Colossians 1, verse 1, this is the word of God. And by the way, we won't go quite so far as I thought in our section today, but we're still going to read a good portion. 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 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 the truth of the gospel, which has come to you is indeed in the whole world. It is bearing fruit and increasing as it also does among you. Since they you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from a path for us, our beloved fellow servant. He's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit. Let's pray. Father, we're so glad to have your word this morning. Father, we thank you that it shares with us and teaches us, Father, about satisfaction in Christ, about what you've done for us through the gospel. So, Father, give us good understanding of the verses we look at, Father. Apply them to the way we think. Father, the certainties we hold, the way we live, that you may be glorified. And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Harvard psychologist and researcher Daniel Gilbert opens his book, Stumbling on Happiness, with eight words he calls the sentence, The human is the only animal that, Now how did he finish that sentence? What is the defining feature of a humanity? How would you finish that sentence? We'll come back to that. We'll also come back to the greeting next week, by the way, as we celebrate the Lord's Supper. But today we want to look to the Thanksgiving section of the letter, a traditional feature of first century letters. If you were writing a letter to somebody back then, you would have at the beginning, thanking the gods or some god, in particular, about something about the person. And Paul follows that pattern. Of course, the major difference is he doesn't address just any God. He speaks about the true God. And Paul uses the format to genuinely thank God, but also to affirm for the Colossians that God is truly at work in their midst. That what they've been taught by Epaphras is true. And this gospel makes the difference in their lives. So what is that difference? Well, let's go to the text and see. We can say, first of all, the gospel makes a difference because the gospel is God's work. We always thank God, the Father, the Lord, Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. Now, notice the God-centeredness here of our prayers. Prayer is not, first of all, about us. Prayer is about God. He's the focal point. And even as Paul is thanking God for the Colossians, God remains his focal point. And for good reason. The gospel is God's work. What has happened to the Colossians has happened at the hand of God. We see that in the language that follows this verse. Paul speaks of the hope laid up for you. It's what God's done. Notice, you have heard. That is, God's made it known. It has come to us. We did not go and get it. He also affirms the divinity of Jesus by calling the Lord Jesus Christ, the word Lord reminding us that he's deity and reminds us of the fellowship, the love, the oneness shared by the father with his son. And so if the source of the gospel is God himself, we can rest assured that it will make a great difference in our lives. And we can tell the gospel makes a difference by the gospel marks the gospel displays. And this will be as far as we'll get today. 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. Now what jumps out as we read those verses? It should be the great Christian trio there, faith, love, and hope. They're the three hallmarks, if you will, of the Christian faith. They're not innate. They're not natural in us. They are spiritual. Now, to be sure, we see them in a lesser way via common grace in others. We do see people in our world that aren't believers doing kind things. We know people who are by nature a bit optimistic. But Christian faith, hope, love, they're at a whole different level because they're rooted in an understanding of love because of the cross that the world simply does not and cannot understand. So we'll start where Paul does with the obvious, faith as a mark that we're saved by God. Now keep in mind, we do not generate our own faith. Rather, faith is God's gift to us. God works faith in us so that we trust God with our eternity and we trust God with our today. Faith means we give up telling the lie that we tell ourselves that our sin's not a big deal. Faith means we give up that I'm good enough. or that my efforts to try and make me good enough will succeed. And that's why we talk about grace. Grace is God giving us what we do not deserve. As we've suggested before, that tells us that it's out of our control. Grace means God's in control. Faith is believing that what Jesus did on the cross, his dying is for us. And that's what guarantees our future. At the cross, Jesus really did take the penalty for our sins. In dying for us and rising from the dead, He gives us eternal life. So as we said last week, the object of our faith really does matter. It must be Jesus Himself. And friends, again, if Jesus is sufficient to guarantee our eternity, then He's certainly sufficient for whatever we face in the here and now. There's no circumstance that we face. There's no problem that's so great that Jesus is unable to deal with it. Jesus never wrings His hands and says, I don't know what you're going to do either. You know? Jesus always points us to the promises of God, to the affirmations and assurances of His Word. You know, we live in a world that looks at our faith in Jesus and sometimes they say, you know, that's good for you. That's your thing, but just keep it to yourself. In the debate that's emerging about how far does our freedom of religion go, one woman this week said, our freedom of religion in the Constitution simply means that we have a right to believe what we want in our heads. All that, of course, is in her world. What she wants us to keep faith behind closed doors as a personal thing. She wants us to keep it within the walls of a church building or our homes. But friends, that's not what faith is. It's not just a way of thinking. Faith in Jesus Christ changes us as people. He brings us from death to life. Our faith impacts every single area of our lives. which is the second gospel mark of the believer that makes a difference, and that's love. If we want to be seen as different from the world, this is perhaps where we'll be the most obvious, the love that we have for other people. Now, Paul's emphasis here is on love for all the saints. That's us. That's the church. The church is the arena where we learn how to love others. You know, we may not share common interest with all the saints in this room. Our views on various world matters, on politics may differ. We root for different teams. We may even hold some different non-essential opinions and convictions about the Bible's teachings about the motive of baptism or eschatology. We may not want to invite everybody here to go on vacation with us. But we must, we must, we must love all the saints. It's not optional. God didn't make it that way. As Matthew Henry said, we must love all the saints, bear an extensive kindness and goodwill to all, notwithstanding smaller points of differences and many real weaknesses. And Jesus said that's the definitive mark of his followers. John 13, 34, a new commandment I give you, love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Friends, that means we love the bumbling, imperfect sinners around us who are just like us. See, as the gospel works its way into our lives, As we grasp that Christ has unconditional love for us, we must love others. No, it's not necessarily easy, but that's what the Bible tells us over and over again. Paul in 1 Corinthians spends the whole chapter doing it. Peter writes in 1 Peter 1.22, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. You see, this is a love that binds people together from different backgrounds and nations. This is the love that is experienced by our interns and those who go on mission journeys with those from around the world. Jesus is the magnet that draws people to himself and us to each other. People who otherwise we might not be drawn together with. Love also addresses one of the great challenges of the 21st century, and that's loneliness. Survey after survey suggests that loneliness is an epidemic. It's twice what it was 50 years ago. Nearly half of Americans always or sometimes feel alone, 46 percent, or left out, 47 percent. Fully, 54 percent say they always or sometimes feel that nobody knows them well. Loneliness isn't just here in our nation. A third of Britons say that they are often or very often lonely. Nearly half of Britons who are over the age of 65 consider the television or a pet their main source of company. In Japan, more than half a million people under the age of 40 have not been out of their homes for six months or interacted with any other human beings. I wonder how the statistics differ for those in the body of Christ. What about this body of Christ? I'm sure there are lonely people here. And we must do a better job of loving people well. And when we see people alone, what should we do? We should reach out, talk with them, sit with them. A few years ago, Robert Putman wrote his landmark study on social connectedness, Bowling Alone. And he said, across a very wide range of activities, the last several decades have witnessed a striking decline in regular contact with our friends and neighbors. We spend less time in conversation over meals. We exchange visits less often. We engage less often in leisure activities that encourage casual social interaction. We spend more time watching, sometimes in the presence of others, and less time doing. We know our neighbors less well. We say our friends less often. And you see, that's what we have an opportunity to address that. If we love one another well, You see, as we love, as that love grows more and more, our differences become less and less and less. You know, a wise person once suggested that it's a good idea to pray for the people that we're having trouble loving. Because when we pray for them, when we pray for their well-being, what gets in the way of our loving people becomes less important. Because the reality is heaven awaits, where we're going to be with all the saints forever. All of them, folks. And as we love each other well, you see, that's how we learn to love the world well. Quite frankly, I've never seen the level of hatred that is being expressed now across our country. And as believers, we stand out as different when we love. Love means we stand against racism. Love means we stand against hate. And again, as we said last week, love in our midst is not optional. Jesus requires it. Loving people caught in a fallen world's web of sin is not optional. Hate's not an option at all that we have. Furthermore, we can say love does require truth. Friends, we cannot sugarcoat sin to make it more palatable. We cannot ignore it. It's not loving to allow anybody to follow a path of sin in a fallen world that leads to destruction. We must honestly declare God's truth and the gospel and the power to save. Will we struggle with the best way to show love for others? Yes. Is it a risk to practice that love? It sure is. Is it difficult in a world that's quick to call people haters or phobic or racist? Of course it is. But is it worth it? It most certainly is. An encounter that Corrie ten Boone had is the best one I could remember that bears out the difficulty and the challenge to love others. and the need for God's help to do it when she writes about the love's greatest test, and that's forgiveness. It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were fouling out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I'd come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. It was a truth they needed most to hear in that bitter bombed out land and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander's mind. I like to think that's where forgiven sins were thrown. When we confess our sins, I said, God cast them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. That's Micah 7, 19. The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood in silence. In silence, they collected their wraps. In silence, they left the room. And that's when I saw him working his way forward against the others. One moment, I saw the overcoat and the brown hat. The next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush. The huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor. The shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath her parchment skin. Betsy, how thin you were. Basically, I've been arrested for concealing Jews in her home during the Nazi occupation of Holland. This man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent. Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out. A fine message for all on how good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea. And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take his hand. He would not remember me, of course. How could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women? But I remembered him. It was the first time since my release that I've been face to face with one of my captors, and my blood seemed to freeze. You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk. I was a guard there. He did not remember me. But since that time, I've become a Christian. I know that God's forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well, Fraulein. And again, the hand came out. Will you forgive me? As I stood there, I who sinned said every day to be forgiven and could not. Betsy had died in that place. Could he erase her slow, cruel death simply for the asking? It could have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do. For I had to do it, I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition, that we forgive those who have injured us. If you don't forgive men their trespasses, Jesus says, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses. I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the war, I had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were also able to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what their physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained imbalance. It was as simple and as horrible as that. And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart, but forgiveness is not an emotion. I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. Jesus, help me. I prayed silently. I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling. So wonderfully, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. As I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. I forgive you, brother. I cried with all my heart. So for a long moment, we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then." See, where do you get the faith to do that? Where do you get the love? I mean, what's the source of the faith and love? It's, for instance, being loved and forgiven by an amazing God. The gospel makes the difference, Paul says, because it springs from hope, not despair. There's so much in the Newsday to give us despair, but we have hope laid up for us in heaven by God himself. Now, very often we tend to think that because we have faith and love, therefore we have hope. In fact, of faith, love, and hope, hope receives a whole lot less attention from us than faith and love. But clearly here, Paul says that faith and love spring from our hope. It's the fountain. William Hendrickson paraphrased him, but what Paul means by hope is the confident expectation and the patient waiting for the fulfillment of God's promises. Now, there are so many promises. That God's made us about the future. And here specifically, it's the hope that God Himself, it says, has stored up for us in heaven. A hope that we know centers on Jesus Himself. So what is stored up for us in heaven? I mean, we cannot even begin to think or imagine. 1 Corinthians 2, 9, quoting Isaiah 64, it says, And we get a taste of it now. Already we're privileged to know what it is to be forgiven of our sins. Already we're privileged to know the peace that passes all human understanding. Already we have deep-seated joy that circumstances cannot take away. Already we have assurance about our future. One of life's pleasures are chocolate chip cookies. to come to our house just when Becky's making them, and she's got all the ingredients there, and she's blended them together, and then she's added that last ingredient, the chocolate chips themselves. And if you can distract her for just a moment to look the other way, you can take your thumb and reach into the bowl and scoop and get some cookie dough, hopefully with a lot of chocolate chips, and quickly get it to your mouth and get out of the room. That cookie dough is so good. Then what happens? Then you smell them baking. That aroma fills the house. And you just cannot wait. You anticipate what it's going to be, the joy that's going to come. Because you know the dough was good. And you know the smell is good. But you also know what? The taste is going to be even better. Friends, as good as the benefits are of knowing Christ right here and right now, the eternal benefits are far greater. I mean, close family relationships are wonderful here. Heaven's relationships are better. As beautiful as this creation is, the new heavens and the new earth, it's infinitely grander. The Grand Canyon is breathtaking. The landscape that awaits us is better. Do we know what it is? No, but we're assured of that. So how does the hope of heaven impact us now? One, it gives us a matter of perspective. We learn to value what's permanent and lasting over what's passing away. You see, if we think being a follower of Jesus is great here, just wait. Just wait. The best is yet to be a bit of a mystery, yes. And right now it's just out of our reach. But we have hope, certainty that one day these treasures are ours. And when we grasp this, We begin to understand that we're different from all those unfortunate people who think that this world is all that there is. We can begin to evaluate what we're working so hard for. When compared to the riches of heaven that God's simply going to give to us, what earth treasures will not be so attractive. The things that we're passionate about, sports perhaps, when viewed against the background of eternity, what are they? Think back to what we sang was satisfied. What we've been chasing. When we know Jesus satisfies all his longings, all our longings, through his blood I now am saved. You know, if we're struggling with pursuing the things of this world, let's face it, all of us struggle with that to some extent at various times. We need to pray that God will help us to be truly satisfied with Jesus now, knowing all that awaits us in the age to come is even better. So what about us? How does God's Word apply? So how would you finish the sentence that the human is the only animal that Well, Daniel Gilbert's a secular psychologist, but his answer is insightful. He said the human being is the only animal that thinks about the future. Human beings can think about the future in a way that no other animal can or ever has. And this simple, ordinary act is the defining feature of our humanity, which we would say a defining feature. The average adult spends 12% of the day thinking about the future. roughly one out of every eight hours. We can imagine events far into the future, and no animal can do that. Knowing that God promises us a far better future than this present world, with greater treasures and joy than we can imagine, gives us something to anticipate, to hold on to, in the midst of our pilgrimage through a fallen world, That's filled with hate, despair, loneliness. Isn't that what Abraham held on to as he ventured towards the promised land? We're told he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. So when we see faith, love, and hope in our lives, When the Colossians see faith, love, and hope, we can know that we belong to God. Once we were not a people, now we're the people of God. Once we had not received mercy, now we have received mercy. And God's continually at work. He's making us different, and the future is ours. Conversely, if you're looking at your life today and you don't see that faith, that love, that hope. Please, let us share with you how you can receive God's truth and love, how you can know it and believe it. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for your work in our lives. What a great God you are. So, Father, we praise you for that today, for the gospel, Father. We praise you, Father, for the faith you've given us to believe the good news, Father, for the love you have for us that has caused us to love one another and, Father, to love our enemies. Father, for the hope, Lord, that this isn't all there is. We've got an incredible eternity ahead of us with you forever and ever and ever and ever. Father, may that reality shape the way we live each day, we would pray. Father, for anybody here that doesn't yet know the joy of belonging to you, Father, show them your Son, Jesus. Show them his death on the cross. Draw them to your love, we pray. And this we ask in Jesus' name, amen.