Colossians 1, 1 through 14. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. Grace to you and peace from God our Father. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing, as it does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit. And so, from the day we heard, 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, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints and light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Good morning, New City. What an honor and a privilege it is to be here with you. I bring greetings from your sister church from about an hour west-northwest of here, University Reform Church. I am Dave Hinkley. I am the Children and Youth Ministry Director there at University Reformed. I am good friends and close ministry compatriots with your pastor, Matt. We have served the young people of our presbytery for a lot of years together. You know, interestingly, Matt and I are are a rare breed of youth ministry, youth ministers, who have been doing it for a very long time. You know that you have been in youth ministry for a long time when you were invited to preach at a church, and one of your favorite alumni is the chairman of the deacons. Hello to Michael and his family. So as I said, it's a real blessing to come and share God's word with you. My task this morning is to begin your sermon series on the book of Colossians. Our text today is the greeting, thanksgiving, and prayer that begins this book. Paul demonstrates for us here his own attitude and approach toward his ministry. Even his feelings about what he's called to do and the people to whom he is called to serve. Paul demonstrates these things by what he chooses to say and chooses to pray. He reveals his heart toward Colossians and his attitudes toward God's work among them. Any minister will benefit from apprenticing ourselves to Paul, examining his attitudes and seeking to emulate them. This is the greatest missionary of the church, the author of much of the New Testament, the father and founder of many churches, And now you'll rightly say to me that Christ is the minister whom we most should wish to emulate. That's absolutely right. And as Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians 11, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. Now, every Christian is a minister. And we use the word We primarily think of preachers in the pulpit or perhaps missionaries or evangelists, but the Bible does not look at ministry in this way. 1 Peter 2 tells us that we Christians are a royal priesthood. 2 Corinthians 5 says that God has given to us all the ministry of reconciliation in order to declare the healing hope the gospel to a broken world. As a believer here in this room, the question is not if you are a minister, but in what way. Young and old, ministry to others can look very different, but if I had to give a simple definition, I would say that Christian ministry is the work of bringing the hope of the gospel to bear in the life of another person. Being a good Christian friend, therefore, or being a good Christian parent, serving in all sorts of ways here in your church, whatever it is, these are works of ministry. If you belong to Christ, if Christ is your life, then you want to show his love. You want his love to come to bear upon the lives of those around you. As much as the living water that you have been given is intended for your own healing, it is also intended to be shared by you. What's more, I'll suggest that the lion's share of your ministry will be done right here. Symbolically right here, I mean. Your gospel ministry primarily happens within the context of your church body. As much as we want to be outward focused, they will know that we are Christians by our love for one another. The goal of our outward focus is to bring them in. here into the community of redeemed believers where they might find the words of life and have the foretaste of eternity that is holy Christian fellowship. Thus, I think that Paul's attitude and approach toward his ministry revealed here in our text will be instructive to every one of us as we seek to minister in whatever context that we've been placed, but particularly as we seek to minister to those within the body of Christ. I want to share three observations about Paul's ministry that we see here in our text this morning, and three ways in which we as ministers should follow him as he followed Christ. First, Paul loves the church at Colossae with the love of a father. or perhaps a grandfather. We see in verse 7 that the church in Colossae learned the gospel from Epaphras. Scholars aren't certain if Paul actually ever visited Colossae himself. One supposition is that Epaphras was in Ephesus, about 100 miles away from Colossae, during Paul's ministry there in Ephesus. Epaphras then heard the gospel and went back up the mountains to tell his own people the good news. The time of writing, the writing of this book, it would have been between five and 10 years since Paul's ministry in Ephesus. And churches have been established in Colossae, but also in nearby Laodicea and Hierapolis. Now, as this book is written, Paul is in prison in Rome and Epaphras himself has traveled all the way back all the way to Rome to visit and care for him. Even though Paul didn't found this church, he loves them like a father does. You can feel it as you read through. He seems genuinely encouraged to hear the hope in Christ has taken root in these believers. He's profoundly thankful for the work that God has done in them and is doing in them. This isn't just perfunctory religiosity. Paul is specifically concerned for them and his fatherly heart is 100% for them. I suggest to you, brothers and sisters, that the love of Paul ought to guide our attitude toward one another in the church. That earnest desire to do what is best for them in Christ at all times. Often, we give lip service to this kind of love and we do not count cost. More often, our hearts say something like, Brother, I desire what is best for you, unless it infringes on my interests. Or sister, I desire what is best for you, unless you are a weirdo. Brethren, this is not how we should treat one another. We must strive toward the genuine, true, and self-sacrificing love of Christ. This kind of love is not merely an emotion. It's not merely a feeling. It is a cultivated and mature affection. Often, it is a choice of the will that is later followed by emotion. We all have natural, innate affection toward those to whom we are related. Affection toward brothers and sisters in Christ is a fruit of the gospel at work in our hearts. It overflows from the faith that we have in Christ. But we have to work for it. We have to cultivate it. We have to pray for it. Consider that you and I, you and the child in the nursery, you and that Christian from another ethnicity, you and that person in the church with whom you have a strong disagreement, you are all indeed related by blood. Not the blood that is inherited from a parent, but the shed blood of the divine Savior himself. Paul doesn't necessarily know many of these people very well, but he loves them with a mature affection. Notice what specifically Paul is thankful for. Verse four tells us two things. He is thankful for their faith and he is thankful for their love. These two things are joined inextricably. When you trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, that trust produces in you love for others, love for Christ's people. And look, we are seeing this play out exactly in Paul's example. His love for the believers at Colossae is rooted not in a natural affection. It's rooted in his faith in Christ. And he sees the same faith producing love in what he's heard from Epaphras of the church. And he is thankful to God that God is working among them. None of us has been perfected in love yet. Each of us, because of the greatness of love with which our Savior has loved us, we are called, each of us, to this task of loving one another for the rest of our lives. We all need to get better at this. And this is not because there aren't people in the room who are amazing at it. I'm certain that there are. It's because pursuing love for our brothers and sisters is what worshiping our risen Savior looks like. And he is worth every bit of that work. Second observation. Paul has full confidence in the power of the gospel to work. In verses 3 and 4, we see that Paul is thankful for the faith that overflowed into love. In verse 5, he reminds them of the hope of eternal life. Here we have Paul's familiar triad. He's talked to us about this before in the New Testament. Faith, love, hope. It's the lens through which he sees the gospel at work in us, in people. We could describe Paul's triad as past faith, present faith, and future faith. Faith, love, hope. We could describe it as something glorious happened, something glorious is happening, and something glorious will happen. Paul has worked very hard on his task of evangelism and discipleship. Paul obviously thinks that Epaphras is an incredible guy who has done so much good work. Paul thinks that the Colossians have responded well and are loving one another well. All this is great and necessary, but what does Paul see as the agent of change? They haven't been transformed into an awesome and faithful and living community and loving community because Epaphras is such a good communicator or because Paul did such a good job of training him. Although undoubtedly, those things are true. Paul's confidence that growth has happened, is happening, will continue to happen, is what he describes in verse 5 as the word of truth, the gospel. Notice how things are phrased in verse 6. What is it that's bearing fruit? Is it Paul? Is it Epaphras? Is it the Colossians? It is the gospel that is bearing fruit in the world and among the Colossians. The gospel is increasing. Paul says it this way in Romans 1 verse 16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew and then to the Greek. The gospel is the leaven that spreads through the whole lump. The gospel is the tiny mustard seed, which before you know it is big. It is working with its own power, or more precisely, it is working by the Spirit's power. The word of truth is specifically how God has ordained the growth of the kingdom in this world. Paul knows that the transformative power of the gospel is at work in the whole world and is increasing. He sees it in Colossae because he's been watching it happen throughout his whole ministry. So, fellow ministers, what strategy shall we devise in order to bring about great change in our community and in those that we love? Should we commission a study, maybe, about the most effective ways to get people through the doors and stick around? What are the recipes for healing a broken soul to whom we might seek to give counsel? How do we bring up kids that know that they are loved and they'll love others well? Brothers and sisters, you and I do not have the power to change a heart. What we have the power to do is to speak the word of truth to a heart. We have every reason to place great hope in the word to work in that heart. Paul knows that when the gospel goes out, power goes out. You do not need to be a perfect evangelist or a perfect disciple maker. Don't get me wrong. Always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within you. Think about it. Prepare for it. Try and do it well. I mean, I wrote a sermon. I'm not just winging it. Be excellent in all these areas, for the Lord we are serving is excellent. A plan is a good thing, but there is no transformative power in a plan. The world around us has a crisis of meaning. These young people today are grasping at false gospels like drowning people grabbing at the oars of a passing lifeboat. It slips through their fingers and they're lost. The people in our culture are not happy and the idols that they are inventing for themselves to try and make themselves happy are making it worse. The centerpiece of our love for our neighbor, of our outreach, the real help that we can give, the real love that we can show, is to demonstrate for them with our words and our lives how the gospel of Jesus Christ is the real and true hope. Your sense of brokenness and alienation Whatever the proximate cause is ultimately a result of humanity's broken relationship with and alienation from its creator. Your sense of being unloved or unlovely can only find perfect healing in understanding that the very creator sent his son to die on your behalf out of pure, unconditional, and unbreakable love. You need to live in the shadow of the life to come. What you want, what your soul needs, is rest in Christ, peace with the Father, and the sustaining grace of the Holy Spirit. New City, you do not need to be the most well put together church. You do not need a perfect pastor or perfect programs. You need the Word of Truth to be faithfully proclaimed among you. And you need to have expectant faith that it will do its work. You need to live that faith. Here we are proclaiming this miracle of God's grace, forgiveness of our sins, reconciliation with God by grace alone, through faith alone. We are proclaiming this miracle of grace, putting it out there, and waiting to see how God is about to work. How is he going to surprise us? What miracle of healing and conversion is he about to do? You need to proclaim the gospel. Expect the gospel to work in power and pray earnestly for the work of the gospel. Which leads us to the final observation. Paul prays boldly and specifically for growth. Paul's prayer here in verses 9 through 14 is one big old pile of clauses and participles, each one qualifying and building on the last. I want to sort it out a little bit. What I see here is one big and bold request and a few specific ways that Paul hopes to see the answer to this request become reality in the lives of the church at Colossae. And then, at the end, a reminder of the reason that Paul has confidence to ask for such things. So Paul's big request is in verse 9, that the Colossians would be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. What might an answer to that prayer look like specifically in the Christian's life? Paul specifies He's looking for three things. First, verse 10, that the Colossians would walk in a manner worthy of the Lord and live fully pleasing to him. Or, said another way, that they would bear fruit in every good work and continue to increase in their knowledge of God. Paul asks that these believers would not only grow deep roots in Christ, worshiping him for who he truly is, the divine Savior who condescended in love to save us, but that this knowledge would continue to bubble over to love and good works toward their neighbor, just as he knows that it already has. He also prays, that's the first thing, he also prays In verse 11, that the Colossians would be strengthened with all power according to God's glorious power. Or said another way, that they would have all endurance and patience with joy. Hardships and even persecutions aren't detours from the Christian life. They are the road on which the Christian life travels. The war is real and the believer fights. Do not be fooled by snakes who tell you that earthly health and prosperity are your right in Christ. Knowing that the battle is on, Paul not only prays that the Colossians would have the power to stand as things get hard, but that they would have power according to God's glorious power. That is, not that they would be given some extra oomph to stand firm, not that they would have superhuman or superhero power to stand firm for Jesus, but that the power that works to sustain them to stand up under pressure, under suffering, under persecution, would be the very same power that would one day crush Satan under his feet. Paul prays not that they would be the best they could be and fight, but that the very power of God would come through them to withstand the hardships and trials and persecutions that are to come. To Paul, to be filled with the knowledge of God's will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding means to live wholeheartedly and love wholeheartedly for Christ and to stand firm in hardship. And the third thing it means, the third thing he's asking for, is for the Colossians to be fully aware of who has granted to them these things and to give him all the glory. Paul's hope for these believers demonstrated by his prayer is that they would pursue holiness and pursue love for neighbor, that they would stand firm in trial, and that they would give glory to God. He prays for their conduct, their perseverance, and the Godward orientation of their hearts. These are bold requests. Paul's prayer is full of alls and everys. But why ask the sovereign God of the universe for a modest amount of good? We have every reason to expect that God will work through the gospel to bring about these good fruits in the lives of the people that we love, in the lives of his people. So why is it that we are so often, that we too often, do the opposite of this? We know we are praying for a good thing, but we are timid about our prayers. We pray modest prayers because we fear that we will be disappointed. Or we hedge our theological bets by asking for something that we're pretty sure could happen anyway. Our God is a big God. the sovereign master and creator of the universe who has condescended to create us in his image and loves us enough to send his son to redeem us. Beloved in Christ, the one in whom is the wisdom to design the universe and in whom is the power to make all things is your Abba Father through Christ. He is a God who is able to heal the sick, to save the lost, to meet your every need. When you pray for others, don't just ask him for what seems probable in your earthly judgment. Ask him for fully transformed hearts, for conversions, for healing, for revival. Timid prayers reveal a lack of trust. A lack of trust in God's love for you or lack of trust in his goodness or lack of trust in his power. A lack of trust that God knows what is good and he knows what is good to grant you in your prayer and what to withhold in your prayer from your answer to prayer. And Paul tells us what grounds his trust and what makes him so willing to pray boldly. Paul is motivated to pray bold prayers and we should be also because he is confident of what has been accomplished on the believer's behalf. He said it this way in Romans 8, God spared not his own son but delivered him up for us all How shall he not with him freely give us all things? Similarly, right here in verse 12, he explains that God has qualified the believer to share in the inheritance of the saints of light. That means that God himself not only opened the door for these bold things to be asked, He himself qualified the saints who belonged to him to receive the answers to these prayers. What accomplished this qualification for us? Verse 13, God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of Jesus, his beloved son, in whom there is redemption and the forgiveness of sins. God hasn't just merely said, go ahead and ask me for things. You see, because of sin, we had no right to ask. But by sending his son to bridge the gap, to achieve the reconciliation, to die on the cross in our place, we are not only given permission to ask, we are qualified to receive the blessings. In Christ, the believer's sins are forgiven and he or she is redeemed and qualified to receive the inheritance that Christ has earned. Do you hear that? Believer, because of Christ, God wants to answer your prayers. He wants to bless you with the inheritance that was purchased by Christ. Let's be clear, we're not talking about praying for selfish gain or anything else that those nonsense prosperity preachers would tell you that you should have. That's materialism with a Jesus mask on, and it isn't Christian in any sense. But Christian parent of a wayward child, as hard as their heart might be, you have been qualified with the saints to receive the inheritance purchased by Christ. It has been granted to you to call the maker of hearts, to call on the maker of hearts, and to call him Abba. To ask boldly for your loved one's heart. Christians who long to see revival in your community ask boldly for conviction of sin and for the lost to walk right through these doors. He wants to answer these bold prayers. This is a model for us of what we should hope for in those whom we minister and what we should ask God to do. These are bold requests, but they are God-glorifying requests. They are requests that admit we cannot in our strength do what we want, but we need the power of God to work. These are God-glorifying requests. God loves to answer this kind of prayer. Christian, pray for your church like this. Pray for your children like this. Pray for those around you that you wish to see come to Christ like this. As Paul sought to minister to the believers at Colossae, his bold prayers for them flowed from his sincere and mature affection for them. and a full confidence in the power of the gospel at work in them. We should seek to emulate his love. And we have just as much reason as he did to have full confidence that the Lord is at work among us. Through our love, through our prayers, through our proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's pray together.