. After all, Paul describes us as those who were once alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. To who? To each other. Hostility between people, warfare, strife, animosity. These are such evil deeds. And such evil deeds are found not only in our history books, but on the front pages of our newsfeeds as well. We see the results of sin separating us from God, from His creation, and even from one another. And so here our Lord reveals to us the problem. He reveals to us the evil thoughts and the evil deeds. For notice these evil deeds flow out of a hostile mind, which flow out of our alienation from our God. And so you could say, sinners are those who sin. Right? Make sense? Sinners are those who sin, of course. But what relationship What is that relationship between who we are and what we do? Are we sinners because we sin? Or do we sin because of who we are? Notice the progression that Paul gives us here in verse 21. Alienated, hostile, doing evil deeds. The evil deeds is the last on that list, isn't it? It's not the evil deeds that put us in estrangement, it's our alienation already that affects our hearts and our hostile thoughts and vomits forth in evil actions towards others. And so the problem goes right to our heart, right to our being, right down to who we are as those in Adam. This alienation, this hostility, this evil, this problem is tied to who we are. And that means that we, we cannot in any way be part of the solution. Our alienation, our hostility, our evil deeds, that's what we contribute. That's what we contribute. Therefore, our reconciliation cannot begin with us. It begins with God. It begins with Christ. He didn't sit around waiting for us to change our own hearts. Rather, our God acted to overcome our hostility, to overcome our evil and our separation. He came to you. He has reconciled you. There's no way you could ever reconcile yourself. How could you? After all, look what it cost to reconcile you. Look at verse 22. And you who were once alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death. So to reconcile you in order to overcome your evil heart, his death was necessary. After all, this is what hostile thoughts and evil deeds demand. The wages of sin is death. And so our alienation is not simply being far from God, physically separated or removed from His presence. Our estrangement is a spiritual one. And it's what sin requires. And so to overcome it took the very life and death of the Son of God, His death on the cross, the blood shed for you, not for Himself. For He took the penalty, the estrangement and the alienation that you deserve. And while we were hostile in mind, what was Christ doing? Loving. Loving those same rebels. While we were doing evil deeds, what was He doing? He was fulfilling all righteousness. The same very righteousness which took Him to the cross on your behalf. Obedient, we're told, even to the point of death. In order to do what? Look at verse 22, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. And not to get too personal, but just look around. Does that describe any of us? Holy and blameless and above reproach? Wives, look at your husbands. Do you see someone holy and blameless? Husbands, do the same. Kids, look at your parents. Parents, look at your kids. Is this what we see when we look around? People who are holy and blameless and above reproach. Is there anyone here whose lives completely demonstrate that holiness, that loveliness? I mean, sure, we present ourselves this way, as we should, but don't we also see our failings and our faults? And those closest to us, likewise, readily see our own failures and faults and sins. And so we easily recognize that we are not yet entirely holy or blameless. Our lives of frequent repentance declare that we are not yet entirely holy and blameless. We still sin, we still feel the effects of sin and corruption in this life. But notice that's not what Paul says. Paul doesn't say that you are now already holy and blameless every day and in every way and everything you say, do, or think. Notice how he qualifies it. By his body of flesh in his death, he presents you holy, blameless, and above reproach. Where? Before him. Before the judge of heaven and earth. You have been declared forgiven, blameless, and above reproach. Though we await the fullness of the resurrection, before Him you stand in Christ, justified and righteous. Not because you've already attained it, but because Christ has. And He's given you His righteousness as a free gift. As Paul says elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 7, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless, in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so Paul goes on then to encourage us, to encourage us in this hope. In verse 23, right, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard. which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister." Here he reminds us of the reason we can have confidence in the hope of the Gospel. The reason we have confidence is because it's through faith. It's through faith. Not because we are holy and blameless already in ourselves, but because we trust in Him who gives us of His righteousness freely. After all, this is why Paul is writing this letter to the Colossians. That the church may not wander or waver, that she may remain steadfast and stable. For there are those who would seek to weaken her. There are those who would seek to draw her away from her confidence in Christ. There were false teachings then. False teachers stand ready to pounce and prey on them and on us. So then how do we know? How do we know if our faith is stable? How do we know if our faith is steadfast? When we examine our own faith, it tends to draw us inward. Kind of makes us introspective, doesn't it? If you were to ask about the quality of your faith, or the nature of your faith, those kinds of questions, they tend to draw us in on ourselves. So it's helpful to be reminded of what faith actually is. Faith isn't an introspective sort of meditation. Rather, to use a somewhat made-up word, rather than being introspective, faith is the opposite. Faith is extraspective. Faith looks outside of ourselves, not in here, but out there, to who Christ is, to what He's done. Now perhaps we're all well-informed Protestants. We've just celebrated Reformation Day. We'd all hopefully agree with the saying that we are saved by faith, what? Faith alone, thank you. But to be more precise, right, there's a context to this phrase, faith alone. The reason we're saved by faith alone isn't because that faith is just so strong and so amazing. Rather, it's who is your faith clinging to? Who is your faith trusting? Just trust as a concept, as a category, can't save. Faith itself has never saved anybody. Right? Because it's Christ who saves. It is Christ who saves by faith in Him alone. And this is my point. Trust, apart from Christ, Trust is just that empty glass to one starving in the desert. It's useless apart from what it holds and clings to. Trust, right, apart from Christ is like a drowning man just holding a rope. What does that rope do? Nothing, unless it's anchored to someone solid and secure and steadfast. It's the object of our hope. It's the object of our faith who is strong. It's the object of our faith who actually saves. By faith. I have a lengthy quote for us to consider. It's a beautiful quote. It's an old letter written from a pastor, Vaughn, to a southern Presbyterian named Dabney. And it was in his later years that Dabney was blind, he was weak, he knew that death was near. So he wrote to his old friend, wondering whether he would have a strong enough faith to face his impending death. And Vaughn's reply was very rich and pastoral. He wrote back to Dabney, a man, again, concerned with the strength of his faith in his last days. And he simply asked Dabney, what would a traveler do? What would a traveler do if he came to a chasm over which a bridge was spanning? What does he do to gain confidence in the bridge? Well, he gets down and he examines it. He doesn't stand at the bridgehead and turn his thoughts in on his own mind to see if he has confidence in the bridge. No, it's his examination of the bridge that gives him confidence. And if he wants more confidence, if he wants to grow in his confidence, how does he make his faith grow? Why, in the same way, he continues to look at the bridge. He says, now my dear old man, let your faith take care of itself for a while, and you just think of what you're allowed to trust in. Think of the master's power, think of his love, think of what he has done, his work. That blood of his is mightier than all the sins of all the sinners that ever lived. May God give you grace, not to lay too much stress on your own faith, but to grasp the great ground of confidence, Christ. and all his work and all his personal fitness to be a sinner's refuge. Faith is only an eye to see him. And so as we desire to be reconciled to our God through faith, as we desire others to be reconciled to God through faith, as we desire to grow in our faith, Paul calls us to not be shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard. which has been proclaimed in all creation, and of which Paul became a minister. I hope this is why you desire to belong to a church here in Scottsdale. I hope this is why you desire to see more churches planted in this city. It's to proclaim the hope of the gospel, to point the eyes of our faith to Jesus Christ. As Paul reminds us, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. After all, even our faith is a gift from God. A gift from God as faith is looking to Jesus, as Hebrews says, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Faith will never grow by looking at itself. Likewise, the world will never come to faith simply by pointing out all their various faults. Rather, both the world and the church need to hear Christ, to be shown Christ, to be pointed to Jesus Christ. We waver in our faith when we take our eyes off of Him. Our faith is stable and steadfast when we are anchored in Christ. And we shift from the hope of the gospel if we ever place our hope in someone or in something else. This is what Paul is warning the Colossians against. For like us, they would face false teachings. Like us, they too need the hope of the gospel. And so God's word directs us back to Christ. While this world and its hostility and evil deeds would point us to simply otherworldly solutions, and while our own sinfulness and brokenness draws our eyes away from Christ either in pride or full arrogance or in despair, the hope of the gospel continually breaks our pride, comforts our despair by drawing our eyes away from ourselves and reminds us of who our King really is. and that we've been reconciled. We've been reconciled to him by his body, by his death, through his resurrection. We are holy. We are blameless. We are above reproach before him. Amen. Let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do thank you that you have reconciled us to yourself. You've reconciled us to yourself through the sacrifice of Jesus, who died for our sins. Though we were once alienated from you, enemies, in our minds because of our, and leading to our evil behavior, Father, now we've been reconciled through Christ's body, through his death on the cross, to be presented as holy and blameless in your sight, without blemish, free from accusations, before your throne. So, Father, help us to continue steadfast, grounded, not shifting from this hope. Keep us and our eyes focused on Christ. We pray that you would strengthen us by your power, that we may live lives worthy of you, fully pleasing to you, bearing fruit in every good work. Cause us to grow in the knowledge of you and filled with all wisdom and understanding, provided by your Holy Spirit. We pray all of