Dennis Tuuri

# Thanksgiving and Strengthening

Today’s sermon is on thanksgiving and strengthening which we just sang and recited responsibly these same truths. The text for today is Colossians 1:3-14. Please stand for the reading of God’s word to us and hear the wondrous news of the gospel contained in this text.

Colossians 1:3-14: We give thanks to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel which has come to you as it has also in all the world and is bringing forth fruit as it is also among you.

Since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth, as you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, who also declared to us your love in the spirit. For this reason, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you may walk worthy of the Lord, truly pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power for all patience and longsuffering with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.

He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.

Let’s pray. Amen. Lord God, we thank you for this wonderful good news proclaimed forth in this text of scripture. We pray that you would bless us as we try to work our way kind of systematically through it that we might gather up all the wonderful gifts and blessings that this text contains for us that we might indeed be moved to thanksgiving and strength. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. If you don’t have an outline, you should get one. It’s going to be a little difficult. Well, maybe you’re not, but I think the outline will help you to follow the movement of today’s sermon. It’s basically two parts. There’s two sections of this prayer that Paul utters in these twelve verses. So if you don’t have one, could maybe you could raise your hand and somebody will get you one. How’s that sound? Could somebody get a few and give them to people who have raised hands?

And while that’s happening, let me call your attention to one thing on the foyer table. There is a newsletter from the church plant in Budapest, Hungary, pastored by Achila Hajdu. Ata has been here before and he will be with us, him and his family, Lord willing, at family camp in June this coming year, as will Rich Lusk and his family. We’re very excited to have both these men and their families with us. It’s going to be a wonderful camp and to sort of bone up or study up on what his work in Budapest is doing. This latest newsletter, I would commend that to you.

Okay, everybody have outlines that wants one apparently. Good. Okay, so I have three cultural references to begin with as by way of introduction. One old, one not so old, but kind of all very old, and one completely current. So hopefully I hit all of you in some way.

So in one of the Star Trek episodes, there was this Genesis device, right? And there was this planet. Spock had been buried there. He was dead. And this Genesis device was sent to this planet where Spock was dead. And so it kind of sent into a you know a planet like Mars or something like this that doesn’t really have any life going on. And the Genesis device is a machine that will transform the planet it’s sent to into a thriving ecosystem. Okay. So it’s this injection into deadness of a device that produces life.

And the analogy we’re going to be talking about today or kind of referring to as we go through this is this is what’s happened at Colossae—the injection of the spirit of God through the word of God has gone into people that were the walking dead, zombies, and transformed them. And this thing doesn’t stop. This injection of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the gospel of Christ, the truth of the will of the Father. This thing has begun. Paul is going to talk about how it’s continuing to grow there just like it is in all the world.

So it’s a Genesis device. Think of it that way. The Genesis device is the Holy Spirit using the word of God. The world had died, right? It had become old through sin and rebellion of people. The world was a place of darkness. And with the gospel of Christ, with Christ coming and that historical event and then the record of that being preached and spoken and being heard, that word brings forth new life. Just like at the original creation, the word of God, the spirit of God is creating an entire world now to beautify and glorify and adorn the Father who made it and the people that will live on it.

So I think that’s the picture that the verses before us just set out.

Couple of other examples: Invasion of the Body Snatchers—whether it’s the very old version or the more interesting or more recent version, you know, the idea is that of a typical town. These pods are found and the pods produce replacements for the humans that are there. So everybody becomes transformed through this alien invasion. These body snatchers, snatching the body of people, controlling them, actually kind of like growing a clone of them. And so, if we, you know, it’s kind of a reverse image, but go with me on this a little bit. I think to some people, they like the world just like it is. They like the tyranny of darkness. And so the intrusion of the Genesis device, the intrusion of the preaching of the gospel by the Holy Spirit that starts to bring life seems to them like invasion of the body snatchers.

So but it’s the same idea: transformation of people’s lives, right? And as a result, you’ll create a transformation of the entire area. The terroir, right? A wine term. Terroir—every aspect goes into a particular wine that’s produced. The terroir of the earth is transformed by this invasion of the body snatchers.

More current example: this year I’m listening to a book by Jeff VanderMeer that’s called Area X and this was the winner of the Nebula award for best science fiction novel this year. It’s actually a series of three books and in this thing these are common motifs—that’s why we could cite examples all day long. I won’t. This will be the last one I promise. But in this thing, something has happened maybe from outer space. We don’t know what yet. I’m not reached the end of the book yet. But something has landed in this particular piece of geography and is transforming it totally, creates a boundary around itself. It’s interesting because the cover story is that there’s been an ecological disaster there when in reality one of the effects of this alien presence is to clean up all the pollution and to create, you know, the elimination of all the pollution.

Now, it transforms everything in there, you know, animals, men, etc. And there’s some, you know, what seem to be horrific results. But again, the idea is some little thing comes, creates a new terroir, a new landscape that’ll produce a new vintage. And this vintage, at least ecologically, is beautiful. In terms of the transformation of the people, I don’t know the end of that yet.

Well, again, this is sort of what’s happening. The gospel has come to a dead and dying world. Jesus has accomplished the salvation, the initiation of a new creation. And as a result of that, the word has sprung forth. That’s the element, the spirit using God’s word, the gospel, the truth, and everything’s transformed. So that’s sort of the context. And if you, as we work through the verses now of this particular text of scripture, I think you’ll see pointers to what I just said.

Now that is a message of tremendous blessing for us, right? What we read here is a message of tremendous blessing to the Colossians, right? To know that this is happening not just with them but around the whole world. That’s blessing. We come together on the Lord’s day to a port—protected as the old song says—to a beautiful place of rest and solace and refuge from the world. But more than that, to remember that the world is being transformed through the proclamation of the gospel.

And the blessings that are found in this text, emblematic of the blessings of the gospel, should fill us not just with a sense of, you know, escape from the world, but with joy, hope, singing, confidence, optimism, strengthening to go back and continue to be the agents, the ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ that we’re called to be. Okay, that’s the sermon in a nutshell. Now, let’s talk about the details.

And what we’ve got here is Paul sends this epistle from prison. And this is a prayer and it’s a prayer with two parts. I’ve connected them together. So, you know, it’s first of all a prayer of thanksgiving. And then secondly, it’s a prayer of intercession. So, we got thanksgiving first. And on your outlines, you see this. There’s two points to the outline. The first is thanksgiving. The second is intercession.

Now, intercession will end with the Colossians being people of thanksgiving as well. That’s what the intercession is for—is that they would mirror Paul’s thanksgiving at the beginning of this section with their own thanksgiving at the end of the section. So, thanksgiving are kind of like bookmarks around this entire prayer. And in the midst of the second half, the intercession, Paul prays for things that will result in strength—in us being empowered. You know, the Colossians being empowered to do what they needed to do. So, you can think of it as, you know, there’s this little plant that’s started up in a little garden and Paul at the end of the first half of this prayer rather, you can sort of sum it up by he says, “Well, the garden is going good. The garden is good.” And then the second half is how that garden will continue to manifest, how it will continue to grow and strengthen just as the garden is really doing that all over the whole world. Okay, so that’s kind of the deal here.

Okay, so first some details then—first the prayer of thanksgiving. It’s to the forgotten father—not forgotten to everyone, but we give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you. And I think this means that when they pray for the Colossians—which is repeatedly his prayer always—has thanksgiving and it’s thanksgiving directed not to Jesus. It’s thanksgiving to the Father. That’s why I say here the forgotten father.

You’ve heard this from me before. You know, I’m concerned that in modern, in the modern church age, the evangelical age in which we live, love the emphasis on the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, but Jesus is a pointer to the Father, right? He came to manifest not, you know, his own characteristics necessarily, but in the Gospels, he’s manifesting the character of the Father. The Son brings the Father’s characteristics to us and so often we just think about Jesus all the time. But here our prayer life specifically—which we’re supposed to be doing all the time—and when we pray we should be engaged in prayers of thanksgiving and when we pray prayers of thanksgiving according to this model and throughout the New Testament that prayer is uttered to the Father. Okay, it’s uttered to the Father. Very important.

Consideration of the Father much beyond the scope of today’s sermon but I really want you to think about that: prayer is to the Father through the Son in the context of the Holy Spirit. Okay. So please, you know, your prayers done in this way will bring the forgotten Father back to some of us and bring an aspect of our Christian faith which is the Father’s deep abiding love for us. Yes, demonstrated in the gift of the Son, but it’s the Father’s character, the Father’s love that all that is pointing to. And so I wanted to make that point as we go through this text.

So, it’s a prayer of thanksgiving. It’s to the Father and it’s for their faith in Christ, their love to the saints and a sure hope. So, what’s he thanking the Father for? Well, he goes on in the verses that follow this to say this: since. So, I thank the Father always since. So, this is what I’m thanking him for. We heard of your faith in Christ Jesus. Christ—think of that as King Jesus. The crown rights of King Jesus. Right. I haven’t talked to Gordon about that phrase, but that’s an old Scottish Presbyterian phrase. And remember, Christ, we can kind of just not remember what these names mean, but it means anointed one. We can think of this King. Okay, so he’s heard of your faith in Christ Jesus. That means that faith is in Jesus Christ. It’s in a Savior. It means we don’t have faith ultimately in life on reliance. A firm reliance is what we’re to have on King Jesus, not on anything else. He died for our sins. Nobody else did. He gives us his faithfulness. Nobody else does. So he thanks them for their faith in Christ.

This is like the beginning point of what then develops in terms of the structure of this sentence to love and of your love for all the saints. So he thanks them for their faith in Christ—connected up with Christ. That’s the beginning point. But that faith, if it’s true faith, will result in a demonstrable evidence of love. This is something that Paul has heard about because people have seen it in action. They’re not reading the hearts of the Colossians by just thinking about them emotionally. They know about their actions, their good deeds. He’s going to talk about that in a couple of minutes.

Their love is not some abstract emotional sentimental thing. There is certainly emotions and sentiment involved. But their love to the saints are their actions of helping other people. It’s acts of goodness. It’s acts of kindness.

Now if I remember, I had an ordination candidate I was on the committee for. First question in those days for a CRC ordination exam was “Do you love Jesus?” and the guy couldn’t answer it. He just sort of froze. “Oh, do I love Jesus?” And you know, you can sort of think about that and think why it’s hard to answer. I mean, on one level it’s obvious to answer, but gee, is that really love? If I examine my heart, does my heart really, or maybe I’m just—I don’t know. It goes, you know, you can just get into a whole deal, but do you serve Jesus? Do you want to please him and everything? Do you love Jesus as demonstrated in what you do to his people, to the body of Christ? You see, I think that’s what Paul’s talking about here. Acts that evidence of faith in Christ that moves toward service to Jesus and service to other people.

Now, look, people say all kinds of things about RCC, particularly these days, but I’ll tell you what I think about RCC: I think you’re an incredibly loving congregation. If I go through the list of everybody in this church and all the ministries that are going on, and these are the only things that I know about. Okay? There’s lots of things you do that I don’t know about. Your lives are filled, absolutely filled. Maybe we encourage you to take on too much. I don’t know. But your lives are filled with love of the saints. And what that tells me based on what Paul is saying here, your lives are radically connected to Jesus with faith in him.

Now, I don’t, you know, I’m not saying that to make you feel good. Well, I am saying that to make you feel good because it’s not you. It’s that Genesis device. It’s the spirit of God that brought the word of his truth to you. And you can look at your deeds and what you’re doing and your good works to people in this church. I mean, think of all the people that were praying and trying to help Gordon and Molly last night and into the next week. I mean, I could honestly write pages and pages and pages of the good deeds being done by the people in this church. And that’s what Paul’s talking about here: a love that is evident, that can be seen. And he’s thankful to God for that. And when I pray for RCC, I’m thankful for your faith as demonstrated in your acts of love toward other people.

Yeah, we all fall down. We all don’t do everything we obviously, but your life is characterized by this kind of love. And I praise God for it, just like Paul does here.

And then he says, “Because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven.” This is a little tough grammatically, but what do we have? We’ve got faith, love, and hope. We’ve got the triad, right? And so we’ve got those things going together here. And what he’s saying is: your faith in Christ, which yields love, active deeds for other people, is based upon, somehow connected to a result of your sure hope, which is in heaven.

Now look, again here: faith by itself is no good. It’s the object of the faith, which is Jesus, right? And same thing here. Hope is not some sort of abstract thing that you’re going to have. I mean, it is. We can talk about people’s hope and wishing and praying and whatever else they do. But this hope is a specific hope. And it’s got nothing to do—it is not reliant upon your experience, your circumstances, what people are doing to you or not doing to you. This hope, Paul says, is reserved in heaven.

Now look, he’s going to talk about an inheritance, right? And we saw in the Old Testament that they had went into Canaan for their inheritance, their lot. And there’s absolute correlation here. The difference is that our inheritance, the basis for our hope is in heaven. Warring people can’t take it from you. Faithless people can’t take it from you. Circumstances of the world can’t remove that hope. There is a solidity to that hope because it is fixed in heaven where nobody can reach up and disturb it right? It’s in the light that is heaven. It’s reserved for us. Nobody can attack your hope.

Now, we need to remind each other of that, particularly when we go through difficult times. We got to point people to hope because that’s related to their faith and love here. And when we do that, we point them to the sure hope that is in heaven, unassailable from men or circumstances.

So, so Paul is thanking them for their faith and their love, tied to their hope which is unassailable. And so the actions on earth of love take place in the context of that hope. It’s interesting, by the way: I heard Rob Rabin preach several years ago at a CRC council meeting, a worship service we had, and he talked about faith, hope and love and love being the one that abides in First Corinthians, right? And it was interesting what he said—that faith, you know, is looking for what hasn’t been received. Hope is a hope for something yet future, right? But love is permanent. So in the eschaton when Jesus comes back and heaven and earth meet, you don’t need—you won’t be walking by faith. We’ll see. You won’t need to be hoping for things because the hope would have been realized. And the one of these triad of characteristics that’s left: love.

It’s why Paul says in Corinthians, “The greatest of these is love.” It’s the abiding one. Okay. But it comes from faith and hope. Okay.

Now, one other thing. So the Colossian church, the goodness of the garden, the well-being of the garden that had been planted by this Genesis device, the goodness of that garden is not evidenced by their doctrinal statement. Now, he’s going to talk about their doctrinal statement in a couple of minutes, and hopefully we’ll get to it, but that’s not what he’s thanking them for at first. He’s thanking them for the results of what that doctrine has produced in their lives, right?

So, it’s not—we don’t thank each other, you know, because our doctrine is great. We’re thankful for that, of course. But when Paul wants to know if the garden is going good or not, he looks for the fruit of that doctrine, the result of that doctrine. Okay? And that’s what he sees. That’s what he gives thanks to God for specifically: love. It’s these deeds that demonstrate their faith and their hope, things that can be seen.

One other thing here: these deeds that we do, and I talked about this a couple weeks ago in a different sermon in the affirm series, but remember love in the Bible is very distinct. It’s, you know, it’s not just whatever definition the modern world has. In the Bible, love is purposeful. Love is intelligent. It’s not an absence of reasoning. It’s reasoning brought to bear in practical ministration to other people. Okay? So, love is intelligent. It’s intentional. It’s purposeful.

Those are the kind of good deeds that we’re encouraged to walk in as demonstrations of love. It’s not pietism. It’s not, you know, I’m doing great deeds because I love anybody and everybody and I don’t think about it. And there’s no purpose to it. There’s no intentionality to it. I just love. See, because that’s all focused on you rather than the person you’re trying to love. And in Germany, that kind of pietism led to rationalism and the deterioration of the faith. It went away. Okay? We don’t want that. So, let’s get our understanding of love correct. It’s intentional. It’s purposeful. It’s tied to our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and our hope.

Brief quote from Lensky here, the Lutheran commentator: “Paul calls the hope the cause of our love to all the saints making it the cause of this love thus reaches back also to our faith in Christ the source of love. Faith is the soil from which the fruit of love springs and hope is the sunshine which ripens this fruit of love. By faith Christ unites all believers so that joined thus they love each other. Christ has laid away the treasure of hope in heaven for all believers. So that united by the hope of this expected treasure, we for this treasure also love each other.”

So I like that imagery. Probably should have just talked about the imagery. So faith is the seed from which love springs and hope is the sunshine that causes the growth. So these three things wrapped together in the word of God. Okay. As I said, it’s behavior oriented.

Let’s see: one last thing. The centrality of this hope is Christ, right? Later in chapter 1, he’ll say this: “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of his mystery which is Christ in you the hope of glory.” So Jesus Christ is our hope. He’s the basis and foundation for all that we do. So we have this Christocentric hope in the context of our lives. All right.

This thanksgiving is for these things, for their faith, hope and love. And it is based upon or through their faith, hope, and love is through word, truth, and gospel via. And so we’re looking now on that part of the outline. And he says this in verse five, second half of the verse: “Of which you heard this hope, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel.” The word of truth, the gospel—Calvin translates it, the word of truth, which is the gospel. Okay, so this stuff happens as a result of the word of truth, the gospel coming to them.

Okay, it came to them through Epaphras. We’ll see that in a couple of minutes. Paul never visited this church. He didn’t plant the church. Epaphras planted the church. Epaphras is probably the pastor still at the church. And Epaphras brought to them the word of truth, which is the gospel. Okay? So without that, nothing else happens. The faith can’t happen if they haven’t heard the word of truth which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Okay.

Now again, just practical point of application: truth is everything in this. It is a word first of all, just like the word brings about creation. The word brings about the elements of new creation. And it is a word that is truth. Jesus is the way the truth and the life.

I would love to find some good curriculum that goes through all the different ways people deceive themselves and other people, you know: equivocation, obfuscation, half-truths, position truth, all that stuff. That would really help me as I work with people in their sanctification. If you know of such a resource, let me know. But I bring it up here because you need to know that truth is absolutely essential to keep everything moving in this garden in the right way. Okay? Truth is the core of it. God’s word. That word is truth and that truth is the gospel. So through word, truth and gospel handed on through Epaphras.

Okay. So in the next section—oh maybe I should read one verse here from Psalm 119:43: “Take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for I have hoped in your ordinances.” So the word of truth is contained in the scriptures and the scriptures are the record of the gospel, the good news of the whole history of the world culminating in the coming of Jesus.

So the word of God has to be central to our lives. We have to be committed to be reflectors of truth and not deceit and lies. We have to, you know, intentionally be these things. And this is all centered upon the great message of the history of the world which is the gospel, the good news that the new creation has arrived now. And that stuff is what ties what creates our faith. That’s what then produces the love which is then tied to an expectation and the hope which is reserved by God. Okay.

This truth and the fruit that came from this truth is being mirrored in the worldwide effects of the gospel. So here’s Genesis device stuff. Verse six: “Which has come to you as it has also in all the world and is bringing forth fruit as it is also among you since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth rather.”

Okay. So I with you—just like with you. The world is experiencing the fruit. What’s the fruit he’s been talking about? Well, it’s probably conversion, but more than that, it’s these demonstrations of the work of the Holy Spirit and creating love, a biblical love in the context of the world. So, just like in you, this thing, this Genesis device isn’t just in Colossae, it’s affecting the whole world, the terroir of the whole world to produce a new vine, a new species, which would be the best ever.

And so, he ties what’s going on in this little—remember we talked last week kind of—backwater town, forgotten town. Used to be big deal, now it’s no deal. He ties what’s going on in that setting, right? And very much to their own lives personally, the good deeds they’re each doing. He ties that reality to the worldwide effects, the cosmic effects. That same word implanted into other portions of the world is creating fruit, fruitfulness, good works, and converts all over the world.

This is a statement of great eschatological hope and it’s kind of already been realized. We’ll see in a couple of minutes. We don’t look for deliverance out of the tyranny of darkness. It’s happened. Okay? And so that’s what he’s saying here. What’s working out is inevitable. Okay? It’s inevitable in the world. The new creation is fruiting out. We could say the word has been spoken. The spirit has worked bringing the message of the Father and the Son. And the world now is blossoming out, it’s bearing fruit, it’s developing and that fruit is primarily, you know, the people themselves as well as the good deeds that they engage in.

So there’s this worldwide effects and then he says it’s bringing forth fruit as it also is among you. So he ties the fruit of the world back to us, back to us individually, back to us as a small congregation. You know, there used to be a phrase in the late 60s, early 70s: “Think globally, act locally.” Well, that’s—most of these things are just kind of perversions of a truth in scripture. And he wants the Colossians to think globally that the Genesis device, the gospel that brings forth the new creation, isn’t just happening here. Think globally. You’re part of a worldwide development of a new kingdom, moving away from the tyranny of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son, as he’ll say in a couple of minutes.

Now, that’s important for us too. You know, we can sort of feel like we’re little. We’re in a fairly small denomination. Even amongst some of them, we don’t all agree. We can feel like, you know, even that denomination is under attack right now. Where are we going to go? How small is the island going to get? Right? You can sort of feel like that. We’re on this island and it’s just a few of us. There’s so many people that don’t believe what we believe.

Well, that was true of the Colossians, too. We’ll see as we get into the book. There were Judaizing heretics that are trying to get them away from in the faith. Eventually there’ll be other people. So the point is we can feel quite isolated sitting in a small church in the middle of somewhat small uninfluential town. And we have to recognize we’re part of the movement of the spirit of God over the entire world.

Yeah. Western Christianity, European Christianity declined, degraded, but what’s going on in Africa? What’s going on, you know, in South America? What’s going on in portions of China? Well, that spirit has brought the word and new creation is happening in all those places. I don’t know how it’ll affect us, the Western cultures, but see, we—it helps us, it encourages us to remember that we’re involved in a mission that God has accomplished and is accomplishing in the entire world. It helps to connect us up to that. It helps just as an encouragement.

More than that, it helps to do what Paul wants us to do, which is to give thanks to God, right? Thanksgiving. That’s what he’s talking about here. Okay.

So, “Since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth.” Okay. Now, another thing I wanted to point out here is that if you read the text, you see a whole bunch of doublings and even triplings. What do I mean by that? There are words that are repeated in these twelve verses a lot.

For instance: “since the day,” it’s found in verses six and nine. “We heard”—verses four and nine. Actually, the “we heard” thing is all over this text from verses 1 to 4. Hearing is a big deal. It’s the word that’s being spoken that’s creating this and it’s hearing—effectual hearing. Paul heard about them. They hear about him. They hear the gospel. Hearing here, here is going on a lot. “Knowledge”—verses 6, 9 and 10. “Bearing fruit” and “increasing”—verses 6 and 10. “Giving thanks”—verses 3 and 12. “The Father”—verses 3 and 12. “The saints”—verses 4 and 12. “Spiritual” in verse 9 corresponding to the “spirit” in verse 8 and then the word “all”—in the Greek—verses 4, 6, 9, 10, 11. The word “all” happens. What’s the point? Dennis, who cares? Well, remember when we went through the book of Lamentations during Lent and how the structure of lamentation falls apart as you go through it. I mean, not just the chaos dwindling and breaking off all kinds of literary devices. It starts with beauty and the beauty deteriorates so hard to see beauty decay. And that’s what was happening with the captivity because of the sins of God’s people.

Well, the structure of these books are not unrelated to what he’s saying. This is not a Greek exercise. This is beauty and art coming from the spirit of God through Paul. And what he’s doing is he’s piling up terms. He’s doubling them up. Four, five, six repetitions of “all” because he’s talking about fruitfulness. He’s talking about the growth of the garden. And you can see that just in the fruitfulness, the abundance, the kind of growing number of words that are seen in the text.

Now, if you don’t buy it, that’s okay. Don’t think about it too much. But for those of you that understand what I’m talking about and agree that this may be what why these words are doubled, just delight in that: that the form of the scriptures themselves have this incredible beauty that reflects the central idea of what’s happening here, which is this worldwide fruiting out of the gospel of God. Okay.

So you heard this from Epaphras, verse 7. “So also as you learn of it from Epaphras our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf who also declared to us your love in the spirit.” So again the spirit is this element in which all these works—the application of the word of God—is occurring. There are community filled with this kind of love based upon the work of the spirit developing the new creation. Okay, so that’s the end of the prayer of thanksgiving.

And the message is: the garden is good. Thank God for all these wonderful things that have happened to you. You didn’t do it. You were dead in trespasses and sins. This is the grace of God and a demonstration of the beginning and the growth of peace—God’s order in the cosmos—through the injection of the word, the spirit, bringing forth new creation and great fruitfulness in that new creation just as in the first creation. Things are growing. People were you know encouraged to be fruitful and multiply. So things are growing. There’s a fruiting out and multiplication of saints clearly but also very clearly this is tied to the good deeds, the love that becomes to be characteristic of Christian communities in the church and ultimately of the whole world. Okay. So that’s the prayer of thanksgiving.

Secondly, there’s a prayer of intercession—verses 9 to 14. He asks for knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual understanding. Verse 9. So this is like your prayers, right? You’re supposed to pray this way—this way—Paul prayed. There’s other ways to pray, but this is a good model: thanksgiving, intercession. Pretty simple. So now he asks things for the Colossians.

He just thanked God for the Colossians. Now he’s asking: “For this reason, we also since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” So he asks—okay, we’re to ask God, we’re to intercede for people, right? Many of us, you know, we’re praying for the health of Jack last night and today and will continue on doing that. And those are excellent prayers. We see those kind of prayers in what Paul says in other portions of the scripture. But what I want—and so he’s saying that whenever he prays for them, which is frequent. He’s thanking God, but he’s also asking something for them. And he’s asking something very particular. And it’s something we should probably ask more for than we do.

Typically, our prayers are all about all kinds of specifics: I need money. I need this. Help me to cope with this person, that person. Those are all good prayers. Nothing wrong with those prayers. But look, he tells us that if you want that stuff, you can cover it all by asking what he asked for here. He asked that they be filled with the knowledge of his will.

So he wants them to get more and more of a know—he already they already know God’s will. They’ve done it already. He wants them to have more of a knowledge of the will of God. Okay? How do you get that knowledge of the will of God? You get it through the scriptures. You get it through an understanding of what the word of God is. You got to study your Bibles. Pray about your Bible. Get to know it more. Come to Bible studies like Tuesday night’s study with Matt Dao. Go to Sunday school class, whatever it is.

If they’re going to continue to grow as a garden and not stagnate, they need to grow in their understanding of the knowledge of the will of God. Ultimately, they’re doing his will. They’re his servants now, right? Like Paul was. So, he asked that for them. We should pray that for each other. That’s what he was doing: Lord God, don’t just correct this person’s attitude. Help that person to have a better understanding of your will in your scripture. Speak to them through the Bible as they read their Bibles and pray. Speak to them, Lord God, through your word. Increase their knowledge of his will.

I know they don’t know what to do. Gordon and Molly never—how often do you, I mean, this brand new situation. How do they respond? Well, how they’re going to respond is based upon an understanding of the will of God. And they’ve never, you know, they’ve never had a situation where the truth of God’s word comes to as sharp relief in a particular case as this one. So, we pray that they may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom.

Wisdom is taking those truths of scripture and knowing how to apply them to the particular situation, right? So we pray for each other not just for content or knowing the doctrine but that we can apply this doctrine in the context of our lives, right?

And then finally spiritual understanding. This is a work of the Holy Spirit. And when we ask for people to know God’s will and have wisdom applying that to particular situations, we do it in the context of a reliance upon and a dependence upon the work of the Holy Spirit. And we do it for spiritual goals. At the end of the day, if our primary concern is physical reality, we lose. We all die. No prayers giving me more life is going to be answered for you. Okay?

But if you focus on your development spiritually, that cannot be taken away from you. That is eternal. So in whatever situation we’re praying for people about and when we pray for the growth of a church, we pray that they would grow in a knowledge of the word in a wisdom and how to apply that word and that their intentionality would be to have spiritual understanding with reliance upon the Holy Spirit and understanding that spiritual truths are the essence of this new creation that God has brought into effect.

So this is the same kind of thing we should be praying in for. To what end? He wants those things for them. But his asking is to a particular end. Not just so we can sit around and be satisfied. Not at all for that.

What’s the goal of that prayer for intercession? That you may walk worthy of the Lord. That’s the goal as we pray for Gordon and Molly today, right? As we pray for each other today, right? As we pray for conflict resolution, right? Yeah. Increased understanding of the word, its application in the context of the Holy Spirit, focusing on spiritual values, but to the end that our walk might reflect those things, that our walk might be worthy of the Lord, right?

So the whole point of it of those things is to get to the place where we’re actually functioning in a particular way—that we may walk worthy of the Lord. And amazingly, this is a walk that is fully pleasing. Not just pleasing. That’s amazing enough that we could please Jesus. Well, you may be much better than me. Maybe you’re not so surprised that you please Jesus real well. I can’t imagine it. I mean, I mean, I can. The word, it tells me what it’s like. But I mean, if you just step back for a minute, brothers and sisters: I know who you are. To think that our walk could be pleasing to Christ. Yay. Fully pleasing to him. Well, this is the cause of Alleluia, right?

I mean, you can walk in such a way. He expects you to walk in such a way. And you do walk in such a way, brothers and sisters. I’ve already said that—to where God, Jesus, is fully pleased with you. That’s the reality. And Paul wants more and more of that. As you encounter weirder and weirder situations and difficulties in life, he’s teaching us how to walk in a way that’s pleasing to Christ. Well, pleasing to him, right? Jesus delights in what we’re doing. Understand that. It’s a manifestation of the new creation and he is actively involved in it. He’s looking at what you do and you are fully pleasing to him.

Zephaniah 3:17, right? “The Lord your God is in your midst, mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will be well pleased with you.” He is well pleased. We give God praise today. And he rejoices over us with gladness. He’s rejoicing over Gordon and Molly, relying upon him with. He’s rejoicing over them with gladness. He’s doing it in your situation. Small, big, whatever it is. As you walk faithful, right? As you walk worthy, then you are fully pleasing to Christ and he rejoices over you with gladness.

He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing. We sing praises to God. He sings great singing of exaltation over your faithful walk, being pleased with what you do, being pleased with all those sacrifices you made this last week, with the sacrifices you’re making right now to come to worship, brethren. Doing something else for the sake of Jesus and one another to encourage each other. Jesus sees that. It is well pleasing to him. And the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit today sing with loud singing in response to this.

This is a walk. How? So, how do you do this? Well, how do you get him singing like that over you? Well, he goes on to say that this is a walk of fruitfulness and good works. “You’ll be well pleasing being fruitful in every good work.” So again, it’s not just your attitude. Jesus is exalting over you over your fruitfulness.

Back to new creation imagery: spirit, word, light, hearing, all that stuff. Yeah. You know, he rejoices over that as you are fruitful in every good work—things you do. Don’t ever think that your good works are not pleasing to Jesus. He sings with loud singing. That’s what this text seems to be saying. And it’s a walk strengthened by increasing knowledge as well. And next week we’ll start verse 15 and we’ll have a whole bunch of stuff Christology pointed out there. We’re going to increase in our knowledge of God’s word and of Jesus.

And the text here says that in verse 10 again, “increasing in the knowledge of God.” So those good works are again tied to a growing understanding, a knowledge of the God and wisdom, “strengthened with all might according to his glorious power.” So this intercession is to the end that you and I might be strengthened. We might be strengthened through a knowledge of the word. We might be strengthened in knowing that we’re called to live a walk well pleasing to him and he actually is pleased with us.

You know, we’re strengthened by being fruitful in the context of our lives, meaning good deeds done for other people. And so this strengthening comes by means of the word of God. Okay? There’s lots of philosophies, lots of ideas out there. They can be useful. They can not be useful. But ultimately, the strengthening that we have to do this fruitful work for Jesus that’s well pleasing—that strengthening has to come from an increasing knowledge of God.

Earlier, the knowledge of his will, which means explicitly an understanding of the scriptures and its application. The end result of this is patience. So verse 11: “For all patience and longsuffering with joy. Okay, patience and longsuffering—two different words, two different things. Patience has to do with circumstances. Longsuffering has to do with people. So whether it’s people or circumstances in your life: God wants you to have patience and forbearance. Okay? He wants you to hang in there. He wants you not to just chuck it in or react in the flesh or whatever you’re doing.

We’re strengthened so that we can have patience and longsuffering. Okay? So, you’re supposed to tough it out. You’re going to have things this week that are going to test your patience, your longsuffering. Gird up your loins, strengthen yourself with knowledge of this word to know that you can bear fruit in spite of those things. So gird up your loins, get ready to be patient and longsuffering this week. It will be tested, brothers and sisters. You know it will and some cases it’ll be tested severely when other people or circumstances happen around you.

But gird up your loins, right? And not just—okay, so the other thing he adds here is joy in the midst of difficulties, personal or circumstantial. He says, not only will God strengthen us by his word and by his spirit that this garden is hearty, okay? This garden isn’t—doesn’t fade off when the sun gets too hot, there’s not enough rain or too much rain—you’re a hearty garden, okay?

And this garden is hearty. And even when it’s difficult, when the storms are raging or when the drought happens, you can persevere and be longsuffering with joy. With joy. How? Only because you know that our hope is in heaven. Only because you know that God’s not going to let anything happen to you that’s outside of his providence. You don’t just suffer, you know, with a bad attitude or grumpy or you don’t do that at all. You suffer according to this text with joy.

Now, I know it’s another aspect: “Mourn with those that are mourning.” I get that. But ultimately, this is a characteristic of a growing thriving church. And a growing and thriving church has people that deal with circumstantial and personal problems with patience and forbearance, with joy.

And then finally in verse—well, not finally, but yeah, the kind of the last element is thankfulness. We’re back to thanks. Paul gave thanks. What are you supposed to do?

“Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” Okay, so we’re thankful again. Back to this idea of this doubling up stuff all over the place. We’re again back to this inheritance. Our lot. God has determined our lot. Okay? And that lot is reserved for us. It’s protected for us. It’s safe. It’s not assailable. It’s God’s lot for us. And we’re to be thankful for the lot, the place where God has placed us with those tough circumstances and tough people.

And then verse 13: “He has delivered us from the power or tyranny of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love.”

Why should you be thankful? You know, people get this wrong. Kingdom of darkness, kingdom of the Son. No, two different words. The power of darkness, which implies the tyranny of darkness. Darkness is monstrous. It’s evil. We tend to just look at it in not those terms. But darkness is where we lived apart from the saving grace of Jesus Christ. We couldn’t get out. It was a tyranny. It is a tyranny. Most people in Portland live in a tyranny of darkness and there’s no good telling them it’s not true. They suffer in the tyranny of darkness. Now part of that’s a result of their own sins. But there are spiritual forces of oppression and darkness—monstrous forces—and we were stuck in those.

But God—present, past tense—has taken us out of the tyranny of darkness. And brothers and sisters, apart from Jesus Christ men will always exercise tyranny. That’s what they do. Maybe in a lot of different kind of manifestations and stuff and it may be a lot of PR going on but men oppress one another—that’s what sinful men do—and God has delivered us out of that and he brought us into a kingdom, a well-ordered state of freedom and liberty, right? Children of God are free. We have great liberty it because it’s the kingdom of his beloved Son. We’re part of the kingdom of the beloved Son. What a contrast: monstrous tyranny of darkness and the kingdom of the beloved Son.

And we now are knights and ladies and we’re—you know, we’ve been brought into a kingdom that is so manifestly glorious. And it’s so glorious in contrast to what our sins deserve for us, the tyranny and oppression of men. Ah, can you not give thanks when you remember this? When you remember these gospels? It’s the gospel. This is good news. He’s accomplished these things. We’ve been brought out of tyranny into the beloved Son’s kingdom. Out of darkness, monstrous darkness, into the blessed freedom and bright light. Darkness and light, creation again, right? Light, kingdom, the blessedness of the beloved Son.

And then finally, verse 14: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

Bottom line: that’s how we move from here to here. It was God in his grace, created faith within us, caused faith to spring forth in the word of truth. And that word of truth is that Jesus has redeemed you from the tyranny of darkness, right? He’s forgiven your sins. He’s redeemed you from those powerful forces that oppressed you. And he’s forgiven your sins which oppressed you as well. You are part of the tyranny.

You know in the Lord’s prayer where it says “deliver us from evil”—it’s actually the evil one. And Rushdoony at least in his systematic theology thinks the evil one primarily in view there is ourselves. We need deliver. We need forgiveness of sins to deliver us from ourselves. We need redemption to deliver us from the powers of evil that are monstrous darkness of tyranny and oppression. And that’s exactly what Jesus has given to us.

How could we not be thankful? How could we not sing with joy today? How could we not come to rest and peace and rejuvenation with this message that the new creation has been affected. It’s growing inextricably, transforming the whole world, transforming all of your life, moving into more and more corners of your life. The beauty, not the darkness, but the beauty of the kingdom of the beloved Son is making itself manifest. That’s what we’re in the middle of.

We thank God for that, not as we ought, but as we are able. And he delights over us.

Let’s pray. Father, we are—words fail when we consider that we are fully pleasing to Jesus our Savior. Help us, Lord God, as we come forward now in response to your word. Open up, make a self-conscious commitment to open up more aspects of our lives that we’ve kind of kept hidden away from the kingdom. Bless us, Lord God, that the kingdom of the beloved Son, that light may penetrate into our darkest places that we still keep hidden from you. And bless us as we bring that light to this world, freeing men and women from the tyranny of darkness and from their own sins.

In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.