This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Ignite the Light Ministries radio and podcast. It is our mission to help listeners develop a deeper relationship with Jesus by sharing what the Bible says and what it means. We aim to encourage and equip you to serve others, share the gospel, and reflect Christ in every aspect of your life. I'm Pastor Wyatt Cudd.
Thank you for tuning in.
So go ahead and turn with me in your Bibles, if you got them, to Colossians 1. We're going to be doing verses 1 through 14 today.
Now, I'm going to do a clean read through first to just let scripture speak for itself. and then we're going to get into it.
Now, since this is my first sermon on the book of Colossians, I want to set the stage with a little bit of background information. for you.
So Colossians is named after the city of Colossi, where the church and the letter is addressed to. That's where it's located. And the epistle is written by Paul around 6062 AD. And at this time, Paul was a prisoner in Rome. Paul did not start this church.
His co-worker in Christ Epaphorus started this church, and he was their functioning leader. And in Colossae, there were pagan Gentiles, and then there was also a settlement of legalistic. Jews there as well.
So the church kind of finds themselves squeezed between this mystical paganism of the Gentiles and then the strict legalism of Jewish thought. It's these two competing philosophies that are kind of seeping through the cracks. of his church. corrupting the gospel with a heretical understanding. And this heresy that developed out of this has all the makings of what we call today Gnosticism.
Gnosticism goes something like this. God and the spiritual things are good. But matter and the created things are evil.
Now, Jesus is just one of the many manifestations of God, kind of like an angel. He's not God, he is lower than God, ultimately not divine. And there's this secret hidden knowledge beyond just scripture that you have to work out on your own to attain enlightenment. At the same time, this Gnosticism Embrace the spirit of Jewish legalism. You would have to recognize the ceremonial rituals and strictly follow the Old Testament law.
This is a works-based salvation. For example, They believe that if you wanted to be saved, You had to be circumcised. And it's an issue that Paul addressed in some other epistles as well. The church is struggling with the same kind of. Thought, but could you imagine?
You're a Colossian Gentile and you just learned about Jesus and you're excited and you show up to the congregation and half of them are saying, Oh, you gotta go get to get the old snip and tuck. I don't know about you, gentlemen. That ain't pushing me closer to Christ. That ain't pushing me out the door. I gotta go what?
No, thank you. Yeah.
Now, the church of Colossi hadn't drank the Kool-Aid just yet. But they were mixing it in the pitcher. It was enough for Epaphras to be concerned. This brewing heresy, again, is a combination of Gentile paganism, Jewish legalism, but I think it's wrong to see it as. This big scary monster that kicked the front door in and stormed the pulpit.
Everyone would have recognized it.
Now, see, this danger came from within the church. from teaching that would have been considered Christian. but had been influenced by the day more than they knew. It was a danger to that church then. It's a danger to our church today.
But by the power of the Holy Spirit, we must be Ever vigilant. Applying this, I want to encourage you, not just today but throughout all the summer, test every word I say against scripture. And if there's any word I say or opinion I give that contradicts the word, go with it and not me. Go with Scripture, not me. Because I am some goofy 26 year old.
This beard, it's a new phenomenon. It's very new. Uh And do you know how many mistakes I make? I mean, when my wife gets back from children's church, you can ask her, she'll tell you. Test new ideas.
Against scripture and our adopted traditions against the spirit of scripture. I grew up Methodist. I know about the split. My church was affected by it. and it could not be ever more relevant than today.
Test everything that comes from this pulpit against the Word of God.
So we're going to get into the scripture part now. Colossians 1, verse 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ. Jesus by the will of God and Timothy our brother. To God's holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for God's people. The faith and love that springs up from the hope stored up for you in heaven about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel. that has come out to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world, just as it's been doing among you since the day you heard it, and truly understood God's grace.
You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf. and who also told us of your love in the Spirit. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, We have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives.
So that you may live a life worthy of the Lord, pleasing to Him in every way. bearing fruit in every good work. Growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened. With all power, according to his glorious might, that you might have great endurance. patience and giving joyful thanks to the Lord.
Who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people? in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness. and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption. and forgiveness.
of sense. God, I ask you to be at work this morning, and Lord, just get me out of the way. Get me out of the way this morning so that your voice may be heard. Jesus name me.
So this is the introduction to the letter. And it's quite standard for Paul's context. It's the same way we would name, date, and stamp a letter. They had their own system of letters. And this is quite standard for the time.
Paul first introduces himself as the author and Timothy.
Now we credit the authorship to Paul on the basis of, well, His credentials. Paul is an apostle of Christ Jesus, acting by the will of God. Timothy is playing a supporting role, and Timothy is being discipled by Paul. Fathers, your job in the home is to be the primary disciple maker, and that is why your role is so important.
Now, it's like an apprentice learning from a more experienced teacher. And that's what discipleship is. Timothy's time would come after his apprenticeship to take on his own Timothy. And that is the such is the dynamic of effective discipleship. Has God put a Timothy In your life.
Disciple him so that one day he may disciple his own Timothy. to the glory of God. Verse 2, Paul then addresses his audience, the saints and the faithful believers in Christ at Colossae.
Now he addresses not their problems. First, he addresses their deepest and most fundamental need. First, grace and peace to you from God our Father.
Now, again, it's a standard introduction, but I think it's intentional and I think it's genius. Before we can even begin delving into our issues and fixing them, we have to recognize our absolute and utter dependence on the grace of God.
Now Paul focuses more on making sure that the Colossians know the right Jesus, not necessarily that the Gnosticism he's addressing is wrong. He focuses on getting Jesus right. Does anybody here do gardening? Ooh, yeah. My grandparents love to garden and they are so amazing at it.
My grandpa, he will grow pineapples in his garage. I don't even know how you do that, but somehow he pulls it off.
Now When I was in middle school, I'd go over there during the summer and they would teach me a little bit about gardening.
Now, I was in middle school, so the best thing I was growing was acne and anxiety. But I did learn something and it's quite obvious, but nothing really grows without water. You know? Gardeners are utterly dependent on the grace of rain. Even a deep well will eventually run dry without it.
Now the person striving to be the best gardener they can be, they think, oh like what fertilizer do I use? Should I be spraying for pests? How deep should I dig to plant these seeds? Should I build a fence to keep that deer from eating my salad before I can? Or the neighbors for that matter?
Okay. But none of these things matter without God's unearned grace of rain. Without the grace of God, we can produce no. No fruit in our lives. be it business, ministry, social working.
Our own family or just gardening. We are 100% dependent on God's. Grace. Everything else comes second. Does anyone know the difference between grace and mercy.
Both are free gifts. Grace is God giving us that which we do not deserve and cannot earn without Him. And mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve and can't escape without Him. Verse 2, grace and peace from God our Father. Grace is first because grace is what sustains us, whether we recognize it or not.
But I believe it's in the recognizing of our utter dependence on God's grace that we find God's peace. Grace and peace. Grace comes first for a reason. And what about when it's not raining? What about when we're We've tried everything we can, but it just seems like God is giving us a dry season.
in our lives, like what what do we do? We trust him. We let go. And we let go. And you will find peace.
And that is faith. It's not a blind faith. It's a faith that rests in God's perfect trustworthiness. He's not any less of the faithful rain giver just because it is a dry season. We wait on the Lord.
Trusting his timing. and his judgment, and remembering how faithful he has been To us. No gardener can grow fruit without a complete dependence on God's grace of rain.
Now what is God's ultimate expression of grace? It's the gospel. It's the gospel. It's the good news of Christ's death, resurrection, and substitution for our sin. That is God's ultimate expression of grace, an unearnable gift to us.
So back to our passage, verse five and six. The faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world. Just as it's been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's. Great.
The gospel is God's ultimate expression of grace to us.
Now we've been looking at the Gardner rain perspective for our own application, but I want to zoom out just a little bit so we can see all of human history. Uh Humanity The gardener has been waiting for the grace of Christ's substitution since the beginning. The Jews had centuries Of waiting. There's a 400-year gap between the Old Testament and New Testament of dry season, of just waiting. Do you know how long 400 years is?
It's long and tongue and that was ten seconds. Imagine 400 years of silence. But Christ has come. And he's taken our selfishness and wickedness upon himself so we may know. God's grace.
How do we respond? Verse 10. Live a life worthy of the Lord. pleasing to him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work. Growing in the knowledge of God.
There is unearthed grace then there is peace.
Now God can provide a supernatural peace. I've experienced that, but I think verse 10 is making it clear that we grow peace from grace by bearing fruit. And the fruits of peace we see in verse 3 to 5 are faith, hope. And love. Faith, hope, and love.
That's the big three. Paul loves faith, hope, and love. There's so many epistles that talk about this.
Some commentators say it just dominates his thinking as it comes to the gospel. 1 Corinthians 3.13, Now these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is... No. God's grace enables us to grow the life-giving fruit. fruits of peace and these fruits are faith.
Hope and love.
So let's talk about faith. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the Wizard of Oz. Oh man, that dog Toto, ah, he's so cute. And he's just, I think he's the unsung hero of that story. You know, right at the beginning, he's with Dorothy through everything.
And just ride or die, Toto is there for Dorothy. Dorothy at the beginning drops this house on some lady with a broomstick. And her sister shows up to be essentially a crime scene. angry and grieving and looking for someone to blame. It's kind of understandable.
Her sister just died. And she's looking for someone to blame. And what does Toto do? He keeps his mouth shut. Good dog, Toto.
Toto ain't the friend you want, he's the friend you need. But there's a scene right at the beginning of Wizard of Oz. when she steps out from her house. And it goes from black and white. To colour.
It's breathtaking. It revolutionized how the industry uses color in movies. It changed everything from that moment on. And faith in Christ is like stepping out of black and white your whole life. into colour.
It will revolutionize. Everything. But faith does not exist. Without Reason. Faith should not be unreasonable.
Yet reason. cannot be done without faith. No scientist conducts an experiment without assuming Laws of nature are constant and continuous. The same laws of nature that govern the past will govern the future. And that's how we do science.
For instance, gravity. Nobody walks around scared that in the next 10 seconds gravity is just gonna switch off and they float into the ceiling fan. Nobody thinks like that. But how do we know? that gravity will be the same in the future as it has always been in the past.
Now you might say, well, because It's never changed before. Gravity's always worked, so there's no reason to assume it will stop. Right, but that's just saying that Gravity in the past has always been like gravity in the past, so it must work in the future. And that's the very question itself: how do we know that the future is going to be like gravity? The past.
We could wake up one morning in the Matrix.
So much for predicting the stock market.
Okay. Ultimately, we don't know. Gravity will be the same in the future as it was in the past without a measure of faith. Faith that the universe is order, not chaos.
So the question is, on what reasonable basis do we have that faith? A believer says on the basis of God, the governor of the universe who carries creation to its final destination, God is the reason. for the order we see in nature. I will not wake up one day and discover reality isn't real because God makes Himself real to me. How, in the historical account of Jesus' death, resurrection, and the miracles He's shown in my own life, and the quiet whisper in the dead of night that I hear.
God descends from heaven to make himself known to the world. We cannot ascend by reason alone to know God. Plus we have Tower of Babel 2.0. An atheist, on the other hand, has no basis. for the order in nature.
There is no reason for the order of the universe, they say, while conveniently ignoring, on good faith, that there is absolutely no reason for that order to not collapse. That is an unreasonable faith. Everyone has faith in something. The question remains, is the faith reasonable? Verse 9.
For this reason... Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding the Spirit gives. Paul is praying verse 9 that God fills them with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
Now there's an interplay between knowledge and reason. It makes philosophers head spin, honestly. Faith is not unreasonable. Reason can't be done without faith.
So it stands to reason. The deeper the Colossians' knowledge, wisdom, and understanding goes, the deeper their faith can go. And the deeper their faith can go, the deeper their knowledge, wisdom, and understanding can go. Faith and reason Feed each other. when they're in their right place.
Faith in Christ is Reasonable. It is the starting point of any true understanding. Faith in Christ illuminates the world to us, like Dorothy stepping out into a world of color for the first time. God's grace grows faith, hope, and love. And when we plant faith in our garden, It produces a redeemed mind.
full of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. Faith in God's grace redeems our mind. as our portion of peace.
Now we're going to look at hope.
So imagine if you will You're one of the disciples. And Jesus has just said, We're all loading up in a boat. I have a divine appointment across this lake, and we're going.
Now, you've been with Jesus. You've seen him heal people. You've seen him do miraculous things.
So you think, All right, Jesus, I've seen you do miraculous things. You wanna go across the lake, you wanna go on a fishing trip? I don't care what we're doing, I'm going with you. Let's go.
So you help the others untie the boat and you shove off for open water. You look behind and Peter's face planted in the water. Look at this guy. I thought he was a fisherman. Check this out, John.
And he turned to Jesus and said, Jesus, look at what Peter... He's asleep. It wasn't two seconds. It's always miracles with this guy. Jesus is dead asleep.
So you set up Rowan. And halfway through, as you're rowing across the river, The sky goes from blue to black. Lightning streaks across the sky. It begins to pour. The waves as you're rowing are getting rougher and rougher, and it seems like the rowing isn't doing anything, and you're just standing still, and the waves are tossing you back and forth.
And you and the other disciples, you're frantically like shoveling water out of the boat so it doesn't start sinking, but it's just not going fast enough. The boat is filling up with water. And you have this paralyzing thought. I am going to die. And Jesus is asleep.
So you stumble past another disciple to get to him and you shake him awake and you say, Jesus, please save us. We're drowning. We're going to die. The boat is sinking. And with this calm look of fire, he just looks at you and says, You have little faith.
Why are you so afraid? Jesus stands up to face the storm. And you're thinking, what does he mean? The boat is sinking, and we're gonna die. Like, me of little faith.
I mean, look at where my faith got me.
Now there's no hope to. Be still. The wind fizzles out. The waves violently stop. The rain immediately shuts off, the black clouds rip apart like a curtain, and the sunlight touches your face.
What kind of man is this? that even the waves and the wind obey him. See, Jesus is our hope. Because he is in full control. This is true whether we believe it or not.
No matter how bad the storms of life get, we are in Jesus' boat. He is our power. He is our hope. And hope brings with it a resilient heart. Full of strength.
power, endurance, understanding, and joy. Verse 11. Be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you might have great endurance. and patience and giving joyful thanks to the Lord. Just like with the disciples in the boat, it is Christ's glorious might that is our hope, and it strengthens us with power.
It grants us endurance and patience. See, Jesus is our eternal hope through the storms of life. Hey there. I hope this sermon has enriched your day. If you like this message, I want to personally invite you to join us for Sunday worship.
We have two locations in Virginia, Trinity Methodist Church in Concord and Mount Comfort Methodist Church in Appomattox. Come join us Sunday morning at 9.45 and we will help you get connected. As always, I'm Pastor Wyatt Cudd. Thank you for tuning in.
