All right, turning your Bibles to the book of Colossians chapter one. Colossians chapter one. Beginning in verse three. 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. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you, almighty God. We give thanks, even as the Apostle Paul gives thanks in this text, for the grace that you've shown to your people. We thank you, Father, for the work of grace in and among us, and we thank you for the salvation which you've imparted. O Lord God, we pray now that you'd open our eyes and hearts to behold wondrous things from your law. O Lord, move in among us. We pray that we would be convicted, exhorted, reproved, and that our hearts would be lifted up to you, O Lord. O Father, give me inspiration in my mind, in my heart, in my lips. May I speak forth the very things of God. For your glory, in Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, so, we pick up today in the book of Colossians. And in this opening chapter, what we have here is a traditional prayer of thanksgiving. A traditional prayer of thanksgiving. In all of Paul's epistles, before he gets into the exhortation, it traditionally opens up with a prayer of thanksgiving. And this is not something unusual, but he's adopting the customs of his day. In the customs of first century Roman Empire, it was normal when you wrote a letter to someone, now remember this is a day and age when text messages didn't exist, when emails didn't exist, when direct messages and social media didn't exist, phones didn't exist, you communicated by the written letter. And in the ancient Roman Empire, it was customary to give thanks to the gods. to give adulation to the gods. And so it would be to Neptune or Mars or Jupiter or whatever the Roman gods were of that time for sparing me of some calamity or granting me great fortune. And while Paul adopts this custom, he Christianizes it and points us back to the true God that exists, the eternal and living God. And so with that we see that Paul points us and directs us to God who is the one who is the author of everything. And in this thanksgiving which begins in verse 3 and ends in verse 23, it's a long one. We're going to take our time going through it. We're going to take our time going through it. David Garland, a commentator, describes the prayer, summarizes the prayer as follows. He describes it as a mighty river meandering through stunningly beautiful terrain. And so as it meanders through this stunningly beautiful terrain, we're going to stop along the way to look at the different landmarks and examine the glorious theology that comes out and bursts forth in this prayer. And as such, it's a model for us how to pray. Our prayers are so shallow and weak sometimes. When we look at the prayers in the Bible, it shows us the rich theology and the great Christology that the men who've written the Bible have in their prayers. In this prayer, we see the thankfulness of Paul for the life of the church, for the believers there, for their conversion, for their growth, thankfulness for the expansion of the gospel and the success of the gospel in the Roman Empire. Then we see intercession for the Colossians, and mingled in there is a hymn of praise exalting the deity of Christ. And then he circles back to the end in verse 23 to once again give thanks to God for the life of Christ in the church. It is a powerful prayer, and in order to appreciate the theological landscape, we're going to go slowly through it. Now, in these first few verses, Paul describes the life of the church, and the way he describes it is in three words, three words, and that is faith, love, and hope. That triad of faith, love, and hope can be found in all of Paul's writings. In fact, in the greatest example of that would be in 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul speaks of faith, love, and hope, and the greatest of these being love, Well, in all of Paul's letters, this triad is found as describing the essence of Christianity. And so when you ask the question, how can you describe Christianity in three words, you could simply say faith, love, and hope. That's the essence of the Christian life. You asked me, in three words, describe the essence of life in New York. I may say something like traffic, taxes, and busy, right? You could describe the essence of life in New York as such, but the Christian life is faith, love, and hope. And so it's with this that Paul begins in describing the Christian life, and more importantly, giving thanks. So let's start with our first point, thankfulness to God in prayer, thankfulness to God in prayer. Paul's opening statement says, we always give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Notice the emphasis on always. Paul is a man who is filled with gratitude and his prayers are bathed with thanksgiving. Now I want you to realize that his thanksgiving is not merely contained to this opening paragraph, but it is the ongoing experience of a pastor and of a missionary. What it doesn't mean is that Paul isn't going around every minute of the day saying, thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you, God. But rather, it's telling us that Paul is a man of regular prayer. He is a man who prays regularly. And as he prays regularly, he gives thanks regularly. Paul does not pray without giving thanks. And you can see that all throughout his letters, you could see it in his exhortations, that thankfulness is to be the central characterization of our prayer. Oftentimes we come to God asking him for things, interceding, saying, God, give me this, or God, do this, and God, please help me, but we fail to give God thanks. How dare we come before the throne of grace without first thanking our Father who has given us all? Notice that even in his exhortation in 1 Thessalonians 5, 17 through 18, Paul encourages us to pray frequently and that that prayer be characterized by prayer. Notice, praying without ceasing. Then verse 18, what does it say? How does it describe the prayer? Give thanks. in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. You know what the word thanks translates from, the Greek word, original word, is eucharisto. It's the same word that has been used to describe the Lord's table. because when we come to the table it is an expression of gratitude and thanksgiving, a celebration as we remember the death of our Lord Jesus. Thankfulness is the natural attitude of someone who is humbled before the Lord. Someone who feels entitled and is arrogant always feels that God owes them something. But the person who's been truly humbled and truly converted and knows God is someone who is thankful. Paul gives thanks, notice here also as it's directed, he gives thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now what's unusual here is that in most of Paul's letters, he refers to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Here he refers specifically to God the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is directing his thanks strictly to God the Father. Why is this different? I believe because this letter of the Book of Colossians, or the letter to the Colossians, to the Church of Colossae, the Book of Colossians, which you're about to embark on a study on, is so Christ-centered. This book focuses so much on the person of Jesus Christ that I believe Paul wants to anchor the person of Jesus Christ in God the Father from the outset. It is the Father who sent the Son into the world. It is in John's Gospel where we read over and over again where Jesus says, I've come to do the will of my Father. I do not say anything outside of what the Father tells me to do. I do not think anything. It is my joy, it is my bread to do the will of the Father, Jesus says in John chapter 6. And so we understand that the coming of the Son into the world and the work of the Son is all directed by the Father. And so we give thanks to the Father whose initiative and prerogative it was to send His Son to save us. And so our thankfulness goes to God, the father of lights, and from whom all good things come, James tells us, in whom there is no variation or shifting of shadow. Just remember something, God is always good. And God always gives us what we need. And God always provides for us. He knows what we need before we even ask for it. He may not give us what we want, But He knows better for us, because the things we may want may be harmful to us. And even in the calamities, and even in the trials, and even in the difficulties, God knows what's good for us, and He gives us the grace to endure. That's why we can give thanks in all circumstances. That's not easy all the time, is it? It's not easy when you're going through the trial to give God thanks for the trial. It's not easy when you're suffering to give God thanks for that. But we know that even in that, God is working all things together for the good of those who love him, called according to his purpose. We need to cultivate this attitude of gratitude. We need to cultivate thanksgiving in our prayer. And the more we do that, the more we will find ourselves humbled and equipped to deal with what comes our way. Amen. And it also eliminates an attitude of complaining. The more we're thankful, the less we'll complain. The more we count our blessings, the less we'll grumble. The problem is we often see what we're lacking rather than what we have. And I gotta tell you, we are richly blessed in so many ways. for people living in the 21st century in the United States of America, have the comforts and blessings that we have. There are so many people in this world who are starving and hungry and poor and impoverished and homeless, who are sick. You know how many people around the world today, you know, some of us I know have battled cancer, and we have family members who are battling cancer. I want you to think of this. I remember reading a story about a missionary who was working, I believe, in Indonesia in a village, and there was a woman who had cancer. There are no doctors. There are no chemo. There is no radiation. There's no treatment. And the woman laid on a floor writhing in pain. suffering a long, painful, slow death of cancer, because guess, there are no doctors, there is no medicine, there is no painkillers, there's nothing. When you get cancer and you live in an undeveloped country, you suffer a most excruciating death. So even in the darkness of cancer, which we may have, could be the worst experience, we live in a country where you can get the treatment needed to take care of it. Be thankful, my brothers and sisters. Notice, also, it is the emphasis on our, our, not just mine, but our Lord Jesus Christ. He's writing to the Church of Colossae, and Christ is Kyrios. He is the Caesar. He is the King of the Church. This is very relevant to the Colossian church in its original context because they live in a world where Caesar is Lord, where Caesar is Kyrios. He is the sovereign ruler over all. And the church knows that there is only one sovereign ruler of all, and that is Jesus Christ. How comforting that is when we can pray to God with a heart full of thanksgiving, directing our thanks to God the Father, who is the benevolent Father, our Abba Father, who gives us all good things, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the sovereign ruler of the universe. You know why we can give thanks? Because in his sovereignty, everything that's happening in the world is happening for the sovereign, glorious purpose of Christ. We dare not forget that Christ is the sovereign ruler. Don't look at the world the way it is and say, oh no, this is terrible. Oh my, I can't believe this is happening. Oh, I can't believe these people are in power. Oh, I can't believe Russia's invading Ukraine. Oh, I can't believe all this is happening. Believe God is sovereign. The son rules. He's omnipotent. He's omniscient. Fret not. God is in control. The sun rules with a iron scepter. There is not a maverick molecule in this universe. Everything that is happening is happening exactly the way the Lord intends it. That's not easy. And guess what? You can sit here and say amen, amen, and affirm that, but guess what? It's hard to believe when you're going through it, right? When your emotions are caught up. And so we have to apply that. We have to believe in the sovereign rule of the sun in the midst of calamity, in the midst of darkness, in the midst of evil, and realize that even Satan, who is nothing but a dog on a leash, can only do that which the sovereign Lord permits. I think it is so important as Christians to understand this, this concept of the sovereign rule of the sun. All have, what did Jesus say in Matthew 28, the great commission? He said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given unto me. Do you understand that? All authority. There is no authority that exists in this universe unless God has given it. It was why Christ could look Pontius Pilate directly in your eye and say, you don't have authority over me. Any authority you have has been given to you by my father. If I want, I can call a legion of angels and have you wiped out right now. We must trust in the sovereign rule of King Jesus, amen? The second aspect we want to notice of the prayer, Paul is welled up with thanksgiving to God. He is thankful to see the working out of the sovereign rule of the Son. And then he says, when we pray for you, since we heard, we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus. Well, how did he hear? Well, verse seven says, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf. Epaphras is the pastor, the missionary, the bishop, whatever word you want to use to describe, he is the means, the vehicle by which the gospel came to the Colossian Church, and he is the means by which Paul learned of and heard of the growth and grace in the life of the Colossian Church. So he heard of this and he says, we heard. So obviously going back to verse one, Paul and Timothy are writing this letter together. He says, we have heard of your faith and your love because of the hope laid up in heaven for you. Now I want you to see something important here. He's saying, we heard of your faith and we heard of your love and we thank God that you generated it. No. We thank God because of the faith and love in you because God gave it to you. God gets the credit, not us. He's not thanking the Colossians. Thank you guys for having such faith and love. No, I thank God for the faith and love in you because God has given it to you. We can be thankful to God when we see people growing in faith and love. We have to understand that any growth, any spiritual vitality, any life, any success of the gospel is because of God. We dare not take credit for anything for ourselves. Yes, we may actually do the discipline of reading our Bibles and praying and growing and actively trusting and believing in God and obeying God, but it is by the grace of God that we do so. Paul writes in similar fashions to the Church of Ephesus. He says in Ephesians 1, 15 through 16, for this reason, because I've heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, same thing, faith and love, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. Listen to John Calvin's commentary. Now with all this, he shows that faith and love are the very gifts of God and do not come from ourselves as men always imagined through a devilish pride. I told you before that St. Paul did not play the hypocrite in giving thanks to God for faith and love of Colossians. If every man was able to believe and have faith of his own accord, or could get it by some power of his own, the praise for it ought not to be given to God, for it would be but mockery to acknowledge ourselves indebted to him for what we have obtained, not from him, but from elsewhere. But here St. Paul blesses God's name for enlightening the Colossians in the faith and for framing their hearts to make them loving. It is to be concluded, therefore, that everything comes from God. I love the way this letter opens up in this prayer, Paul acknowledging the sovereign rule of the Son and Paul acknowledging the sovereign grace of God in the life of the church. Nothing happens apart from God. Now let's examine this triad here, if you will, this triad of these three aspects of the Christian life. And number one is faith. Paul says, I am thankful. I am thankful for your faith in Christ Jesus. It's important to notice here that Paul is not describing abstract faith. It is not merely faith in faith, that you believe in something. Oh, the fact that you're a person of faith. That could mean anything, right? Faith can mean a lot of things. Mark Twain, who was a known atheist, once said, faith is believing in something that ain't so. Now he's saying it's coming from the position of an unbeliever. Well, there's a lot of people who have such faith. There are people who believe in aliens from outer space that have UFOs that are visiting our planet. That ain't so. They have faith, but it's misguided faith. There are people who believe that if you go in the woods, you might find Bigfoot running around. It ain't so. There are people who believe Elvis is still alive. It ain't so. On the other hand, what we are talking about is not so much faith in itself, but the object of faith. What does Paul say? For your faith in Christ Jesus. That's not the kind of faith you have, it's who your faith is in. And I could tell you something, it is so. It is so. It is true. It is not blind faith. It is not credulous faith. It is not silly faith. It is faith in Christ Jesus. It is faith that is historical. It is faith that is factual. And it is faith that is real. Jesus is a real historical person that is attested by many witnesses. His life, his death, and his resurrection are facts. Now, we have knowledge, right? Faith is built upon a knowledge, right? It must be something that can be proven. It could be true. It is not empty. It's blind. Or blind. It is based on this fundamental truth. And then there is an aspect where we must ascend to that truth. I can ask you, do you believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States? You say, yeah, I believe that. Of course, everybody believes it's a historical fact. But do you believe in who he was or what he did or what the principles were behind his founding of the country? That's a whole nother story. This brings us into the idea of ascending to the truths that Jesus taught. It's coming under his authority. And then finally, it's trusting. Intellectual assent is not merely enough, but there must be a response. The element consists in personal trust in Christ and the salvation he offers through the gospel. It's trusting not in myself and my abilities, but trusting what Jesus said, that if you believe in him, you will have eternal life and your sins will be forgiven. Do you believe? Do you trust? Do you have faith in Christ Jesus? John Stott says this, faith has absolutely no value in itself. Its value lies solely on the object. Faith is the eye that looks to Christ, the hand that lays hold of him, the mouth that drinks the water of life. And the more clearly we see the absolute adequacy of Jesus Christ's divine human person and sin bearing death, the more incongruous does it appear that anyone can suppose that we have anything to offer him. Faith in Christ Jesus and this faith which Christians have, which is how we're saved. We're saved by faith, not by works, is a gift of God. If you're sitting here today and you've come to faith in Christ Jesus, it's very easy to look at the person who doesn't believe and say, how could you not believe? What's wrong with you? You wanna shake people sometimes and smack them around. Come on, wake up, it's so true, believe. It's because they don't believe because they can't believe. They're blind. 2 Corinthians 4, 4 tells us they're blinded by the God of this world, by Satan. The heart is dead in sin and trespasses. Ephesians 1 and 2, 2, 1 and 2. You cannot believe apart from the pervenient grace of God. There has to be an awakening. There has to be the light that shines in. We're in darkness. And until God opens your eyes of your heart to see and behold Christ for who he is, you cannot and you will not believe. It is a gift of God, this faith. And so rather than sitting there and saying, how come they didn't believe? We should say, but for the grace of God, there go I. If it wasn't for God's grace opening my eyes, I would be just as darkened in unbelief as everyone else. Sometimes we forget what our life was like before we became Christians, don't we? Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 says this, for by grace you've been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing, it's the gift of God, not a result of works. Why? So that no man may boast. There will be no one in heaven strutting around boasting how they had faith in Christ and it got them to heaven. No, there will not be. No man will boast before the Lord, but the faith we have is a gift of God. You know, the best way I could describe faith, and I've seen it recently, I was on Facebook and they had these reels. Sometimes I like to watch recipes or people doing bizarre stunts or crazy things. And one of the bizarre stunts that I saw was two men jumped out of an airplane. One had a parachute, one had nothing. And the phrase came up, trust. The guy without the parachute had a trust that the guy with the parachute would grab him and bring him safely to the ground. You couldn't pay me a million dollars to do that. I don't trust no one like that. But that's the kind of saving faith the Christian has in Jesus. We're plunging into hell to eternal ruin and damnation. You don't have a parachute. You have nothing. You gotta trust that Christ is the one who will grab hold of you and save you. It's realizing you are completely helpless and you can only trust in Jesus alone. Secondly, love. One of the important second aspects here of the Christian life that Paul talks about is love. He says, we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints. So it's a love that's in the church and it's a love for all the saints. Remember that word saint was used earlier in the opening text. All Christians are saints. And if you weren't here last week, let me just reiterate that. It's not St. Teresa or St. Paul or St. Anthony. No, the Catholic Church has their own idea of what a saint is. Biblically, all Christians are saints. If I say, dear saints, to you in an email I write, it's because I know that we are all God's people. A saint is someone who's called out and set apart by God, and that is the people of God, that is the church. And what Paul is saying here is that this church that has faith in Christ Jesus is going to have a love for God's people. Let me repeat that. If you are born of the Spirit and you are trusting in Christ for your salvation, you are going to have a profound love for God's people. And that is something you cannot manufacture or generate. It is indescribable. It comes, it's an affection, it's a love that wells up in the person who's born again that actively seeks to love on other Christians. By the way, this is fundamental in Jesus' teaching. This is the basic, fundamental principle of the New Testament church, to love one another. Christ commanded it in John 15, 12. I command you to love one another. And let me just make something clear. Love is not a feeling here. This is not talking about a feeling. Christ cannot command a feeling, right? You can't be commanded to feel a certain way, but you can be commanded to act a certain way. And love is an action. Love is a verb. Love is always in action. And what love is, is faith in action. That's what love is. If we could describe Christian love in one way, it's faith in action. If you truly believe that Jesus is the son of God and he died for your sins, then it is gonna work itself out in love towards other Christians the same way Christ's love has been shed abroad in our hearts. It is the primary fruit of the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5.22. And according to 1 Corinthians 13, Paul tells us that love is the greatest of the triad of faith, love, and hope. It is the hallmark of true Christianity. You cannot say you're a Christian and have no love for the people of God. If you do not love the people of God, if you don't have an affinity for the people of God, if you don't want to sacrificially give of yourself to the people of God, then perhaps you are not born again. If you just feel dead cold towards the people of God, then something is wrong with you. Because if you have the Spirit of God in you, you can't help but to love the people of God. Love is very practical and it's very visible. In 1 John chapter 3, verse 16 through 23, John says, by this we know love. He laid his life down for us and we ought to lay our lives down for the brothers. If anyone has this world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet you close your heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth. If it's within you to do good for others and you're not willing to do it, and you're not willing to make the slightest sacrifice for anyone, how can you claim that Christ sacrifices his life for you? The kind of love described here is a sacrificial love. It's a love that actively seeks the good of others at our own expense, expecting nothing in return for the glory and honor of Christ. That's Christian love. It's tangible, it's visible. Paul said he heard of their faith and love. It means that their love was on display for all to see. And because it was seen, it was heard. I think that this is something that is so missing in the church today. Not just grace and truth, but in churches in general in America. I feel that there is such a lack, and I think it has a lot to do with our culture, our sense of independence, our sense of autonomy, our sense of you do you and I do me, and we'll just meet each other on Sunday, and there's not that koinonia of the ancient church, that fellowship, that deep involvement. You know where churches see that? In countries that are persecuted. You know why? Because when you're hunted, when you're hunted by the government, when you're hunted by hostile enemies, you have to rely on each other because you have no one else. There becomes more of a deeper dependence and a love, a mutual love for one another. And so I think in, yes, in some ways we're blessed in living in one of the freest countries in history. In some ways it's a burden, it's a curse, because it distills the Christian experience. John 15, 35, Jesus says this, the world will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. What does he mean by that? Well, he means this, he means that the witness to the world of authentic Christianity is our love for one another. When the unbelieving world looks in, what do they see? I'll tell you what they see for the most part. They see a lot of self-righteous people. They see a lot of hypocrisy. They see a lot of bickering and arguing over theology. They see people who are so quick to point out all the sins of those who are out of Christ, but never look within at themselves. They see people that come to church polite, go home, and the rest of the week they live like pagans. Whatever is our witness, where is the unity, the oneness, the love? I think it's something that if we lose, we lose our witness, we lose our credibility. And guess what, there's always someone watching. People at work, they're watching. People in your family, they're watching. The world is watching. And guess what? God is watching. We need to see that as faith increases in our life, it'll work itself out through love. Paul says that in Galatians 5, 6. Faith works through love. The more we grow in faith, the more we grow in love. It goes hand in hand. You can't separate the two. They're inextricable. And so now that we see that faith and love are on the display as this bound up together one in the other, and it's this dynamic that Paul is giving thanks to God for working out in the church, he reminds them why. It's because, it's because of the hope. laid up for you in heaven. You see, behind the faith and love, there's a motivation. And the motivation is not earthly success. The motivation is not a hope built on some achievement in this world. It's not because we're going to get the praise of men It's because of the hope of what's laid up for us in heaven. See, that's what it's all about. At the end of the day, and it's interesting because in all of the triads that Paul used, the times that Paul used this triad, this is the only one where he emphasizes hope. It's the foundation, it's the bedrock here of love and faith. It's why we do what we do, because we believe that there's another life after this. It's because we believe that when we die, there's something better. It's because we believe that we've been delivered from something worse. It's because we believe in the inheritance, in the treasures that God has laid up for us and that belief is not some whimsical hope, right? When I say whimsical hope, you know, if next week, you know, it's hurricane season, they say, oh, a hurricane's barreling up the Atlantic coast. Oh, I hope it doesn't hit us. You know? Or you're waiting for a, I hope I get my promotion. Or I hope I get a raise this year. That's whimsical hope. Our hope is built on truth. Our hope is built on the promises of God. And when God makes a promise, you can believe it. Men make promises and they lie. But God never lies. When God says he'll do something, he does it. And God has promised us great things. Did you know that? Did you know that in Ephesians 1.18, when Paul prayed for the Ephesians as well in his opening prayer, he says he prays that the eyes of their heart may be enlightened, that they may know what is the hope in which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. In 1 Peter 1, 3-5, Peter says, Resurrected in heaven for you. Reserved in heaven. There's a reward, there's a treasure, there's an inheritance. It's like having a father who's a billionaire and he's leaving it all to you. We have immeasurable riches in heaven. I want you to think about what life will be like. Life could be good and bad in this life, right? You get old and things start to wear out. There's only so much you can enjoy and pleasure in this world. Eventually you're gonna die. And that's where life really begins. This is temple, this is just a very, just the Bible says that life is a vapor. You're either gonna spend eternity in hell forever under God's eternal judgment and it's real, or you will spend eternity forever in the presence of God. Oh, hallelujah. free from sin, free from death, free from sickness, free from frailty. Oh, the joy. We can't comprehend how great heaven is, but it's gonna be better than anything you could ever imagine. It has to be better than anything, because God said so. If we don't have this hope, if you don't have that hope, then you have nothing. Your whole faith collapses. Seriously, think about it. If that's not your hope and that's not where your heart is directed, then you will cave. The persecution that will eventually cave you in, the pressure of life, you will cave in. The discouragements in life, you will cave in. The trials, you will cave in, because you don't have that hope. Last week, Cloney and I were reading the news and the CFO of, what was it, Bed Bath & Beyond, A very wealthy man, a billionaire, living in one of the most exclusive high-rises in Manhattan. You know, some bad financial reports, things not looking good. Jumped off the building to his death. I was astonished at that. I said, wow, this guy has so much. Like even if things fell apart with the company and there's lawsuits, whatever, he still has way more. He has more than all of us combined and every church in Westchester. And he plunged to his death. You know why? His hope is in this world. His hope was in this, in what this world has. And once it was taken from him, he had nothing left to live for. See, the true Christian, how is it that Christians were able to endure such persecution, such suffering in the early three centuries? Or how do they endure in countries like Nigeria or Afghanistan, as Paul was describing? Because you know what? They have something amazing to live for. And that's how they endure through the suffering. But when you don't have hope, you have nothing to live for, and you just jump off a building. Let me conclude. Paul's opening prayer begins with emphasis on being thankful to God for the work of grace in the hearts of the Colossians. He never saw them, never visited them, but he heard of what was going on. And everything he heard was to the glory and praise and honor of Christ. I don't know about you, but if there's one thing that gives me joy and gives me a sense of gratitude is to hear when other churches are growing. We should give God thanks when we hear of the good works of God. When I hear of the gospel flourishing and being successful in countries like India, in countries like South America, in countries like China, I am thankful. I am joyful because God is advancing his kingdom and we ought to give thanks to God for those things. We ought to give thanks to God when we hear of a church plant that's growing and thriving. We ought to give thanks to God when we hear of a revitalization of a church that's growing and thriving. We ought to give thanks to God when we hear of a successful outing for the evangelism team, because this is God at work. And it's the work of God in us. Are you thankful for the work of God in others? And moreover, as we recognize the importance of thankfulness, we must examine ourselves. Does this triad, these three, these three words that describe the essence of the Christian life, do they describe your life? Are you walking by faith, not by sight? Is the love of Christ been shed abroad in your hearts and do you experience it actively in your life? Do you have a hope that's unshakable? This triad is the essence of Christian life. If you don't have it, it could be yours. You say, I want that, Bob, I want it desperately. I want some very simple solution. Humble yourself, repent, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Stop chasing after the world. Stop being consumed with worldliness. Let go. Give it up. Repent. Give yourself fully to the Lord Jesus Christ. Surrender. Believe in Christ. Exalted. Remember, I give thanks for your faith in Christ Jesus. Believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, whom he sent into the world, the Father sent into the world. This is the gospel. He died on a cross, not because he was some victim of a self-righteous society, but because it was the plan of God that he would die and bear the sins of many. It was the will of the Father to crush him, but that he would be raised on the third day, and that he is alive. Jesus is alive. And he rules, he's the sovereign ruler, the sovereign king of the universe. And if you believe in him and by faith and by faith alone, not your good works, there's nothing you could do to satisfy God's righteous demands. It is only the death and resurrection of his son. If you trust in him and entrust your life to him, and you let go and like the tandem jumper, allow the guy with the parachute to just grab hold of you, then you will know what this faith, love, and hope is like. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you for this day. I thank you for your word. I pray, almighty God, that you would allow us to really bathe in what we heard, that it would marinate in our souls and would change our lives. And may we grow in faith and love and hope. Thank you, Jesus, for the work of grace you've done in our lives and what you're gonna do. We pray for all those in our midst, especially those who don't know you. We pray, Father God, for those who have been in church for years, for those who visit, for our children. Oh, Lord, anyone who doesn't know you, may they be saved. May you open the eyes of their heart, and may they truly believe to salvation. In Christ Jesus we pray, amen.