Thank you. Thank you, man.
I'm super excited. Like Pastor Andrew said, my name is Daniel Thompson. I'm the college director here at Mercy Hill. I mean, I've been blown away by what God is doing in our college ministry.
And if he gives me a minute on stage to say something about it, I can't not do it. You know, I mean, we saw the number of college students coming weekly to our gathering double from January to May. We had dozens and dozens of college students proclaim what Christ has done in their life through baptism this past semester. We saw the number of college students and staff overseas with our ministry partners, our sent ones, getting a heart for what God is doing all around the world, man.
Can we just praise God for what we're seeing? But I'm super excited for today for this sermon series. And I want to do this.
I want to set it up. I want to make sure that we really understand what we're going to be doing over the next few weeks. We're going to be in the Book of Colossians, if you don't know by now. We're going to have make sure that we're taking notes. And Christians, we ought to be note takers. We ought to digest what God has for us and mull it over week after week. We don't just want people who hear it.
We want people who do it. And so I want to challenge you to take notes. But Paul is writing this letter to the church in Colossae.
He's writing this letter. And in this time, there are a lot of pressures on them from the outside with something that theologians call the Colossian heresy. And this is exactly what the pressures were. But this is what we know. People were trying to convince them that even though they believed in Jesus for their salvation, there was higher things that they needed.
Whether it was Jewish influence on the outside telling them they had to keep some of the traditions or some Gnosticism teaching there was some higher form of spirituality. We don't know exactly what that was. But this is what Paul screams over and over and over again in this book is that what they need to know and what we need to know is this is that Jesus is more than enough. And this series cannot come at a better time. It could not because this is going to take us right up to our fall launch. And for me, this might be selfish to my ministry, but I think for our whole church, it does a lot for us.
Our college students are going to be coming back. And what would it look like if they stepped into a church where everybody who called mercy home lived like Jesus was more than enough for them. That they looked around, they saw adults, they saw children, they saw high school students living like Jesus was everything they needed. They weren't looking for satisfaction from their job. They weren't looking for people to satisfy them by thinking they have something to gain. That people wouldn't be looking at how their kids behave on how good of a parent they are, how worthy they are.
That they would see a church of people who say, I don't know anything but this, Christ and him crucified. And because of that, I have everything I need. My grandfather, he's from Dothan, Alabama, which is in the southern part of Alabama. And he moved to South Carolina. That's where I'm from.
So, country, that's all I can say. And he was taking me to this restaurant. It was a local spot. It was a really high-end restaurant.
I don't know if you guys have them here. It was called Golden Corral. It was, man, it was a delicacy.
That's the way it took me all the time. He loved it because he could pay $10 and stay there for hours for two, three meals, get your money's worth. But I remember he would just push play. He was a plate pusher, man. He was like, go get more, go get more, go get more.
He really wanted to get our bang for our buck. And I would be sitting there and I'd be getting lasagna and steak and mac and cheese and it's just all this weird play. And I loved it as a kid.
I absolutely loved it. But I would get so full. I'd be sitting there.
You know, when you kind of push away from the table and you're just like sitting, leaning back because you're like, if I take one deep breath, this button is gone. And I'm sitting there as a kid and my grandfather, without fail, without fail, after he would eat his corn missing his four teeth and I would laugh at him. After I'd see that, he would be like, do you want to get ice cream?
Do you want to get dessert? And every time, no matter how much food he ate, he would ask that and he would go get it. And I remember every single time I never got dessert because I would look at him and I'd be like, how could you want more?
How could you eat any more? But every time he got it, in my hope, in my prayer for this series over the next six weeks or so that we would begin as these weeks progressed, we would look back at our old self and be like, how could you have ever wanted more than Jesus? How could you have thought doing a little bit better at work could make you feel any closer to him? How could you have thought any service or lifting your hands in worship would make you better before him? How could you have thought being a marginally better parent would make you more worthy of the God who calls you into his kingdom and glory? And so with the absolute ridiculousness that I looked at my grandfather getting ice cream every week, I pray that we would retrospectively and introspectively look at our lives and say, Lord, woe is me that I ever wanted more than you. And what would it look like in our families, in our church, in our workplaces, in our schools, amongst our friends, in our very lives, if we actually had a deep-seated belief that we did not need one single thing apart from the God of the Bible and apart from what he's done in the personal work of Christ?
That's what we're going to see. And so before we really get into today's sermon, I would just love to pray over our series altogether. So would you go to the Lord with me? Jesus, God, I pray, God, as a sinful man speaking to sinful people, that God, you would open our eyes to the reality that we need you. And Lord, over the next six weeks, Lord, I pray that you would bring up things in our heart that we go to other than you, that we look for, for joy, that we look for, for satisfaction, for worth, for pleasure apart from you. And God, we would bring those to you and say, Lord, whatever you have to do, get that out of my life.
God, I pray, as we go into this fall semester, after this series, that every first-time guest, every student that comes in would say, I don't know anything about Mercy Hill Church, but I know they believe Jesus is more than enough. And God, you're the only one that can do it, and you're the only one worth praying to. And it's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Amen. So today we're going to be in Colossians 1. If you have your Bible, go ahead and open it up. Colossians 1, we're going to be looking at verses 1 through 14. And what we're going to learn over the next few weeks is that Colossians is one of the most theologically rich books in the entire Bible, specifically about the person and work of Christ, something called Christology, about who Jesus is, what he did, and what that means for us. And we're going to see that over the next few weeks, and it's going to go over and over and over again. But before Paul really gets to this deep, heady theological knowledge that we need to know, he kind of starts off on something, and this is our big idea in these first 14 verses that we need to see, it's that it's the gospel that produces spiritual fruit in and through you.
If you're taking notes, please write that down. The gospel produces spiritual fruit both in and through you. What he doesn't want us to think is this.
There's all this knowledge out there. There's all these things that we need to know about Jesus, and it's on you to know them and do something with them before he gets into all this incredible stuff like we're going to see that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Before we get to that, he says, but you got to remember in all the knowledge and everything that it's him who does the work in you and through you.
And that's what we're going to see today. So all I want to do is walk through these verses, and I want to point out what God wants to show us for this series. So let's begin in verse one. It says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God, our father.
You know, I went back and forth on whether or not I should stop right here, and I'm going to because I think I would mad at myself if I didn't. Something we need to know about the church in Colossae is it is probably of Paul wrote nine letters to churches to seven different churches in total. And of those churches, Colossae, by every single number, by every single thing that we know about them, they were the least significant, the least impactful, the least meaningful church that received a letter from Paul. If we were looking at what they did, I mean, we would say there's no way that they would be the church that received something Paul that's not a rebuke.
Most scholars agree that there was some earthquake or natural disaster that kind of decimated the city. Paul's never been there. He didn't plant the church. He's never met these people.
And so from everything that we're looking at, they're insignificant. There's no knowledge that they've done a lot for Paul. There's no knowledge they've prayed a lot for Paul. There's no knowledge that they've raised money for him.
They haven't really done anything. And this tells us a lot about the God we serve. It's that he doesn't value people or churches based on anything external or by anything you do.
And I know all of us feel like this from time to time. When we get in a sermon series like this about what God wants to do in us and through us, we all from at some point in our life, and some of us right now will think, man, I know he wants to do those things, but not through me. But not through me. I'm not the kind of person that God uses. I'm not skilled enough. I'm not influential enough. I'm not charismatic enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not skilled enough.
I don't know enough. And I'm sure the Church of Colossae felt the exact same way at times. But this is what the reality of this letter exists tells them and what it conveyed to them and what it conveys to us is this, that your worth is not found in your perceived significance. It's only found in your received salvation. Any worth that we have is not from people looking in at us and say they matter. It's not about anything we've done that people can point to and say, yeah, God would use that kind of person.
Every single thing that God wants to do in and through us is based solely on the fact that we have received salvation from him. And so as we enter places like this, I know first time guests, you can come in and you can feel like a fish out of water. I know people who come in every single week because of things that you can't clean up in your life, you feel like a fraud. And I know all of us from time to time can come in here and be like, man, I just don't belong here. But we've got to see in this is that everyone listening needs to know this, that the God of the universe has said you are enough for him. By virtue of this letter existing, he has said, you need to know I don't care how worthy you think you are. I care how worthy I think you are. And so if you're sitting here today and you're like, man, I'm not sure what you're talking about, why you're getting at this.
I needed to say this for this reason. We're going to belabor the point that Jesus is enough for you. We're going to go round and around again over and over. And my fear is that some of us won't even be able to process and digest the fact that he's enough for us because you don't feel like you're enough for him. And so if we don't address this on the front end, the reality is that you were enough because he came to die for you.
And that's the basis of it all. If that is true, then he's enough for every single other part of your life. And that's what Paul is making sure they hear is that, man, you might think you're insignificant.
But, man, God wants to use you and grow spiritual fruit in and through you. It was never about whether or not we were enough for him. It was always about the fact that he was enough for us.
And I want to make sure on the front end of this series that we understand that on a deep level. Let's continue going back to the sermon for this weekend. Verse three. It says, 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 of the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You know, Paul begins by saying that he's thankful for their faith. He's thankful for their hope.
He's thankful for their love. These are things that we've seen time and time again in letters that Paul has written. These are these are fruit that the spirit produces in the life of a believer. And they're absolutely incredible things. They're things that we should be thankful for. You know, it's one of those things that I find a lot of joy in seeing fruit in other people's lives. I know people that mercy you time and time again. Some of the things that have brought most joy to me is when they come and tell me things they see in me.
I know from all the events we do as a staff and we get together and we talk about them. The thing that stands out as we call out people that we see them growing in. It's one of the things that Paul models that we see. We get joy and we're thankful for the things that we see God producing in other people's lives.
And that's an awesome thing. But sometimes we can go straight there and we can miss what he says right before that. Look how he starts this thing. He says we always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. He doesn't say thank you for producing faith. He doesn't say thank you for being loving. He doesn't say thank you for the hope you've laid up in heaven. He says we want to thank God for all these things he produced in you. He gives all the credit to God for what is growing in the people in Colossae. He doesn't give any credit for the fruit that he's seeing in their life. And that's one of the things we've got to get is that God gets all the glory from the fruit that he produces in your life. It's not you.
We can't produce anything. But we have this propensity when we see that. We see, OK, your faith, your love, the hope that you've laid up in heaven.
And we think it's all me. I've got to do these things. If I don't do them, they won't happen. If I don't produce fruit, then they won't grow. But Paul is making it very clear to the Colossians that God is the one to be praised. He's the one to get all the glory for the fruit that he's produced in our lives.
And one of the best safeguards for this is to not let yourself forget what it would have been like and what it was like. I mean, before God was the one producing all this fruit. Let's keep going. It says of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed the whole world. It is bearing fruit and increasing as it does also among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. You know, Paul continues by saying, you know, this hope, this faith, this love, all these things you produce. They've been produced by the fact that you've understood and responded to the gospel. The gospel has done the work in you. He says when it came to you, you heard it, you understood it, and it produced fruit in your life. And so for us, if we're like, man, how do I make sure that I will give all the glory to God before for the fruit that he's producing in my life? We remember without the gospel, the faith that we have in Jesus would have been us just trying harder and harder and harder to show everyone that we're worthy enough. Without the gospel moving into life, the love that we have for one another would have been a pretense of falsehood because really what I get joy from is you falling.
And the hope that we have in heaven, man, that's not there for us. All it is, is can I have enough money? Can I have enough security? Can I have enough things?
Can my kids take care of me? And the safeguard to not giving God glory, if we want to make sure we give God glory, is we think about, man, where would I be if the gospel had not come to me? And all these things that push us to Christ, man, they would have all been pushing us to look inward. And so that's what Paul's trying to get them to see.
But, man, this is where we can miss it. So many times when I'm talking to believers and I'm talking to them about the gospel and I'm getting them to talk to me about the gospel, they'll start by saying, you know, our sin, talking about our sin and our need for a savior, which is 100 percent correct. They'll go on and they'll talk about how Jesus came and lived the life that we couldn't live and died the death that we deserve. One hundred percent. Awesome.
Right there with you. And then they'll talk about how he rose from the dead and he offers us eternal life with God to spend time if we'll believe that Jesus is who he says he is and did what he said he did. And that's all correct. But it ends there when they talk about the gospel. And I'll say, OK, but what about our life after salvation? And they'll say like, oh, yeah. And they'll begin to talk about the things we ought to do and be. You've got to be more loving, got to be more kind. You've got to be more generous. You've got to go to church, be a community group, serve, which are, again, godly, incredible things.
But what's happened here is they'll look back at me from time and they'll be like. What do you mean, what motivates you? I'll ask them, well, how do you do those things like you're a Christian? Just do them.
Just do them. And I think this is the disconnect is that we forget and we don't realize that the thing that saved us is the thing that grows us. That the thing that brought us in is the thing that keeps us in and moves us along.
It's not that you've gotten in. It's not that the gospel saved you. And now all this fruit that we're called to produce is 100 percent on us. Paul is showing us here and we can't miss this is that the gospel that saves you is the gospel that grows you. The gospel is something you need once for salvation is something you need every single day for sanctification. We like to say it like this here is that you don't grow beyond the gospel. You just grow deeper into it. You don't grow beyond it.
You just grow deeper into it. But what we have to what we miss from time to time is we think the gospel is just the diving board into the Christian faith. It's not the diving board.
It's a swimming pool. It's the thing that we continue to swim and enjoy and find growth in. So when we talk about the gospel, we've got to understand this. It's the same motivation. That saves us, that pushes us to surrender to Jesus is the same motivation that pushes us to grow in Jesus.
You know, we've got these tomato plants here. And the reason that this is so important to understand the reason that it's important to understand the gospel is we don't grow beyond it. We just grow deeper into it is because we miss it has deep ramifications.
We miss it. It's like going to this potato, this tomato plant and seeing it and saying like, OK, it's here, but I've got to produce the fruit. I've got to be the one producing fruit. So we from time to time will get our tomatoes with our stems and we'll begin to put it on something like this. And we say, OK, I've got to produce the fruit.
I've got to produce the fruit. And it's on there. And we feel good about ourselves. And we sit back and we're like, good. And the problem is everybody else looks on the outside and they see, oh, they're a little they're kind of a more loving person. They're kind of a more generous person.
They're kind of a better person. And we're like, see, look at my fruit. But the problem is it's going to rot.
It's going to die. And so what happens? You've got to staple more fruit on. You've got to staple more fruit on, the more fruit on. And what it begins to do is it begins to cultivate this fatigue and this exhaustion in you. And I've had people come to me like I'm doing all the right things. But when I look at the other people that are doing the right things with me, they seem to be joyful and I seem to be exhausted. It's because we miss this reality that the fruit will never, ever bleed back in and change the root.
It will never do it. And from afar, this is the problem, because we've elevated fruit above the father from afar. If you were standing in the back of the room looking at this, you're like, that's the plant I want to be. And so we try to mimic this, not knowing it's going to lead to our absolute destruction. It's going to lead to fatigue.
But really, where this one has these small budding green tomatoes, when we pour water on this and we cultivate this, they will grow and they will flourish. But this is what happens when you think the gospel is only for your salvation, not your sanctification, when you grow beyond the gospel and you don't continue to be rooted deep in the gospel. I know people here, we talk all the time about the Acts 2 flywheel, gather, group, give, go. And there are so many people like, man, I'm doing it. I'm going to church. I'm showing up in community group. I'm talking a little bit.
I give a little bit of money. I've gone on a mission trip and nothing, absolutely nothing is doing it. What happens is this, we're missing the motivation. We forget what got us in.
We forget the thing that got us there. And so we're trying to do all these things on a different motivation. I know people have used this illustration from time to time. You may have seen it where pastors will have suitcases and they'll talk about the baggage and the things you carry and the things you try to lug around. Well, before you're a Christian, what you're trying to do is you're trying to prove your worth. You're trying to say, I'm good enough.
I got all these things. And it gets exhausting. But every single person here who Christ calls Christ Lord, what we've done is we've come to the cross.
He says, hey, you got to lay those things down and you've got to surrender and you've got to surrender. And so we do it. And that's the gospel.
Right. We're good gospel. But the problem is, Christians, we're very good at this. The second we step past the cross, we're very good at picking up new bags. We're very, very good at picking up new bags. Like, yeah, I don't have the bags to prove that I'm worthy enough for God, but I do. I'm going to pick up the bags to show everyone else I'm worthy enough for God. I'm going to pick up the bags to say, God, I'm going to produce the fruit. Look, I'm going to be more loving to people. I'm going to be more kind to people.
I'm going to be more generous. I'm going to lift my hands in worship, even when things are going bad, to show everybody I've got it all together. I'll even come to the altar and pray from time to time, God. What you don't realize is you've picked up a different motivation. If you want to continue to grow in the gospel, surrender got you in, and surrender will keep you going. But we often believe that, okay, surrender that got me in and service is going to grow me.
But that's not it. I mean, it is the ongoing surrender, a daily dying to self. Because the gospel that saves you is the gospel that grows you.
Here's the way I like to think about it. How do I know? How do I know if I've grown beyond the gospel?
How do I know if I'm trying to do it myself? If surrender was easier for you when you got saved than it is now, man, you might have grown beyond the gospel. If surrender is harder for you, the longer you've walked with Jesus, you may have grown beyond the gospel a little bit. And so what we have to ask ourselves this is, say, God, would you help me surrender again? Would you bring me back to the thing that saved me? Would you bring me back to the thing that got me, that brought me in?
When we look at the gospel, we should say, yes, I am sinful and I need a savior. Yes, Jesus did have to do everything necessary to save me. He did live the life I couldn't live and did die the death I deserve.
He did rise again and offer me a new life. And that motivated me to surrender. And it's the same thing that's going to motivate me to surrender every single day of my life. But as Christians, we hear it so often that we almost get tired of it. What we can't do is we don't ever grow beyond the gospel.
Let's continue in verse nine. Paul has just finished talking about that the gospel has produced fruit in them. And it's only the gospel. It's the gospel that has produced the fruit. It's the gospel that is going to produce fruit.
It's all about the gospel and God gets all the glory for it. And so we come to this phrase, and so whatever he's about to talk about is based on the fact that the gospel is doing everything. And so when he calls them to walk in this manner worthy, it's not based on anything other than God has produced fruit in you. But so many of us, when we hear that, we think about God wanting to do something in us, we think we have to work and work and work and work.
Or we go the other way and say, God saved me so I don't have to do anything. What we can see here and what Paul is getting at is that if the gospel has produced fruit in you, he wants to produce fruit through you. If God has done something in your life, he wants to do something through your life. The fruit that God has produced, the fruit that God has produced in you is not just for you.
It's for the body. And if you're a follower of Jesus, God does not just want to do something in your life. He wants to bless others through it.
The gospel wants to go to the ends of the earth. God's plan is for every tribe, tongue, and nation to know him. And he has chosen for some reason to do that through people like us. He has chosen to use flawed, broken, sinful people to redeem the world by the virtue and the word of his son.
But even when we think of the ends of the earth, that's like, okay, good, mission trip, all that stuff. He wants to change people in your life. He wants to change people in your family. He wants to save people that you work with, that you go to school with. And if we don't understand that what God has done in us pushes us to let God do something through us, then we might miss what God wants to do in our life. Man, God might want to use you to be the mouthpiece that leads someone in your family, someone you work with, someone you know, a friend to the gospel. But oftentimes for myself, I think God saved me.
That's enough. I mean, if he's done something in me, man, he wants to do something through us. Man, I want to read verse 10 again really quick. It says, to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. And this phrase, walk in a manner worthy, it messed with me for years of my life.
It did. Growing up, the church I was in, the student ministry was called 212 Student Ministry. Now everybody just calls it your church students because it's cool. But it was called, we had cool names, 212 Student Ministry. It was based on 1 Thessalonians 2.12. Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord who calls you into his kingdom and glory. And I remember seeing that was plastered on our wall.
And no one told me this, but I saw that. And I was like, okay, I've got to do a lot of things to prove to everyone and prove to God that I'm worthy of him. And this messed with me for a long time. I know we read things like this, that live a life fully pleasing to him.
You're like, how in the world could I live a life pleasing to God? And it weighs on us. And it's hard. And I struggled with that through college.
I struggled with that even coming on staff at Mercy Hill. But it wasn't until I had kids that God began to flip this switch in my life. I've got a 17-month-old named Rowan and every single morning I give her a bottle. And her crib, she's an absolute maniac. She throws all her pacifiers 40 feet around the room in the middle of the night.
But what I do is I'm like, hey, can you go get your pacifier and put it in the crib? And she waddles over. And every single one she gets, she puts it in there and she looks back at me and she grins and she claps. And then I clap for her and she goes against another pacifier and puts it back in the crib. And she looks back and she grins and she claps. And she does that over and over and over again.
And that's, it reminded me, I was like, man, this is what it is. It did not change any amount of love I felt towards her. It did not change the fact that she was my daughter. It didn't make her more my daughter. It didn't make her more loved by me.
But what it did is this. It made her more satisfied in me that she knew that she knew that she was living obediently. And so in the same way, John Piper said it this way. It's that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Man, when God calls us to walk in a manner worthy of God, pleasing to him, man, it is not to try to get God to love us. But it's because he loves us that we desire with joy to walk worthy. Man, my daughter, she does not have to do anything to make me love her. But because she knows that I love her, man, she wants to do the things I ask her to do.
Not every time, but she does in this instance. And that's our motivation for growth. Man, if you're sitting here and your motivation to grow is anything other than the fact of what God has done to you. I know at MercyO Church, man, we talk all the time. We want a lot of people in here and we want to send a lot of people. We want to multiply campuses. We want to multiply churches. We want to do absolutely incredible things.
But not because people will look at us and say, good job. But so that we could look at our Father and say, because you've loved us, God, we are completely and utterly satisfied in you. If you did nothing else ever in the life of MercyO, if you did nothing else for me, it was more than enough. And from that, we can walk worthy, fully pleasing to him, not because we got to earn something, but because he's already given us everything. But we got to get that because if not, we'll continue to work and work. But that's the motivation that we pray as individuals for growth. That's why we pray for others to grow. That's why we pray as a church to grow. And that's why the gospel wants to continue to produce fruit in us. Not so we could look impressive to other people so that God could be glorified in the fact that we're satisfied in him. But some of us miss it.
Some of us miss that fact. When we talk about these plants, one of the things, the reality that we have to understand is, man, being satisfied in him is understanding that he's going to give the growth. Trying to please him is staple on fruit and say, God, look at me, I'm good enough. For the vast majority of my life, I stapled on fruit to my life. And what it led me to was, man, I began to rot as a Christian. I didn't lose my salvation. I didn't lose anything. But then I lost my desire to know him. I lost my desire to be close to him. Because then when you continually staple on fruit on your life.
I mean, it doesn't do anything to help you actually grow it. But let's continue on. He says, bearing fruit in every good word and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy. You know, these are some of the things that Paul is praying for. He started off by thanking God for them, and then he continues by praying for them. But one of the things that kind of stood out to me as I'm reading this, he says, be strengthened for all endurance and patience. And Paul is kind of he's hinting that, man, you're going to need to be strong. You're going to need to endure.
You're going to need to be patient. And one of the reasons that I think even people who desire fruit, like godly people that desire to grow fruit by the gospel. One of the reasons we struggle to do that is because they have a bad we have a bad understanding of how it actually arrives in our life. We have a bad understanding of how fruit is actually produced. You know, Paul has mentioned there might be some difficult situations that are coming up and fruit is never really given before the situation is produced through and in the situation.
And I don't think we're understanding what I'm saying. A lot of times we're like, God, there's these things coming up in my life. Can you make me more patient in those things?
He's like, no, I'll make you more patient because of those things. God, I want to be strong. I want to be more loving. Well, man, I'll give you opportunities to exercise that love.
I'll give you opportunities to do it. And we don't like that. But this is the reality we have to know is that spiritual fruit is grown. The idea that it's cultivated. Man, stuff is dug out. Soil is tilled. Roots are planted deep. The vines grow. It has to push out all this stuff of our life for fruit to be grown. That doesn't happen.
Man, a lot of times without hardship. Man, more than anything, we run from it. One of my favorite facts, one of the favorite things that stands out to me is that the way that cows and bisons approach storms.
It's amazing. Cows and bison both live in these open fields. And when a cow sees a storm cloud coming off in the distance, they get terrified and they run the opposite way. And they begin to walk. But what happens is the storm cloud catches up with them. And so as they're going with the storm cloud, they end up spending way longer in the storm than they should have. But when bison see a storm cloud coming far off, what they do is they've learned to run to the storm. And what happens is as they're going to the storm, the storm cloud hits them and goes over them and they spend way less time in it than the cows do. And somehow they've learned that the good grass is on the other side of the storm.
And my fear is that so many Christians were living like those cows. We're like, God, you would never want me to go through anything hard. God, you would never want my friends to think less of me.
You would never want me to have to end this relationship that's unfruitful. So I'm going to run and we're like, God, I'm in this storm. I don't know how to get out of it.
I don't know what to do. It's like you're running away from what I have for you on the other side of it. And so some of us beg for fruit and we beg for God to do these things in our life. And most of the time, a lot of the time, what God has for us is on the other side of a storm.
It's on the other side of a hardship, on the situation that's right in front of you. A lot of us at work, well, this is what happens. And I feel it.
I know everybody's feel it. Family members have taught me about this. The desire sometimes to get a promotion will make you not stand up for what you believe in because it might ostracize you. And the desire for our kids to be well-liked might mean that we don't discipline them in a such a way because it's probably a little harder than just letting them do it. And there's hundreds of things like that that when we see for me in college, it was standing up for my faith around my friends.
I was like, God, there's no way you'd want me to live lonely. But when I look at the Bible, every single apostle was isolated because God oftentimes, most times, grows us through the situation, not before it. But so many of us in here, man, we're missing the fruit that God wants to grow in our lives.
It's because we see hard times in front of us and we're running the other way. And so for every single believer, if you believe that Jesus is more than enough and that's what he wants for you, we ought to run it, like Paul says, with joy. He doesn't say just with patience. He doesn't say just with strength. He doesn't say just with endurance.
He says with joy. Because when you understand that Jesus is more than enough for you and not your comfort, the storm is not a bad thing. If we actually want to be refined, the fire is good. If we actually want to produce fruit, the hardship is good.
If we actually want God to grow us, the cultivation is good. And so believers, mercy, they call mercy a home. Over the next six weeks, I want to challenge you, run into it. And say, God, I don't know how hard this is going to be. I don't know how long the storm is last. But God, I believe this deeply, the good grass is on the other side.
I believe that, and we're going to run into it. But man, let's continue on. Let's apply this, starting in verse 12. He says, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.
Man, this is a rich, rich passage. What does he say? He says he has qualified you. He has delivered you. He has transferred you. He has redeemed you. He has forgiven you.
That's a sermon in itself. Man, for the believer in the room that's sitting here and you're like, man, I believe God has saved me. I just don't think he can do the things through me that you're telling me he's going to do.
Well, look at it here. He said he has qualified you for everything. And there's a classic cliche Christian saying that I think is the most applicable here. God does not call the qualified. He qualifies the called. If you feel like you are not worthy enough to do the things that God is wanting to do in you, if you don't feel like, man, I'm not that person that God wants to do things through, man, he just said that the gospel is increasing and bearing fruit all around the world.
Man, that's not going to be through me. What I'm going to tell you this, if he's called you, if he's produced fruit in you, he wants to do it through you and he qualifies you for it. And then to the unbeliever, man, Paul says here, he talks about being delivered, redeemed, forgiven. And we're talking about fruit. What I don't want to happen is you say, OK, cool, fruit's the goal.
Let me do this. And before we get to what he produces in us, man, we've got to talk about is he in us? Man, have we been redeemed?
Have we been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light? Have our sins been forgiven? Believer and unbeliever alike, we're talking about what God wants to do in us. We're talking about all this fruit he wants to bear and we want to pray for it. We're talking about all the good things he wants to cultivate us and we want to pray for it. Man, we talk about wanting to be forgiven, redeemed, unbeliever. We're talking about wanting to be saved, wanting to be redeemed and forgiven. We want all these things.
What I don't want us to do is I don't want us to elevate those things above the gospel. There's an illustration that we talk about quite a bit. I mean, it's a story about a father or a man who has this woman that he loves and they fall in love and they have a kid. And the woman, they get pregnant, they have a baby, and the father is so excited. When the child is born, the doctors give the baby to the father and they tell him to get out of the room. And the mother is dying and the father is praying. He's like, please, please don't let this happen, and the mother dies.
He's completely broken over it, but he knows the one way that he can love his wife the best is by loving his son. And so he loves his son and he develops the boy and he grows the boy and he pours all his love and affection into his son. And the boy grows up to love the father.
But when the boy is 16 years old, he's driving and he gets a car wreck and he dies, and it absolutely crushes the man. And he begins to live as a shut in. He's lost his wife. He lost his son. He was a wealthy man, but, man, he just didn't want anything this world had to offer. And so he lived out his days and he died. He had no heir.
He had no one to give it all to. He had paintings, he had Rembrandts, he had Van Goghs, he had Bentleys, all these crazy cars. So what happened was they had an estate sale and people came from all over to bid on what this man had, the things this man had that they wanted. And they get there and people in a room quite like this, and the auctioneer stands up and he pulls up the first item.
And it's a picture of the son, a painting that the man had done of his son. And everyone who's coming is like, man, I didn't come for that. I came. I want the other things. I want all the things the other man had.
I want those things. And so they're sitting there and the auctioneer goes, we'll start the bidding at $50. And everyone's dead silent. He goes, $50, anyone, anyone, $50 for this painting. And finally, to save the family from any more embarrassment, this lady raised her hand who was a nanny for the boy. And she goes, I'll pay the $50. And he goes, $50 going once, $50 going twice, sold, $50. And everybody's like, phew. Now to the stuff we actually came for, now to the good things that we actually wanted.
And as they're sitting there getting their wallets out, the auctioneer hits the gavel again and he says auction closed. And everyone's confused and looking around and he pulls up the will of the father. And the first line, he reads it aloud and he said, whoever gets the son gets it all. And for us today, man, we're talking about producing fruit in and through us. We're talking about being redeemed and saved and all these things that God wants to do it. But man, we don't get any of those things without getting the son. And so if you're here this weekend and we're listening to all these things that God wants to do in and through us, man, let's don't go past starting point.
Let's don't go past the beginning. Man, do you look to Jesus? Do you see your sin before a holy God and say, God, there is no way you could ever love me. And he looks back at you and says, but I put my love on you even when you weren't lovely.
I've died to make you lovely. And he lives that life you couldn't live. All the time as you rebelled, he was treated like a rebel. And he dies that death he deserved. The ways that your sin had incurred, he paid it for you. And he died and he rose again and he offers you eternal life. And so before we say, God, I want you to produce fruit in me and through me, what we have to say first is, God, I want you.
I want the son. And so when I ask a question and this will answer this throughout the week, I want us to ask this to her as you're driving in the car and you're talking with friends, I want to answer this question with each other. It's what is producing fruit in your life? Is the fruit that's being produced in your life based on the fact that you have the son? That the gospel has done something in you? Or do you come here every week and even though life is terrible? And even though hardship has come and even though you're exhausted, even though you have nowhere else to go, man, you're just stapling fruit.
Stapling fruit. And you're trying to look like you've got it all together. And what he's calling us to do is say, no, no, no. And if you want that, you've got to get the son.
You've got to get the son. And so as we go to a time of worship after this, what I want to do is I want to challenge everyone at Mercio. Every week we ask people, man, come to the altar and pray.
Come ask God to do something in your life. And I'll see people come up and I'll even come up and prayed and gone back. But I want to make sure we understand what this is symbolizing. And we say come to the altar. An altar in the Old Testament was where sacrifice was made, where they offered sacrifices to God. And luckily, because of Jesus, we don't have to do that anymore.
He is the final sacrifice. But we still call it the altar because of this. I want to challenge everyone to come down and say, God, the thing in me that wants to produce fruit on my own, that wants to grow beyond the gospel, the thing in me that wants to more than you, the thing that doesn't think you're good enough.
God, I want to bring it up here. And when things go on the altar, they don't get up. And so I want to come to the altar. I want to lay that down and say, God, I'm not getting up until you kill it. Because if we go over the next six weeks, if we go week after week and we're asking God to do something in our life, but we're not giving it to him saying, God, you got to do it for me. Man, we're just going to be stapling fruit. And so if you're here, I don't ask with families.
I don't ask with a friend that you came with by yourself. Let's be real and say, Jesus, I want you to be more than enough. So you've got to get everything in me that wants more than you out. And so my prayer is that this altar will be full of people laying things down and saying, God, you've got to kill it.
You've got to kill it. So as I pray, ask yourself the question, what's producing that fruit? Is it the gospel? Or is it your desire to look the part? Is it the family that you have that people look at? Is it the way that you live your life? Is it the money that you have?
Is it all the success? Is it the things that you want more than Jesus that's producing fruit that you've stapled on? Or is it the gospel growing and producing fruit and abounding and abounding and increasing? And if it's anything other than the gospel, if you have any temptation to go beyond the gospel, I mean, let's bring it to the altar. Would you pray with me? Jesus, God, tonight I ask, Lord, that every single person here, that, God, as we see what the gospel calls us to, that it calls us to lay our life down, that, God, we would not grow beyond that, that, God, we would not begin to think that the gospel is good enough to save us, but it's not good enough to grow us. Lord, I also pray for the people in here that, like myself, we can want the things you want to give us. We can want the love that you want to grow in us. We can want the joy that you want for us and the peace that you want for us.
God, more than we want you. And so, Lord, I pray that we would be a church, that when people look at us, the one thing they would know about us is, man, God has done everything in them, and they believe that Jesus is more than enough for them. So, Lord, as we sing, Lord, let them be more than just words. God, as we pray, let it be more than just action. And, Lord, as we bring things to the altar to ask you to do it in us, God, let it not be a performance. Because, God, you're the only one who can do it. You're the only name worth praying to. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
