Please stand as you're able to honor the reading of God's word. Colossians 4, 2 through 18. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Tickasus will tell you about all my activities. He's a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts and with him, Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you, and Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, considering whom you have received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is justice. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God. and they have been a comfort to me. Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis. Luke, the beloved physician, greets you, as does Demas. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of Laodiceans. And see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. And say to Archippus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you. You may be seated. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to go pick up my daughter from college. She's up at Michigan Tech, way, way, way up in the Upper Peninsula. And I'd never really explored the Keweenaw Peninsula, which is part of the Upper Peninsula. I'd never really explored that before. So I went up a couple of days early to do a little bit of exploring. And this was at the end of April, beginning of May. and she had recommended a couple of waterfalls to go check out, and there was this one falls called Hungarian Falls. It's a one-mile hiking trail, and in the course of that one mile, there are five waterfalls that you get to observe. and they range anywhere from 15, 20 feet high to 100 plus feet tall. They are absolutely gorgeous and beautiful and being there in the spring, all of the snow is in process of melting and these waterfalls are full and overflowing and it is just a spectacular view. Well, about a year and a half later, we were up there on a camping trip and I wanted several different of my family members to go and check out and see these waterfalls as well. And so we go up there and it was in the middle of August when we go up there and I look at the waterfalls and I was like, This is not what I remember. Like they were still really good and they were still fun to look at, but they weren't near as full as what I had remembered them being. Well, over the course of the summer, the snow had melted and the water had drained off and they weren't as overflowing quite as much as I had remembered them being. Well, as you think about this idea of an overflowing waterfall or a waterfall that is perhaps less, is flowing less, or maybe even to the point of being dried up, what would the connection be and how would your life reflect the effects of the gospel in it? Are you at a place in your life where the gospel is completely dried up in your heart and mind? There is no more water flowing through it. Perhaps there never was water flowing through it. Perhaps you've never received Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you're questioning why you're here this morning, and you're wondering if this makes any difference in life at all. Or perhaps you're in a place where that waterfall of the gospel in your life is down to just this little tiny trickle, and there's just not much happening. Maybe it's a piece of your life, maybe it's a part of your life, maybe even it's just an afterthought, and you're not really experiencing all that much growth. Or perhaps it's like these waterfalls were in the late summer. And there's still water flowing. There's still growth. There's still things happening. But the reality is, it's not much. And there's sin you're struggling with. And there's things that you know you should be doing that you're not. And there's things that you know you ought not be doing but you are. And there's just this battle and struggle and you're frustrated and you don't know where to go or what to do. Or perhaps your heart and life is so full of the gospel that it is just simply overflowing into the rest of your life as your life is full with the gospel of Jesus Christ that He has died and rose again to forgive us of our sins. And that is just flowing out of us. Well, we come now to this final chapter in the book of Colossians. And in this chapter, or I'm sorry, in this book, we've started off and Paul has done greetings and thanksgivings and prayers as he does in every one of his epistles, as he does all throughout all of his epistles. Those are three themes that continue to stand out in all of his books. And then he moves into talking about the preeminence and the sufficiency of Jesus. The fact that Jesus is preeminent, He is first. He is the firstborn. He is the ultimate King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And He is also sufficient. He came and He died and He rose again. And He is sufficient to forgive us of our sin. He is the only thing we need. He is all that we have. And he proclaims this because there's some outside force that's trying to influence the Colossian church to draw them away or to say that, no, no, no, no, Jesus isn't enough, you need something else, or no, no, no, no, this world philosophy is better than Jesus. And the Colossians are battling with something though we're not ever told or not clear as to what that is. And then as he talks about the preeminence and sufficiency of Christ, Paul moves in to this place where he talks about putting off sin and how to live and how to put off sin and how to put off Christ. And he talks about how we're called to live in our households, in relationship between husbands and wives and parents and children, between employers and employees. And there's all these different connections and relationships that as the gospel fills us, it begins to overflow. And now we come to this final chapter and we're just gonna focus on these first few verses. We're gonna leave the rest of it and just touch on it ever so briefly. But what we see in these first few verses of this chapter is that the gospel, as the gospel fills us, the overflow of the gospel in our lives, is of prayer and of witness. Now, for many of you, and the first piece that we see here is that the gospel overflows into prayer in our lives. Many of us, the second we hear that word prayer, all of a sudden feel this twinge or this check in our gut of guilt and shame Because in all of my years of walking with Jesus, I am yet to come across a Christian who would ever look at me and go, yeah, my prayer life's good, it's sufficient, I pray deep enough, I pray a good amount of time, man, my prayer life is amazing and everything is all good. Every one of us look and go, oh. There's some aspect of my prayer life that is missing. It needs to grow in depth, or it needs to grow in the amount of time I pray, I spend in prayer, or what I pray for needs to change. There's some aspect of our prayer life that we begin to feel dissatisfied with. Paul doesn't want us to feel guilt and shame in this. In this passage, as he's talking about prayer, what he really wants us to experience is hope, to experience encouragement, experience a challenge to continue on, and a motivation and an inspiration to pray. He looks at us and he says, the overflow of the gospel is in steadfast prayer. It's an encouragement. It's an inspiration. It's like, look, as you are filled with the gospel of Jesus, as you recognize who God is, as you recognize what God has done, let that overflow in your prayer to first and foremost, steadfast prayer, prayer that is ongoing, prayer that keeps going, prayer that keeps moving forward. Things that we pray for over and over and over again, keep coming back to prayer always. and keep praying the same things. So often what we'll do is we're like, oh, I should pray for that. And we pray for it one time. And then, you know, several weeks or months or maybe even years later, you're like, oh yeah, I prayed for that once. I don't ever remember anything happening from that. Well, to be steadfast in our prayer is to pray for things and to pray for them over and over and over and over again. And as we do that, God shapes our hearts and our minds and he shapes who we are and our understanding of who he is. Several years ago, I read a book called A Praying Life by Paul Miller. If you've never heard of it or you've never read it before, I would highly recommend it. There was one section in that book that really transformed my prayer life. And what he talked about is creating a prayer list for your prayer life. And so he kind of walks you through the process and what that looks like. And what I have found over the years is that I just about have that prayer list memorized. And I come back to that prayer list almost every single day. And I pray through all of the things on that prayer list in a circular way. And sometimes there's little variations to my prayers. And sometimes I might pray for a situation differently because of something, some way that God is working in me or in somebody else. and that prayer begins to morph, but it continues to be a constant and consistent prayer list. And what it does is it shapes me, and it helps me become aware, and it enables our prayers to become steadfast. Well, as those prayers become steadfast, the second aspect of prayer, we see Paul talking about here, prayer not only that is steadfast, but prayer that is watchful. The other way that word watchful in Greek can be translated is for prayer to be alert, for us to be alert in prayer. See, what happens is as we pray steadfastly, as we pray for the same things over and over and over and over again, what God begins to do is help us to become aware, help us to become watchful of who He is and what He is doing. We become aware of our circumstances. We become aware of our own hearts. And as we become aware of our own hearts, we become aware of the depth and the wretchedness of our own sin. And is not this the peace that oftentimes make prayer so hard for us to do? See, because when we pray, we recognize and we see our own inadequacy. We see our own insufficiency. We see our sinful, wicked, wretched, rebellious against God's heart. And almost worst of all, we recognize and we have to see and we have to admit that when we pray, that we are dependent and we are not in control. And for us, that is so unbelievably difficult for us to wrap our hearts and minds around. Our sinful fleshly hearts does not wanna give up control, does not wanna recognize that we are sinful. And so when we pray, we begin to see that and it's exposing and it's uncomfortable. But as we pray and as we continue steadfastly in our prayer, as we become even more watchful and aware of the depth of our sin, God begins to reveal to us and show us and help us to see and understand the beauty and the wonder and the awe of the gospel. We begin to see that we are loved beyond anything we could ever ask or imagine. We begin to see that our God will never leave us or forsake us. We begin to see that God loves us and is steadfast and cares for us. We begin to see the covenantal love of God that will never, ever, ever let us go. As the gospel fills us, as we recognize the level and depth of our sin and the reality of our sin, that we are more sinful than we could ever dare imagine or believe, we begin to see and become watchful of who God is and what He's doing. We become aware of what He's doing in our lives. We become aware of what He's doing in the hearts and lives of other people. We begin to see God's heart and we begin to understand who God is and what He's doing. And it gives us this unique and amazing vantage point upon God and His kingdom. One of the most beautiful places in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park is on top of a mountain there is what's called Shuckstack Fire Tower. Shuckstack Fire Tower is a 60-foot fire tower that's sitting on top of a 4,000-foot mountain. And when you climb up those rickety, open, terrifying stairs that you're pretty sure you're about to get blown off of this fire tower, you get all the way up to the top of it. And as you stand in the top of it, you have this unbelievable view of the mountains and the rivers. You can see so far that you can see cities and towns off in the distance. And if there was a fire anywhere around, you would absolutely be able to see that fire that was out there. That fire tower gives you a perspective where you can see things in a way that you can't see them in any other way. Prayer does that exact same thing in our hearts and our lives. As we become watchful and steadfast in prayer, we get to see who God is, His love for us in Jesus, and the work that He is doing. And all of a sudden, all of the pain and difficulty, the suffering, the joys, The good things and the hard things that we face in life all begin to gain perspective because we get to be alert and watchful as we commune with our heavenly Father. Well, the overflow of the gospel into prayer comes as prayer is steadfast, it comes as prayer is, as we are, it helps us in our prayers to become watchful, and it also naturally leads to us being thankful. Paul, note here, if you haven't caught this yet in this epistle, Paul is in prison. And Paul is continuously just overflowing with thanks. Two of his prison epistles, Colossians and Philippians, that he writes from prison have probably the longest sections on thankfulness that he has in any of his epistles. Paul's in prison and Paul is overflowing in prayer and thankfulness. Because as we pray steadfastly, we become watchful. And as we become watchful of what God is doing, we become thankful. And we can begin to thank God for anything and everything that we face, for every situation that we face in life. The good and the bad, the hard, the fun, the celebratory, and the painful. Because as we pray and as the gospel fills us and it overflows in prayer, we begin to see who God is, what he's doing, and how he's working in each of us. I had someone several years ago tell me, If we could see everything exactly the way that God sees it, then we would want everything that is happening in this world, in this earth, in our lives, to happen exactly the way it's happening. As we pray, we begin to see who God is and what he's doing. And at this point, Paul can't help himself. And he asks for prayer. He says, continue steadfast in prayer, watchful and thankful. And by the way, please pray for me. Pray, and he says, in verse three, he says, pray for three things. He says, as you pray, pray these things. Pray that, that God would open a door to us for his word, that doors would be opened, that he would have opportunities to proclaim the gospel. Pray that Paul and his companions could declare the mystery of Christ. Pray that they could proclaim the mystery of Christ, His death on the cross, His perfect sacrifice, His resurrection from the dead, and the beauty and the wonder and the awe that comes from that. Pray that that would be known. And then he also says, the last part of that phrase, he reminds us, that pray and declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison. He very quickly and briefly reminds us, as you proclaim the gospel, as you pray, as you grow in the gospel, as the gospel overflows out of you, Sometimes you get rejected. Sometimes you get sidelined. In Paul's case, sometimes you get thrown in prison and you get isolated and separated from everybody else on account of Christ. But notice, Paul doesn't ask for prayer to get out of prison. If I was asking for prayer, I would be asking for prayer, get me out of this prison. Paul says, pray for the advancement of the gospel. And if I'm in prison and that's what it takes for the gospel to advance, then I trust my God who died and rose again. And if I get out of prison and that's what's gonna cause the gospel to advance, then I give my God praise and I am thankful for my God. Whether I am in prison or I'm out of prison, whatever the situation is, Paul is excited and thankful that the gospel is going forth. The overflow of the gospel within us is the advancement of the gospel, and sometimes it's through heart and pain and suffering and rejection, and sometimes it's through joy and amazing reconciliation and gospel transformation that takes place in people's lives. But no matter what, as we pray, we begin to see things from God's perspective, and that begins to overflow in prayer. And the fascinating part about this is we don't wait for ourselves to be filled up with the gospel to begin to pray. As we are filled up with the gospel, and maybe it's just a little bit, maybe it's a little bit more, maybe it's a lot, that turns into prayer. And as that prayer turns into us being filled with the gospel, and as we're filled with the gospel, that turns back into prayer. And as we pray, it turns back into being filled with the gospel. And we begin to get this flow in the circle moving between these two things, working in perfect harmony with one another, that as we're filled with the gospel, it overflows into prayer that is watchful. Prayer that is steadfast. Prayer that is thankful. And then he moves into the next section and he begins to talk about the overflow of the gospel is not just in prayer, the overflow of the gospel is also in witness. Take a look at the next verse. Verse four, it says, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. He first and foremost looks at us and says the overflow of the gospel within us not only produces prayer, it also produces witness. We begin, he calls us to walk in wisdom to outsiders. Now, Paul's in prison. He's the one who's been rejected. He's the one that has been sidelined. He's the one that's been put out. He's the one that is on the outside. And yet he looks and he says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders. See, Paul recognizes something that I think we oftentimes struggle to recognize. We look at this world and we look at the rejection that we receive. We look at the way we feel marginalized, the way we feel sidelined, the way we feel ostracized from the rest of the world. And we think of that as a bad thing. And, oh, I hate this. I don't like where I am. I don't like what this looks like. I don't like what's happening to Christianity. And on the one hand, that's absolutely the right perspective to have. But on the other hand, Paul looks and says, no, no, no, don't pity yourself. Pity those that don't know Jesus. Pity those who are truly on the outside. As a matter of fact, don't just pity them, but pursue them and go after them and walk in wisdom before them. because they are on the outside. We, believers, followers of Jesus, those who have been set free by the blood of Christ, now and forevermore, who will be with God now and forevermore, who have salvation, we are the insiders. And his heart is not to stay separated from the outsiders. His heart is to grab these outsiders and say, come, come and see. Come and see who Jesus is. Come and see what God has done. Come and see how you have been saved. Come and see how you have been set free. And he says, walk in wisdom. Don't be obnoxious. Don't be in your face. Don't be a clanging cymbal or a banging gong to those in the world. but rather walk in wisdom, walk in gentleness of spirit. Live your life in such a way that outsiders are attracted to what is going on. As you live, let the outsiders, let non-Christians see that we have different goals in life. Our goal is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Our goal is not to glorify ourselves and advance our own kingdom. We have a different goal as followers of Christ. We have different priorities. We seek to honor and glorify God in all that we are. To walk in wisdom means to let the fruits of the spirit pour out of us. Love and joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The gospel builds up in us and these things begin to overflow out of us. And then when we recognize that we aren't measuring up, when we recognize that we've fallen in sin, to live different from the world means that we own our own sin, that we come in repentance, we come in confession, we come asking for forgiveness from people. And that's weird to people in the world. But it is powerful to stand before somebody who you have just sinned against. If you look at that person and you say, hey, I'm so sorry for what I did, that's one thing. But if you look at that person and you say, I need to repent and ask for your forgiveness for the way I have just wronged you, that's a whole different level of power. That's a whole different level of power that God begins to use and demonstrates the humility that can come by Christ in Christ alone. You can't work that kind of humility up in your life. That humility comes from the power of the gospel. That humility comes from Jesus and Jesus alone. And as we do that, and as we live in this very broken world in a very different way than the world lives, as we walk in wisdom, it gives us opportunity to share because that watching world becomes curious. And that watching world begins to look at us and go, hold up. Like, what I understand about Christians, and you're a Christian, doesn't add up to the way that you are living life, or they might not know anything about Christianity, and they might simply look at us and go, look, why are you so weird? Why are you so different? Don't be offended when they ask that. That's an amazing opportunity to share the gospel and to share what God has done in your heart and life, how God has transformed you, to begin to proclaim that to a watching world as we walk in wisdom. And what that means is that we need to then have, as Paul says in this next section, speech that is gracious. Speech that is gracious towards one another. Our world has taken that idea of what it means to be gracious and twisted it and morphed it and made it something that it is absolutely not. Our world looks at us and says to be gracious to other people means that you're going to be nice, you're going to be tolerant, and you don't want to offend anyone. God is none of those things. God is not nice. And what I mean by that is God is not fake. God does not put on a veneer. God does not whitewash it and make something appear as though something it's not and fake that niceness before other people while thinking something completely different back behind the scenes. God is not nice. God is kind. And He calls us to be kind and to have speech that is gracious. And by speech that is gracious means we have speech that is kind, that is gentle, that is loving, that is compassionate. We have speech that doesn't hesitate to speak the truth, but we do it in gentleness and goodness and faithfulness. We might say something that somebody doesn't want to hear, but kind speech. speaks the truth and compassion. The world also tells us to be tolerant. God is not tolerant. God cannot tolerate sin, wickedness, and evil. Sin, wickedness, and evil are destroyed before God, they are judged before God, and He cannot tolerate them. And while God cannot tolerate sin and wickedness and evil, God has given us. love and God is love and that means that we speak the truth in love to the world around us sometimes we say just as in kindness sometimes we say things that are hard for people to hear but we do it in such a way that they look at us and say thank you I didn't want to hear that but I needed to hear that speech that is gracious and speech that is kind and speaks with compassion, speech that is gracious and speech that is loving and tells the truth. And God does not hesitate to offend us. God offends us as sinners all the time. All throughout his word, he looks at us and says, you are a sinner. You have missed the mark. You have not acted, thought, believed, said what I have called you to say. You have rebelled against me. You have acted in iniquity. You have acted in sin that you don't even know the rebellion and the wickedness and the sinfulness of your own heart. And he says, not only have you just missed the mark, not only have you sinned in iniquity and not even realized the way you're sinned, he also says you have sinned in transgression. You have knowingly and intentionally sinned. And I love you, and I died for you, and I rose again for you. In Christ, we are saved, we are loved, we are forgiven, and it does not matter what we've ever said, thought, or did. God doesn't hesitate to offend us, but as God offends us, he immediately covers us with the gospel. And he says, I sent my son to live a perfect, righteous, holy, innocent life, and Jesus lived perfectly, righteously, holy, and innocent. And He was betrayed, and He was rejected, and He was arrested, and He was crucified so that He could be our perfect sacrifice. And as He is our perfect sacrifice, our sin is forgiven. And because He is holy and righteous and innocent, He has risen from the dead on the third day to set us free and to set us alive in Christ. God doesn't hesitate to offend us, but God immediately gives us and tells us and shows us and draws us to himself to show the healing power of the gospel. As the gospel fills us, it overflows into witness, witness that walks in wisdom, witness that speech is gracious, but witness that speech is also salty. Now, some of you might get a little bit excited about that, like, sweet, I am naturally salty. I can be good and sassy and get after people, I'm in. That's not the saltiness that Paul's talking about here. Paul is not talking about salty food. Paul is talking about food that has been flavored with salt, that is enhanced and brought forth its flavor, that has brought it new, that has brought it full and has made it good. Our salty speech is speech that is winsome. It's thoughtful. It's speech that is witty. It's speech that is engaging. It's speech that's interesting and humorous. It's speech that makes people think about life and about the gospel and about God from different angles and different perspectives than they've ever thought about it before. And you might be sitting there thinking, I don't have that ability. As the gospel fills us, we overflow in prayer, we overflow in witness, and you and I don't have to have the words. We come before God and he is the one who gives us the words. He is the one who gives us the ability to give a defense for the hope that we have in Christ. Our speech becomes salty and interesting and engaging, and a watching world begins to see who God is and what He has done. A few years ago, I was meeting with a student. There was one student in particular that I had been in my student ministry, and over the years, we had kind of regularly caught up. He was now a junior heading, I'm sorry, he had completed his junior, heading into his senior year of college, and we are towards the end of the summer, and he's just completed an internship. And that internship was done by a business owner. And the purpose of it was organized through the Navigator's Ministry. And the idea of it was to shepherd and disciple college students in what it looks like to be a Christian businessman or to be a businessman who is a Christian. And then at the same time, it also helped disciple and it was supposed to help these college students grow in their relationships with Jesus over the course of the summer. And so they get to the end of the summer and this business owner looks at the student and says, I don't think you're a Christian. I know you think you're a follower of Jesus. I know you think because you've gone to church your entire life, you think that you are a Christian, but you're not. And the student, as he's sharing the story with me, looks and he says, I was absolutely furious and angry with him for saying that to me. How dare you say I'm not a Christian? I've gone to church my whole life. I believe in Jesus. And he just kind of had this little short rant about how dare you say I'm not a Christian. And then he shares with me that he thinks about it a little more and he realizes No, I'm not a Christian. And as he's sharing this with me, and he goes, you know what? I'm okay with that. It is what it is. And he and I had conversation, and we had a great conversation over the next couple of hours, and I found out several weeks later that he had stood up before his fraternity, the guys that he had been partying with in college for the last three years, and shared his testimony about how he had come to Christ within the last several weeks. And now he, with gracious and salty speech as sharing the gospel with a bunch of guys who had never ever heard it before. Because of a businessman who was bold and willing to say hard and difficult things to this student, it was the catalyst that brought this student to faith in Christ. And then he, since that day, has continued to proclaim the gospel to those around him and continues to grow in faith and hope of Jesus. The gospel fills us. And as it fills us, it overflows from us into witness. And as it overflows into witness, it also overflows into prayer. and God's kingdom advances. And so what does it look like to have prayer that is steadfast, that is watchful, to have prayer that is thankful, but three ever so brief things to grow in prayer of the gospel that is marked by steadfastness, watchfulness, and thankfulness. First and foremost, every single day, set aside a time when you can come before your heavenly father and pray. Pray every single day. Do it first thing in the morning. Do it on your drive to work or school. Do it before you go to bed at night. Pick out a different time, but find a time every single day that you can begin to pray and pray steadfastly. But not only pray steadfastly, pray watchfully. Pray also throughout your day. As you are walking through your day, And all of a sudden you catch yourself taking a deep breath and you're just kind of going through your day and all of a sudden you go. Take a moment in that point and pray. Pray when you're joyful, pray when you're super excited, pray for your anxious when you're anxious, pray when you're worried, pray when you're worked up. Take a moment throughout your day and be watchful in your prayer and just pray in the moment. And to help you do both of these, create a prayer list. And if you need help with that, I would love to help and serve you in that. Send me a text or an email, I will gladly share what my prayer list is, and then you can begin to create your own. But create that prayer list of things that you can pray for continuously, steadfastly, over and over and over again, and watch how the gospel fills you up. and overflows within you and turns into prayer. And that prayer turns into more and more gospel fill. And as that gospel fills, it turns in to witness. And so what does it look like to have witness that is walks in wisdom, witness that is with speech that is gracious, wisdom with speech that is salty, but to simply come alongside other people. Befriend them, get to know them, spend time with them. And when all of a sudden that door opens, share what God has done. Share what God has done and how he's worked and transformed your own life. Invite them to church when the opportunity presents itself. Invite them to study the word of God with you. Invite them to hear how God has worked and how God has moved. And so this morning, Who is that person in your life that God brings to your heart and mind that he's calling you to witness to, that he's calling you to build a relationship with, to pray for, to begin to share the gospel with? Because we know that in Christ is our only hope. There is no hope outside of Christ. He is preeminent. He is sufficient to save us. He is the only place that we find life because He died and He rose again. And what is it that all of this looks like? Paul culminates the entire message of Colossians in these final verses. And he gives examples of men who are with him, proclaiming the gospel with him. He says, there's Tychicus and Onesimus, who are both bringing this word and bringing this message to you. They are witnesses and ministers, and they are sharing in the ministry of Paul. And then he gives us six names of men who are co-laboring in the gospel with him. Aristarchus, who is in prison with him. He's got Mark with him, who is the cousin of Barnabas, who Paul had a falling out with, has been reconciled with. Paul, who authored the gospel, I'm sorry, Mark, who authored the gospel that bears his name, and then they have justice with them. These are the Jews with him. And then he has these other three co-laborers in the gospel. He has Epaphras, who is passionate about prayer. He has Luke, who's the physician and the author of the third gospel. And he has Demas along with him. He has these men with him who are co-laborers in the gospel, who are living out this idea of witness and prayer. And here in this passage, you have three authors of the New Testament. Comprising and accounting for 18 of the 27 New Testament books are gathered together here with Paul, who have been filled with the gospel, whose lives are overflowing with the gospel. These people are proclaiming the gospel to a watching world in prayer and witness. Let's pray.