It's good to have you here. Been a wild week again. Say what? I messed up golf. Yes, I did. I was wondering this week, in 1923, a man by the name of Harry Petsch, I believe it is, wrote what would become the Nebraska Cornhuskers fight song, There's No Place Like Nebraska. I wonder if he was thinking about the weather when he wrote that. That's not really the way the lyrics read, right? Yeah. And we were all stuck together, everything was all stuck together, frozen solid. The girls are the fairest and the boys are the squarest. That good old NU. So. It ended up really we, you know, I had communicated with the deacons fairly early in the day because it was so unpleasant about what to do Wednesday night and then the electricity went out. So we would, the church was mostly without power Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So just as well that we canceled. All right, let's pray. Colossians chapter one is where we will be this morning. Father, thank you so much for your kind patience and your abundant grace. And may we rejoice always in the greatness of your power. And may things like winter storms remind us of the awesome power that you have, that you designed to use primarily for your good and for the good of your people, and we pray, please, that we would be very much grateful to you for who you are and all that you do. We thank you that we could be here this morning, and we do pray your blessing, not just upon our Sunday school lesson, but I pray, Father, that our studies of Paul's prayers would have the best possible influence on the way we think about prayer and the things that we pray and we ask this in Jesus name, amen. Colossians chapter number one is our passage this morning. So the church was not started by Paul and I think at some point in time we will come back to another letter that Paul wrote and just think about the way that Paul thought about other believers that he did not know personally. It is a fascinating insight. Colossae is located close to the city of Laodicea, a city that probably has a little more fame from the letters to the churches in Revelation. And it is from Laodicea that Paul writes the book of First Timothy, we see that First Timothy 6.21. A man by the name of Epaphras is probably is the pastor, no doubt, of this church. And he is the messenger in communication with Paul. His prayer for them, and we'll kind of work, we're gonna begin this morning by looking specifically at Paul's prayer, and then kind of looking at some of the surrounding material that informs it. So let's begin with verse number nine of Colossians chapter number one. For this cause, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and the increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power unto all patients and long-suffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and we will stop there. He goes on, of course, to expound upon the glories of Jesus Christ, but, right? So let's just turn our attention again, first of all, to the content of his prayer for this cause, reminding us once again that Paul doesn't kind of pray in the abstract, that Paul prays out of information that he has and that there are reasons for the things that he does. And of course, all of the letters, all this is true of all the Bible books, they have a reason that they are written when it comes to the epistles. We call this the occasion. All the letters are occasional. There is something going on in a local church or in a person's life that has brought about this letter. And then God in his wisdom and inspiration has preserved it for our benefit. And so that would be how we then, and there are things that are going on in the churches, the church at Colossae, that Paul is concerned about things that are going on in the world that they have to contend with. But again, going back to verse number nine, so there is a reason for his prayer. And Paul just goes on to point out once again, the pattern of his prayer life, that we do not cease to pray for you. that he prays for people regularly and often. It does not seem to be the pattern of Paul's life that he needs to have a regular kick in the pants to keep his prayer life going. He is one who prays regularly and often. And he prays in sincerity. Verse number nine, we do not cease to pray for you and to desire which can be taken even to describing begging. We are imploring the Lord for these things for these people. And what then does he pray for them? In verse number nine, that they might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. And I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, but I want to take just a second and talk about the word filled, right? Because you can fill something with a quantity, a measurable quantity, and that is one way to think about filling. But that is not how Paul is thinking about filling. not a measurable quantity, but actually an influence. It was a word that was used to describe the wind filling the sails of a boat. And so the boat is moving under wind power. It is being moved by the filling of the wind. And so this is what Paul wants for us to be filled, not in a quantitative sense of the word, but in a qualitative sense of the word. Paul wants these things to be the influential things in the lives of God's people. And the things that he wants are twofold, that they would be filled with the knowledge of his will, with the knowledge of his will. And again, let's just pause here and think about that. Almost never, Almost never, when Paul talks about the will of God, does he talk about the will of God in the vocational sense of the word or the geographical sense of the word. That's just not the way that he thinks. It tends to be very often the way that we think about it, right? Is this job the will of the Lord for me? Is this city the will of the Lord for me? And there's legitimacy to that. I'm not trying to denigrate that in any way. But just to point out that that is not the way Paul is talking. He's not opening, so to speak, the door for the Colossians to wonder whether or not living in Colossae was God's will for them. He has something completely differently in mind when he talks about the will of the Lord. Within the sense of living a life that is to every imaginable extent possible in conformity to what God would have done. Jesus said that he always did the will of his Father. So that we could make the argument that his vocation, I mean if you want to put it that way, He was the Messiah because it was the will of the Father. He went to Galilee or to Judea because it was the will of the Father. But obviously it is far broader than just where he lived and what he did for a living. The very things that he said, the way that he said them, the attitudes that he took, the things that pleased him and displeased him, all were reflections of the fact that all that he did would be exactly what the Father would do. and exactly what the Father would have said. And in Psalm number 40, we are taught that he delighted to do the will of the Lord, right? That he never thought of the will of the Lord as a chore. You know, I'm torn here between this decision and this decision and I guess I've got to do what God wants. That was just never, the way that Christ thought about things. And next week, by the way, Lord willing, next Sunday, we'll look at Paul's prayer in Philippians in which we really get a little bit more of a sense of that, the way that we are oriented always around the will of the Lord. Philippians chapter two teaches us that Jesus was obedient even to the point of death. So this is the kind of concept that Paul has in mind when he's talking to them about doing the will of the Lord. It's a familiar passage, you may be able to quote it, but let's just take a second and look at Romans chapter 12. A couple of verses to help us round this out. Romans 12, one and two. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that, or in other words, so that, so that this would be the consequence, the ability, that ye may prove, put to the test, what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. And I say this every time we come across that verse, I hope that we all understand that Paul is not presenting to you three levels of his will, of God's will. He is presenting to us three attributes of God's will. Here is how we should think about God's will. Jesus delighted to do it. The will of God is good. It is a quality. that is good, it is acceptable, and it is perfect, it is complete, having done the will of God, folks. In our world, people are on a quest for meaning and fulfillment. And they frequently find meaning and fulfillment in their vocation or in their location. If I could just live in this place, then my life would be fulfilled and have meaning. But biblically, If you do the things that God wants you to do under all of the ordinary constraints that you have, because some of you obviously are ladies and some of you are men, and we all have different areas of giftedness. If you do the will of God, right, you have done all that God will ever ask of you. You have done all that you will ever be measured by in the great day of measurement. The will of God is perfect, it is complete, it is all that one should have an ambition to do. And one should be, I'm not saying that I am, I'm just saying that I should be content to have done the will of God. What does God want in a particular given situation? Gonna do the will of the Lord. And that would make it good and acceptable and perfect, complete, it is the whole, or Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse number 15. See then that you walk circumspectly or carefully, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil, or for being not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. But understanding what the will of the Lord is. And back in verse number 10, Paul tells us to be able to prove what is acceptable unto the Lord, which is something that he said to the Romans in Romans 12, one and two, right? Is the ability, here is, the lot of humanity, we have choices. Now in America, we have an abundance of choices about an abundance of things, but people have always had choices, at the very least in this sense, they have had the choice between doing what God would accept and doing what God would not accept, and they have choices. And part of the responsibility of maturing believers is the ability to put life situations into a framework to establish what God's will is. And now I'm gonna go off on a little bit of a tangent, and I don't wanna get too far afield on the prayer, but I would just point out to you folks that the very nature of the texts of scripture on these lines, proving what is acceptable to the Lord, as we just read in Colossians 1 9, to be filled with the knowledge of his will totally undercuts this notion that somehow the Spirit of God is going to tell you exactly, specifically everything to do so that you have virtually no decision to make. You just pray about it and get, you know, you're just gonna pray about it and the Lord's gonna tell you what it is. And so you just don't have to, the only decision you have to make is whether you're gonna do the will of the Lord or not. And there are instances in which that is absolutely true, but that is not generally what God expects from mature believers. What God expects from mature believers are people who have the biblical knowledge and the spiritual insight and the appropriate desire to look at all of the decisions that are laid out before them and make the one that is most in line with what God would do or what God would say. This is, right? This is the attribute of maturity. This is Jesus. He could make those decisions and fulfill them. Back to Colossians chapter one and verse number nine, because Paul is continuing on in that line, right? He wants them to be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. God's will, God's will, folks, is not simply the accumulation of certain theological facts. Theological facts are important. I'm not saying that they're not. But just to know a bunch of Bible verses on any subject, pick the subject, money, morality, honesty, integrity, prayer. You gotta know what the Bible says about something in order to come to the right conclusions, but knowing what the Bible says about something does not all by itself mean that somebody is making the right conclusions. So what we need to do is be what we are after. What God is after in us is the ability to gather all of the facts, and I mean by that his facts, to have our confidence in his facts, and then to employ those facts in the area of expertise. So it is the proper use of certain facts. I will just give you one that pops immediately to my mind. This was many years ago. family was having a problem with one of their very young children, and the conversation came up about whether or not a young child should be spanked, or any child should be spanked. Now God has a position on that. God has a number of positions that he has made public on that, on whether or not children should be spanked. And the world has provided a number of opinions and Many of them backed by people who proclaimed to be experts on whether or not a child should be spanked. So what is a person going to do? What is a person going to do? They might have all of the Bible knowledge. Yes, I know what Proverbs says. But I'm not going to do that. Two things, folks, to qualify that. Number one, spanking is not a miracle cure. And punching somebody around and beating them every time they walk past is not spanking, right? So you can go to two extremes. But it is something that God instructs parents to do to their children. It is part of the chastening discipline procedure. It is the imposition of unpleasantness for the purpose of instruction. Now again, God has a wisdom and God has information there, but there are many competing views and in our world they come to us with great authority on how detrimental these kinds of things can be and you have to make a choice and you're going to have to decide who you're going to follow. So Paul goes on here, right? This is how he prays for these people that he does not even know. I'm praying for you to be filled with the knowledge of his will. In all wisdom, capability. In all capability. Wisdom is skill and sound judgment. The ability to use facts. To use them properly. Understanding, the word actually is two words in the Greek. It means a flowing together. It is the union of idea and action. I put what I know into action. If you look at it here in verse number 9, spiritual understanding, Paul is orienting himself around one spiritual conduct. And again, not that this isn't a necessary thing, but Paul is not talking about your ability to take the facts that are necessary for you to do your job and to apply that knowledge skillfully. If I can give you an illustration. I like carpentry. I don't ever remember not liking carpentry. I have very limited skills in carpentry. I know some things I can do, some things I can't do. I have absolutely no mechanical ability. So if you said, Pastor, could you come help me build a bookcase? Yes. Pastor, could you come help me work on my car? You really don't want me there. You really don't want me there. So I had this used lawnmower that I had bought. And I got to the place where I couldn't get it started. I've told this story. And thought that it was the battery and replaced the battery. And that didn't fix it. And finally, in desperation, take it to a mechanic. And I've got this big, long story. What's wrong with it? He looks at me. He goes, it needs the valves adjusted. I go home and tell my wife. The idiot says it needs the valve adjusted. But he's got the lawnmower adjusted the valves. He calls me a few hours later. It's running. I adjusted the valves. So this kind of became a little bit of a thing, right? It was an older lawnmower and it had to have the valves adjusted or that wouldn't work right. And so I don't want to keep spending money on this guy. So I go to YouTube and I watch a guy goes, look, this is very simple. Any idiot could do it. I am not any idiot. I am a unique idiot. I could not do it, could not do it. And finally, my wife says, please just get, I am so tired of listening to you go on about that lawnmower, just get rid of it, replace it. So I put it on Facebook to try and get rid of it. It should work, but I can't get it to work. Have a guy show up. He shows up with like this 40-foot trailer, he and his son-in-law. And he looks at it and I go, here it is, you know, whatever you want to give me, I can't get it going. And he reaches his hand in there and he spins the flywheel around and he starts it and drives it on the trailer. See, I have knowledge, but I don't have understanding. I could talk to you about needing the valves adjusted. I could tell you what to do. I had the wrenches. I have the gap finder to know the gap, but I couldn't make it work. But Paul is not talking about that kind of understanding. It is understanding that is spiritual in nature. What are we going to do with all of these verses about praying? What are we going to do with all of these verses about loving each other? What is that going to look like? How is that going to play out in what is oftentimes a very complicated world? It's one thing for all of us to love each other when everybody is on their very bestest behavior. But what if somebody is on their worstest behavior What does love look like then? It requires folks a tremendous degree of spiritual maturity. So again, back to the text, right? Here we are, we are human beings made in the image of God. We are like him in many ways, which means that we can be imaginative and innovative and creative and lots of things that we might want to do that we think are really good ideas, right? That's not the question. The question is, would they be acceptable to the Lord? Not, do I think they're acceptable to the Lord, but does he think that they're acceptable to the Lord? These are the things that Paul is after for them. Back to the text, right? So that Paul's prayer for them is that they would be filled with the knowledge of His will in this framework, all wisdom and all spiritual understanding, so that they don't just have theoretical knowledge, they have practical working knowledge. And when that comes together, this then is going to be the conclusion, verse number 10, that you might walk worthy of the Lord. That you might walk worthy of the Lord. toward always being pleasing to him. That's what he means there. Walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing. Because again, folks, who is our true role model? Jesus Christ. What would be said about Jesus Christ? He always did those things that were pleasing to the Father. What does he want for me? To do always those things that are pleasing to the Father. How will I walk pleasing to the Father? by having the full knowledge of his will. One of the Old Testament predictions is that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. A real knowledge that is a usable knowledge. So let's just throw this question then to verse number 10. What would that life look like? What would a life that is worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing look like. And again, I've already mentioned this, right? This is going to operate within the constraints of our gender. God is never going to judge me on what kind of a mother I might have been. And neither is he going to judge my wife on what kind of a father she might have been. Because it was not, it is not, it never will be God's will for me to be a mother. Or for a lady to be a father. or our giftedness, because again, we are not all equally gifted. We are not all equally gifted. And we certainly don't all have the same amount of life that we live in. Our health is a major consideration in that. All right, so if we look at the text, Paul now, beginning at the end of verse number 11, begins to help us out by giving us some explanation of what he means by all-pleasing. So if I could just point it out for those of you who are grammatically inclined, Paul is now going to take the concept of walking worthy, the verb, and he is going to expand upon it with a series of participles, kind of the supporting cast for the explanation. So it would look like this, that you would be fruitful in every good work. Fruitful in every good work. My understanding of what Paul is arguing there is that our lives are filled with good works. Not that our good works produce fruit, but that our lives are filled with good works, being fruitful unto every good work. If you will go back for just a second to the book of Ephesians chapter number two. Well let's go to verse number eight because it flows out of a couple of our favorite salvation verses. Ephesians chapter two and verse number eight. For by grace are ye saved through faith. And that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. So even our faith is God's gift to us and we believe him. Not of works lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship. We are his work. Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. So when Paul wants the Colossians to be fruitful unto every good work, he wants them to be people whose lives are characterized by good works. The kind of things that are pleasing to the Lord. Back to Colossians chapter 2. Fruitful in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God. Right? Which is right in conjunction with being filled with the knowledge of his wills, increasing in the knowledge of God, because God is, after all, folks. Right? If we devoted all of our lives to knowing all that we could know about God, we still would not know God as he really is. Now, that's bad. We would know God as he really is, but we would not know him fully, for he is infinite. He is infinite. The very best of our knowledge of God is still an incomplete knowledge. There's always room for growth. There's always room for growth. And this is the work of a lifetime, by the way, not of an instance, of an instant. Verse number 11, strengthened with all might Strengthened by God towards spiritual stamina according to His glorious power unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness. Strengthened by God towards spiritual stamina. This is how he is praying for them. Again, There are hardships that we endure and I don't think that the Bible would ever pretend that they are otherwise. But we do not simply grit our teeth and endure them. We endure them in light of what we know about our God and what we know about his will and what we understand about his purposes and how we understand the end to be so that there can be a joyfulness anticipated, right? Jesus endured the cross for the joy that was set before him. So we have a willingness to endure for the sake of the Lord. And this is one of his works in us. This is his gift to us. This is a prayer request of us. And then we are thankful. And I think that the context is, right, that our primary, that Paul's prayer for them, his primary focus of gratitude is that they would be grateful for their salvation and their Savior. Verse number 12, not just, right, and again, I just feel like I always need to qualify. Not that we shouldn't be grateful in everything because Paul says that elsewhere, right? In everything give thanks for this is the will of God. But the way that is put here, giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us meet or suitable to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. The context of Paul's immediate prayer is that they would be thankful for their salvation. So that is the content of his prayer, right? Jesus has, in verse 13, delivered us from the power of darkness. translated us into the kingdom of his dear son, the way you would take one language and make it another. He has moved us from one locale to another in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin. So there's the content. Let's just take a couple of minutes now and turn back to the context of the prayer. Let's look at the very beginning of the letter. Paul, verse number one. an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God in Timotheus our brother to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colossae. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which he have to all the saints. For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven wherever you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel which is come unto you as it is in all the world and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it and knew the grace of God in truth, as ye also learned of Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ, who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit. Right, so what is the context? And I've already kind of alluded, mentioned this, I didn't allude to it. I mentioned it specifically. Paul prayed frequently for people he did not know. Paul prayed frequently for people he did not know. How did Paul come to know about the Colossians from Epaphras? He's just a hearer. I heard about you. I heard about you. So that folks, if a missionary says to us, please pray for us or please pray for this person. They put the picture up on the screen, please pray for a brother or sister or so-and-so. It does us no good to go, I don't even know that person. I'm not going to pray for them. I don't even know that person. Paul didn't know these people. Paul didn't know these people and yet he prayed for them. And we learn in verses three and four that his gratitude, again, is what drives his prayer, not simply a desperate need or a desperate moment. But that his gratitude for what God was doing in bringing the gospel to people around the world was an occasion for him to pray for them when he heard that people got saved. Right? Paul receives word that people have been saved. And he immediately prays along the lines that the gospel had transformed them and that they would live out that transforming work. But let's go to verse number 14. Right? So part of the context for the prayer is what Paul said before he talked to them about how he prayed for them, which again, right? It's not bragging, it's not boasting, it's not gloating, it's not unseemly to say to people, I'm praying for you as long as you are in fact praying for them, as long as it's not deceitful. Then we notice what he says after the prayer of Jesus in verse number 14, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, for by him were all things created that are in heaven, that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him, and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell, and having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself. By him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven, and you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight, if he continue in the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which he have heard and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a minister. So, all right, I'm gonna stop there because Paul has once again touched on something, right, that we talked about last week, and that is that He recognizes that a real crisis of the faith might conclude in a rejection of the faith if you continue, if you continue. And this is a church that is facing, right, one of the occasion of this letter is that this is a church that is facing a particular type of crisis. One that is going to involve, the essence of the nature of Christ. And it is under pressure to minimize Jesus through either the works of the law or some philosophical element of the world. And we're not going to take the time to look at that. But this is why it is important that they are filled with the knowledge of God's will and spiritual understanding. Right? Paul will write to them, well, we have a moment, look over chapter two in verse number eight. All right, I'm praying this way for you because I am aware of this peril that you are in. Beware, lest any man spoil you, rob you is the idea. Through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men and the rudiments of the world and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and year complete in him which is the head of all principality and power. Right? So there was the tried and sometimes successful temptation that Christ is not enough, right? That Christ is not enough, that we need more, we need something else, we need something additional. And this was what they were facing and this was what Paul was concerned about. And for him, the prayer was that they would be filled with the knowledge of God's will. Okay, I'm gonna stop there. I got, that's just about 10.43, a couple of minutes early. We'll be back at 11 o'clock.