What Makes Christians So Great? - Part A

The ancient world was cruel. It was sadistic. It was autocratic. It was filled with slavery.

It deprecated the role of women. Christianity came in, brought new values, new ethics, because people now believe that all men were created equal and are in the image of God, and that system elevated every society that it penetrated. There's no question, the world is better off because of Christians. But what makes you so unique as a believer? Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip examines Colossians to answer that very question. But first, we want to tell you about a resource that will help you better understand and follow God's will. What is God's will for your life? Skip Heitzig has biblical direction. The will of God is not some mystical, impractical, ethereal process that makes you weird. It is not a maze.

It is not a puzzle that you have to put together and figure it out. In fact, sometimes the will of God is so plain and straightforward, the Bible just tells you what the will of God is. Shed the Bible's bright light on your path ahead with Discovering God's Will, an eight message package from Pastor Skip. You can uncover and understand what the Lord wants to show you about his will.

It's not always easy, but the answers are in there. We want to send you these insightful messages as thanks for your gift today to support Connect with Skip Heitzig and help expand this teaching ministry to more major cities in the US in 2023. So request your copy when you give today and begin to let God direct your path for your good and his glory. Just call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash offer.

That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in Colossians one as Skip kicks off today's teaching. Well, some of the greatest men and women who have ever lived on this earth have been Christians and we enjoy their legacy, all of the central values and institutions that we cherish in Western civilization, whether it's representative democracy or the abolition of slavery or compassion for the weak or the dignity and equality of women or the education of the young or the rights of workers for fair pay or health care, the introduction of hospitals by Christians in the sixth century or prison reform.

All of them have their roots in people who are followers of Jesus Christ. The ancient world was cruel. It was sadistic. It was autocratic.

It was filled with slavery. It deprecated the role of women. Christianity came in, brought new values, new ethics because people now believed that all men were created equal and are in the image of God and that system elevated every society that it penetrated. Also, some of the greatest thinkers and scientists have also been ardent Christians, people like Sir Francis Bacon, Copernicus, Johann Kepler, Galileo, Rene Descartes, Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, Pascal, Michael Faraday, Kelvin, Louis Pasteur, on and on and on. The noted historian from Yale University, Kenneth Scott Latourette, once said, speaking of the influence of Jesus Christ, he said, through him, that is through Jesus, movements have been set in motion which have made in society for what mankind believes to be its best, gauged by the consequences which have followed the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ have been the most important events in the history of man. Measured by his influence, Jesus is central in the human story. This is so stark that even Dinesh D'Souza in his great book, What's So Great About Christianity, said, even the atheists should say, thank God for Christianity. But what makes Christians so great is not their scientific achievements, it's not their social contributions, it's not their philosophical advancements.

What makes Christians so great? Well, that is the theme of the paragraph that we're about to look at. It is what is going on in the life of his people transformed by the gospel. Now, we're going to look at verse three through verse eight, six verses. Six verses in the English Bible, in the Greek language, it's one long sentence. My language teacher would never let me get away with that, but this is Paul the Apostle, and it's Greek, so that's how it is written.

One long sentence because it forms a thought. So let's begin in verse three. Where he is giving thanks, we give thanks to God, the 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 learn 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. Paul begins by saying, thank God. Now remember, this letter was written from jail. Paul is a prisoner in Rome.

Anytime anyone from jail is thankful for anything, it's noteworthy. And Paul is often want to do those kinds of things. It's one of the great features of Paul the Apostle. No matter what is going on in his life personally, no matter what pain or incarceration he is experiencing, or for that matter, what's going on in the church of Rome, no matter what's going on in the church of for that matter, what's going on in the church of Colossae, like all that weird false teaching, he can always find something to thank God for.

We noted that last week. Yes, there are false doctrines and there are false believers, but there are also real ones, authentic ones. And for those, he says, we give thanks to God. If I only see problems, I'm a pessimist. If I only see blessings, I'm an optimist.

But if I see problems and blessings, and I am thankful for those blessings and focus on those blessings, I'm a spiritual realist. That's a great trait of Christianity, and Paul was good at that. Now Paul never visited, as we said last week, Paul never visited the town of Colossae.

He did not start the church there. He had never met these new believers face to face, but he had heard enough about them from Epaphras to make this assessment that we have just read. And these verses give us five traits that make Christians great. And by the way, it's not just true of those in Colossae. This is true of anyone who's a real believer and follower of Jesus Christ.

It's true. I could pick anyone, but I'm going to…Santi, I'm going to pick on you. Can I do that? Would you come on up here? This is Santi. He's one of our youth pastors here at Calvary. Santi, you ready for a test?

I'm going to ask you a few questions. Have you heard the gospel? When you heard the gospel, did you believe it? Not at first.

But eventually you did. That's good because you're a pastor and we want to make sure that you believe. So you heard the gospel, you believed it. Next question. Do you love God's people? You love church people.

That's not always easy to do, but you do. Okay. So you have a love for God's people.

Next question. Are you looking forward to going to heaven? Yes, I really am. So you have hope beyond this earth. You have hope in heaven.

Have you ever shared your faith with anyone? Yes. Okay. So you passed the test.

Congratulations. You're a great Christian. Now, I could ask any of you who are followers of Jesus those same questions, and I would get similar answers. You heard, you believed, you have love, you have hope, and you are productive.

And we want to look at those five here. So what makes Christians so great? First, they're exposed to a great gospel. Now, look at verse five with me. Look at the end of it, the second part of verse five, where Paul makes note of, you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel.

They heard a message. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. You heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel. And then notice in verse six, which has come to you, verse six toward the end, since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth, verse seven, as you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf.

So once again, Epaphras was a citizen of Colossae. He went to go hear Paul, the apostle, 80 miles away when Paul was in Ephesus for three years. He liked what he heard. He believed what he heard. It transformed his life. He went back to Colossae and shared the gospel with his, I don't know, family, friends, gas station attendant, guys he works out with at the gym, camel washer, whatever it was. He shared his faith with people in that town. And now, because of that hearing of the message, a church has developed.

Let me give you a couple notes about this before we keep going. The church was started by Epaphras, not Paul. And I just want to let you know that God doesn't always need an apostle to start a church or to get his work done. It's not like, well, you can't do that unless it's sanctioned by the protocols of this organization. You can do whatever God tells you to do, whatever God calls you to do.

The church at Colossae was not started by Paul. It was started by Epaphras. You know, a lot of church planters today, sort of the going thing is you develop a social media campaign first. Then you get a core group together.

And then you have a launch date set. And hopefully, in the meantime, you raise support so you can go full-time. When I started this church, I was a layman.

I worked in the medical field. I got a job in this town and started a Bible study and watched. So I had no clue how to do church. I know some of you are thinking, you still have no clue how to do church. Well then, to God be the glory. So it was started by Epaphras, not Paul.

God doesn't always need an apostle to do it. Second, I think it would have been a lot easier for Epaphras to stay in Ephesus and not go back home to Colossae. Ephesus is where the action was. That's where Paul was. That's where good teaching happened.

That's where a lot of fabulous things were going on. But he did go back. We don't exactly know why. It could be just, I feel led to go back home. Or, here's a thought, maybe it was Paul who told him to go back home.

I mean, maybe he said to Paul, hey Paul, I've just received your message. Hi, my name's Epaphras. Listen, you've never been to Colossae.

That's where I'm from. Why don't you leave Ephesus, come to Colossae and start a church there? And maybe Paul said, better yet, why don't you go back and start a church?

It's burning in your heart. You want to see that happen? I'll pray for it.

Go for it. I wouldn't doubt that that happened. In fact, there's a little bit of precedent for that in the New Testament.

Remember the guy who was demon-possessed? Jesus delivered, and he begged Jesus that he might be with him. And Jesus said to him, go back home and tell your friends and family the great things God has done for you and how he has had compassion on you. And so, he went back and he spoke, and they were exposed to that gospel. That is the word that Paul uses here, the word of the truth of the gospel. Now, that word gospel is used 100 times in the New Testament.

73 of those times, Paul uses it. So, other people use it, but Paul loved that word. And you know what the word gospel means. Tell me, what does the word gospel mean?

It means the good news. Most of us know that. Most Christians know gospel means good news.

That's sort of where we stop in our understanding. What's the good news exactly? The good news is that Jesus solved the problem. That's the good news.

The good news is we have a problem. Jesus solved the problem of our sin through his death, burial, and resurrection. That's the gospel in a nutshell.

He solved that problem. The gospel, if we want to talk about this in business terminology, the gospel is our product. It's what we do. It's what Christians do. It's what Christians focus on and center on more than anything else. It's the gospel.

That's our product. We're not all about community service, though we do that, and it's important. We're not all about fellowship, though we do that, and that's important.

It's not about having a pancake breakfast. We do the gospel. It's about the good news that Jesus solved mankind's problem. It was the gospel that changed Paul's life. It turned him from Saul of Tarsus to Paul the apostle.

It made him from a persecutor to a preacher, and consequently, it changed the life of Epaphras and Philemon from this town, and they in turn went back, and they spoke that message, and others heard it, and others heard it, and they were changed. So the first step to a great life in this world is to hear the greatest message in the world, and that's the gospel. Romans chapter 10, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they hear or call on him in whom they have not believed, and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher? So a preacher gets sent.

The preacher preaches. People hear, and that's how the gospel is spread. So this is important because it tells us that salvation is both a divine work as well as a human work, and it's funny how people kind of want to just get stuck on one side of that balancing equation. It's all God's work. It's predestination.

It's election. It is, but it's also evangelism. It's also people speaking the message, speaking the word, preaching the gospel. You've heard me over the years say this, so it's not new to some of you, but I'm just going to repeat myself. I have never liked the saying that people seem to fawn all over these days. It goes like this, preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words. And people think, oh, that's so cool. It looks so good on a greeting card.

It does sound kind of cool. It happens to be wrong. You always need to use words. When somebody says preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words only reveals that he's embraced a version of Christianity where words don't matter. Listen, Jesus did not say go into all the world, period. He said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Preach the gospel.

He didn't say go into all the world and hug people and smile at them. Give them a message. Tell them how to get from earth to heaven.

Give them accurate instruction. That's what preaching the gospel is. So Epaphras did that. He preached, and people heard the great gospel of Jesus Christ. So that's number one. They're exposed to a great gospel. Second, they experience a great Christ. Once a person hears a message of the truth of the gospel, look at verse four, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus.

Stop there. Once a person hears truth, they either believe it or don't believe it. Or like Santi, you didn't believe it at first, but at some point you believed it. And when you believed it, that was the contact point of salvation.

Faith is the contact point. When a person believes what they hear in terms of the gospel, they experience salvation. Romans 10 verse 9, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. The Bible says believe in the name of the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. So people hear, people believe.

But notice something. Go back to our verse and notice that Paul is very specific about the faith that he is referring to. It's objective faith. He didn't say just, we've heard of your faith, but your faith in Christ Jesus. Now this is very important and one thing you'll discover in Colossians is that Paul makes a big deal out of Jesus because the false teachers that we talked about last week gave you that background introduction. They were trying to take Jesus away from the preeminent position.

So Paul keeps putting him in his rightful place. It's not just faith, it is faith in Christ Jesus. People these days say things like, you just got to have faith.

Period. Just got to have faith. Man, you just need to believe.

Really? Believe in what? Have faith in what? Faith in faith? Faith has no intrinsic value in itself. Faith is only as good as its object. I can place my faith in the universe. A lot of people talk about that. I'm just going to throw it out to the universe, man, and trust the universe.

I'm not. You can place your faith in faith or you can place your faith in humanity. You can place your faith in a banana peel.

They won't help you. Your faith has to be in someone who can actually help you, who can actually fix you. So it's faith in Christ Jesus. So it has to be objective faith in him, but something else. It has to be authentic faith, real faith.

I would call it raw faith. It's what Paul said in Romans chapter 10. He said, if you believe in your heart, that means in the core of your being. Faith doesn't mean to acknowledge. Oh yes, I acknowledge there is a God. I believe in God in some superficial acknowledgement. James chapter 2 reminds us, even the demons believe like that and they tremble. So to believe in the heart is to really believe. To really believe. It's to be all in, not just superficially, to be all in. So I've always loved this illustration.

It happens to be true. In the 1800s, a missionary from Edinburgh, Scotland, went over to a group of South Pacific islands called the New Hebrides Islands. Now it's called Vanuatu, but at the time he went, his name was John Patton. John Patton went to those group of islands as a missionary, share the gospel, see people's lives change.

The people who lived on those islands were cannibals, so it made life interesting, to say the least. He was so committed to this group of people and he wanted to translate the truths of the New Testament into their language. As he was translating, he had problems with one word that he couldn't find the right equivalent in their language and it was the word believe, the word for faith, the word for trust. He couldn't quite get the right meaning. So one day he's sitting in his tent or his hut and he has a, so he's sitting down, I don't know what he was sitting on, certainly not a stage, but he was sitting down and he invited an elder to come in, one of the tribe's people, and John Patton leaned back in his chair, put his feet up, and he said, okay, to the guy, what am I doing right now? The guy said, what?

He goes, what am I doing? Do you have a word in your language that describes what this is? And so he gave him a word in his language that literally means to place all of your weight upon. So when he translated John 3 16, John Patton's version equivalent in that language is this, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever places his whole weight on him will not perish but have everlasting life. That's what it means to believe in the New Testament, to place all of your life upon.

That's Skip Heitzig's message from the series Always Only Jesus. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep teachings like this one today going out around the world, connecting you and others to God's Word. We want to connect more listeners like you to God's never-changing truths in these ever-changing times. So we would love for you to consider partnering in this work today so that many others can continue to know God's truth and be transformed by his love. Here's how you can take God's Word to more listeners like you around the world. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give a gift. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity and be sure to come back tomorrow as Skip shares more truth about the marks that will be present on your life because of the Gospel. The Christian life is not static. It is not stagnant. It is not just a system of ethics. It's not just a religious ideology. It is living. It is moving. It is growing. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.