You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, it's summertime and corn on the cob is one of my favorite things and I just love to salt it up. Ooh, salt makes food taste so good. Exactly. But today, Paul's going to talk about salting something not that goes in our mouths, but the words that come out of our mouths.
The speech, but what does that mean? Well, let's find out. Okay, today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning. This is Jim. And I'm Dorothy.
And this is More Than Ink. And we are dedicated to the proposition that the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. And we're here to look at it together. And we also are dedicated to the proposition, this sounds like a constitution or something.
Boy, keep going. I want to see your thought. Well, that the Bible is accessible to anyone who wants to read it.
That's right. Rather than just experts or highly trained academics. And so we believe that you can gain value from God's Word at any level you're coming from, whether you're an academic or whether you're just a first-time reader. Well, and we don't want to devalue academics. No, no, I'm not.
We all are the beneficiaries of their hard work. Exactly right. But God intends for us to understand what He has to say. Yeah, yeah.
So let's just do this together. And as I've told people in the past, I feel more like a tour guide than I do a knowledgeable Bible scholar. You know what I mean? It's like what we've done through our 50 years walking with the Lord is we've seen certain things. And on that tour, we take people back on that tour and point out things to them and say, I want you to look at that for yourself. Do you see that?
Do you see that? So we are not so much the people who are the masters of interpretation necessarily. We're just tour guides. Well, and since you said that about interpretation, sometimes we jump right to interpretation before we have properly observed what's actually there. What does the text really say? Which is why we take the time in this program to actually read the whole passage we're going to be dealing with. Because sometimes we just jump into what we've heard some preacher say before without really observing. Because in no sermon can any pastor be completely exhaustive, right? There are things that they will skip over in order to emphasize the thing that the Spirit is emphasizing. So we want you as listeners to learn to observe the text carefully. And now that I've said that, we probably will skip over some things you want to observe. So that's why you can do this for yourself. You can.
So if you've never done this before, why don't you join us and maybe we'll give you some ideas about how to do it as we go along. Well, we're in Colossians. Small book that Paul wrote to the church in Colossae. It's just inland from Ephesus on the western edge of Turkey today. And we think he was never there.
Pretty sure he was never in Colossae. So he's writing to some believers he may never have met before. But this little book is so, what do you want to say, dense and concise and profound in what it talks about in terms of the preeminence of Jesus. Well, I think you've swiped all the good words.
Oh, sorry. So unfortunately, and I'm sad we're coming to the end of it. We're in the last chapter and Paul is really winding down his discussions.
But it's full of great stuff today. So if you're following with us, we're in chapter 4 and we're going to be starting into verse 2. And we're only going to look at a handful of verses today because it is wonderfully dense.
Well, but one of the things that's really important to do in terms of observing the text is to consider the context. Where did we come from? Within the last couple of weeks, we were spending our time in chapter 3 where Paul says, Now put on as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. And then he gives a whole list of characteristics. And forgive one another. And then he calls out different groups of people, different identities, different roles that people fill.
Masters and slaves, wives and husbands, children and parents. So that's where we've been. But he has told them all, whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. So that's where we're coming into this from. And now instead of calling out a specific group, now he kind of turns his attention to the body as a whole. But this is his last admonition about what we should be doing. Right.
How to walk. It's really nice. And the topics he chooses are simple and profound. So I get it. And they're things that show up in almost all of his letters. There's nothing particularly unique here. Yeah. So let's just look at what his closing admonitions to us. What's his closing thoughts? Okay. So we're only going to be dealing with six verses today.
So let's just read the whole thing. So he picks up right in verse 2 of chapter 4, Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I'm in prison. That I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every person.
That's it. Thanks for joining us. It's a great admonition.
It really is. So let's go back to verse 2 because he's talking about prayer. Now, you know, if I was going to give an admonition, something about prayer, I should say, Well, you know, you need to keep praying. That's, you know, keep praying. But he uses much more colorful admonitions here, which actually mean some profound things.
You have to stop and look at each word and just roll it around your mouth for a second. Well, you know, the New American Standard says here at the beginning of verse 2, Devote yourselves to prayer. Right? So that carries with it an indication of love and purpose and careful, loving attention. But here the ESV says, Continue steadfastly.
Right? Keep on keeping on. Stay at it. And he said something very similar to the Thessalonian church back in First Thessalonians 5, 17. He said, Pray without ceasing. How do you do that?
How do you do that? Yeah. But this draws a very strong picture of it being kind of a determined work is what it is. I mean, really a determined work because that first word continue literally means strong. Now I would almost never use a verb be strong when I'm talking about prayer.
I mean, it's just, it's fascinating. So when he looks at prayer here, this isn't just a side thing we do that when we're comfortable and we're sitting on the couch and, you know, and you're all relaxed. Or in your designated prayer time.
Yeah, this is actually work. So this continue, this devoted, this be strong in it and the steadfastly in prayer. Continue steadfastly. That's another big word about effort is what it is. But focus. Stay on target.
Right. So it's about, you know, if you're going to dig a hole with a shovel, you need to put the effort in and you need to steadily apply effort over and over and over. Steadily apply.
I like that. So that's really what's being looked at here. So he's saying be strong and apply some steady effort to your prayer. Now I don't know how many people talk about prayer with that kind of attitude. It's like, that sounds like work. I mean, how do I, how do I pray and put in this kind of effort?
I mean, what does that look like? What does that entail? Well, you know, when he said that the Thessalonians pray without ceasing, that kind of implies breathe in, breathe out.
Right? That every prayer, every thought, every sentence, every moment of the day, let prayer be what characterizes your attitude, what's going on in your mind, even internally, even if you're not praying out loud. And throughout history, there are lots of people who've made a real practice of this. One of the little books that I read many years ago, and I can't now remember exactly the title of it, I think it's Practicing the Presence.
Brother Lawrence. Yeah, but I can't remember the name of the missionary who set about to practice this, and he said, I'm going to set about turning my mind to the Lord every second, you know, every minute, every hour, every, he was going the other direction, starting with once an hour, once every half hour. Every minute, and turn my heart to prayer consciously. And that is a work, right?
As soon as you forget, like, oh, it's been two hours, I better, you know, I can. And we know people who have, especially late in life, taken on this posture of saying, I'm going to pray today, and I'm never going to stop praying, I'm going to pray for you. It's a very determined, very purposeful, very devoted, strong setting of the mind toward, I am going to pray now and nothing will deter me.
And that's exactly what he's talking about here. But also this idea of moving into prayer as easily as you do into conversation with another person, that let your prayer be so much a part of you, that you can say a sentence to the person you're with as part of the conversation, and then the next sentence is addressed to the Lord, and your prayer becomes part of your conversation, right? Continue steadfastly to bring prayer into your day to day experience.
Stay at it. It's interesting that then he says, being watchful, pay attention. Watch for what? Yeah, and in fact, that's the same word that's used when you put a watchman on the top of a city wall looking for invaders coming from a distance, you know, and they're not supposed to sleep, they're supposed to be watchful all the time, they're supposed to be watching. So there is an expectancy of seeing something is what it is.
You have to be watchful and diligent. Don't sleep, be wakeful, literally is what it is, wakeful. I remember the first time Rene was thinking, well, he just means that when I pray, I shouldn't fall asleep.
No, it's much bigger than that. What he's saying is that when you pray, you need to be like the watchman on the wall expecting God to respond to your prayers, looking for the answer to come on the horizon. That's what he's really saying. So it's a great expectancy in your prayer. Pay attention, right? Because one of the ways that we don't become watchful is we sort of fall into a rote repetition of the same words and the same thought. And then, oh yeah, I think I prayed for that, but I can't remember because I was daydreaming while I was speaking those familiar words. So, you know, that may be an application of this too. Pay attention.
Yeah. Well, and it's coupled with being thankful. And I think that's really a good point because you usually pray for something and then it doesn't show up, and then it doesn't show up, then it doesn't show up. And you start to lose your vigilance.
You're looking really strong at the beginning, but then you sort of lose your intention of watching for it. But what he's saying right here is what you need to do is actually be thankful at the fact that God will indeed respond to your prayers. You have to be thankful about the result before you can see it on the horizon.
Well, and perhaps it's not even only result-oriented. It's be watchful with thanksgiving. Watchful to be thankful, to express an attitude of thanksgiving that simply, in my case, I practice this a lot. Thank you, Lord, that you have given me this way of communing with you.
Yeah. So I come back to this verse two all the time as being kind of the bellwether description of what prayer should be like. It's purposeful. It's devoted. It's strong. It's determined.
It's steadily applied. It has an aspect of looking for the answer, I mean, diligently looking for the answer. It has an aspect of, even in the midst of the asking, being thankful for what God is allowing.
So that's just such a different picture from prayer than most people you talk to. I think it's wonderful. It's wonderful. Well, and Paul says, and at the same time. I don't want you doing that. Why are you doing all that?
I don't want you at it. Pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, right? What's he asking them to pray? That he would have opportunity to give intelligent expression to this mystery of Christ in you, which he had actually already mentioned a couple times in the letter, right?
This is back in chapter one. Christ in you, the hope of glory. That's the mystery that God has unfolded to us in Christ. He says, that's the mystery that I'm called to declare and please pray that I would have opportunity to do that and that I might make it clear how I ought to speak. When I follow through.
Yeah, I'll be Captain Obvious for a second here. It's God that opens these opportunities. Right, right. And we can be ready to go, but God opens those doors. So door for Paul, it's a great metaphor for just the opportunity. So, you know, if someone opens the door to you, well, you walk through it.
You still have to walk through it. So it's a way of saying God is going to orchestrate my opportunities to talk about Christ. And so pray that God gives me those opportunities, that he opens those doors in the places I am.
And that just made me think. You know, Paul had said to them earlier, let the word of Christ dwell richly in you. If the word of God is dwelling richly in us, there will be opportunities to bring it into every conversation. And so that's what Paul is asking.
May God open a door for me to bring out and declare this mystery, what God has said to us in Christ. Yeah, and you know, I incorporate this when I talk to strangers about Christ, because in my first conversation, just the opening remarks, what I want to find out is if their door is open. You know, and many times, like if I'm on an airplane next to a stranger and they find out I'm a pastor, I'll almost immediately say, so you got any interest in spiritual things?
You know, that's testing the doorknob. And if they say, well, yeah, sort of. Well, then that door is creaking open and you walk through it. But if someone says, nope, nope, nope, not into spiritual stuff at all.
I go, well, okay, you know, let's talk about something else. So really these doors open in ways that we can't even predict. But you need to be available so that God, when he opens that door, you can walk through it.
So Paul is saying in these foreign places I'm traveling right now, I'm praying and I want you to pray with me that God will open these doors because he's the one that opens these doors. And then when the door opens and I walk through it to declare the mystery of Christ, I want to do it really well. I want to do it with great clarity.
I don't want to fuzz it up is what I talk about. I want it to be extremely clear because the moment may only last for a split second, you know. And I want God not only to open the door, but then when I walk through the door and I open my lips, I want him to be able to say it through me very clearly. You know, that's really interesting to me that Paul being as articulate as he was and willing to take the podium and speak all the time. That here, this is very humble. He's asking, you know, pray that I may make it clear that I may speak how I ought to speak.
Yeah, yeah. That's always my prayer, too, because I have experience speaking, but I also have experience flubbing things. And not speaking clearly. So I really don't want to waste the opportunity. I want to be able to say it clearly so people understand what I'm talking about. That's always, and I'll say this again as an obvious thing, that usually means a unique kind of discussion with somebody. You don't use the same rote approach with people. So the clarity has to sort of match their needs and that's always the case.
You have to listen to be able to figure that out. So that's just a big part of it. Well, should we move on to five? Yeah, because these last couple of verses, he's going to talk about our walk and our words.
Yes. Right, so how we live, what people see about the way we walk, and then what they hear come out of our mouths. And this is not the first time he's mentioned this in the letter, but here he just says, he has said it a little differently here, verse five, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.
Okay, let's talk about that for a minute. Yeah, not talking people in the body, he's talking about outsiders. Who are the outsiders? Those who are not yet in Christ, who are without understanding that the Holy Spirit gives, right? Because when Jesus used this term, the outsiders, those outside, he was talking about speaking in parables to those outside. He says, but you understand the mystery because to you it's been given the key. So I think that's probably in Paul's mind. Those who all they have is just the picture, they don't really have an understanding of the content. Well, and your first message that they see of the gospel is your behavior. Right.
And that's what he's saying here. Your behavior, that's what the walking is. You need to walk in wisdom. You need to walk in a way that you actually are illustrating the gospel before you ever get to words, because words comes next in verse six.
But you need to ask God for you to be able to walk to conduct your life in wisdom so that outsiders see something about the character of God in your life. So they don't see you frittering away your opportunity. Yeah. Because he says make the best use of the time.
Best use of the time, yeah. So we many times dwell so much on what do I say to communicate the gospel. But we miss the fact that you are a walking testimony of the gospel before a word is even spoken. And a lot of the behaviors we've talked about in chapter three are really about that. And Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount said, do these good works so they glorify your Father. So something about how you conduct yourself will actually make known, glorify, make known the heart and character of God because of how you walk.
And there's really easy ways to illustrate that. If God is love, are you a loving person? Do people look at the nature of your love and say that is like a supernatural love. Who would love in that circumstance? That person would.
Maybe God himself would as well. So there's aspects about how he's transforming us and how we're participating in that transformation that we talked about in the previous chapters that actually without words starts the conversation about the character of God. So this sets me in mind of a little story I could tell real quickly. Many, many years ago when we were first married, I was singing with the group and we went on tour. And Jim was driving the, you were driving the van. And there was in that group, there were no other believers in that group.
I think I was the only one. And yet I was also the only one who had their spouse along on the trip. And there was a young girl, an unmarried girl who I was friends with.
And after the trip was over, she pulled me aside and she said to me, I like how he treats you. Oh, really? Do you remember that?
Yeah. And it's so interesting to me that we weren't aware of doing or saying anything to each other. We were just doing and being who we were.
But here we were in this close proximity to this group of 25 unbelievers. And this one picked up on it. She said something is different. I like how he treats you.
And I thought, hmm, what have you been seeing and hearing? But it's this. You know, when Paul says in verse six, let your speech always be gracious.
I want to stop right there. We live in a time when even the conversation of Christians is not always characterized by graciousness. No matter what you're talking about, you can be communicating gracious attitude rather than an argumentative or belittling.
Yeah, yeah. And so if you just remember in general that grace is a gift, it's not conditioned on anything. So when you equate that to how you talk to other people. You know, if someone says a snippy comment off the side that hurts your feelings, what are you tempted to do? You throw something back at them to be counter snippy, right? That's not being gracious.
Bigger and badder. Right. And so what you need to do is be kind even though it's not deserved. That's what gracious is. So it's not being tit for tat in terms of how you talk with other people because many times communication is like a sparring match with a lot of people.
Yeah. You need to be always kind in response. You need to always be giving in your words regardless of the emotional nature of the conflict. Well, and Paul says that in Ephesians. He says, let your speech be such that gives life to the hearers.
Don't let any rotten word come out of your mouth and give death to the hearers. Yeah, right. Well, and you know, he uses a great metaphor right after this, seasoned with salt. Right. And you know, many times part of that metaphor of salt is that it makes it tasty. Right. Because it's a savor. So he's really, a lot of commentators talk about this and say, so you know our conversation with outsiders ought to be winsome, it ought to be witty, it ought to be kind, it ought to be maybe even fun. I mean, there should be some sparkle in it that actually says there's great good news behind my attitude here and my words.
That it tastes good. Right. Right. And you know, I find this all the time when I walk up to someone, usually that I know, and they look kind of down in the dumps.
My first thought is, can I see something just fun to pick them up? And that's just gracious. That's just totally gracious. So Christians ought to be ones whose words themselves are not deserved by the people who are listening to them.
I mean, then they'll actually see this is kind of a gift from this person, what they're giving to me right now and how they're talking to me. And so that's different from a lot of the world. A lot of the world is just very self-serving in terms of the words they use and why they talk. He's saying, don't be self-serving, actually be others serving through this salt, this, I don't know, wit of talking about the Gospel.
Well, there's something else about salt, and that is not only does it taste good, it's savory, but it arouses thirst. Right? And when you respond to people graciously, it makes them thirsty for more conversation. Yes, exactly.
Why would you say that? Or I'm amazed that you responded that way. And that may have been what my friends saw so long ago and all the irritations of being on tour and wrangling 25 people. Well, and that's, again, that's the kind of a strategy I use when I talk to unbelievers, because many times we'll get into this, my background in electronics, and my background in electronics is in radio, electromagnetics and stuff. And they'll say, no, I'm not interested in spiritual things, things I can't see.
Well, guess what, I built a whole career on radio waves that you can't see and you can't feel and you can't even touch. So I have a great belief in things that I can't see, even though it's scientific. Well, that's scientific.
Well, that makes me thirsty. Well, yeah, see, that's kind of a sparkly little thing. It's like, well, you're right, you know. And like, you know, what about things like love?
Does science measure love? Well, no, well, that's one of those. So you can use this sort of fun, playful, intriguing conversation. Be kind when people don't agree with you.
Don't slam them, be kind and be complimentary. I mean, there's just so many ways we could do this that he's capturing just in this little salt word. Well, and Jesus talked about being salt, right? He said to the listeners, you're the salt of the earth. And he said to the disciples, now have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. Because they had just been squabbling about who was the greatest.
Yeah, right, right, right. So I looked up, William Barclay did a commentary on this and he says that this word means to be with gracious charity, seasoned with the salt of wit. And then he says, and what I mean by that is, he made a list, not boring, not dull, not sanctimonious, not holier than thou. So in that little word, he's talking about the salt of conversation about the gospel.
It ought to be something enticing and alluring and thirst producing. That's our job. So we need to let our speech be like that with those who are outside the gospel. Well, and that's, I think, what Jesus meant when he said, you are the salt of the earth, right?
If your salt loses its savor, it's not good for anything. God's purpose for us is to make himself known through us, right? Peter said we're a royal priesthood in order to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called us out of darkness. That's 1 Peter 2.9.
Go and read the whole verse because it's wonderful about this whole idea of living in a way that is other oriented, and our speech should cause them to be thirsty when we talk about the excellencies of our God. Yep, yep. And I'll kind of close on another obvious observation, you know, in how you ought to answer each person, not shove truth on them. Right. And so I have changed over my whole method of talking to unbelievers about the gospel by trying to evoke questions.
Yeah. And you ask them more questions, more and more questions. Do you have an interest in spiritual things or what kind of spiritual things?
What do you mean by invisible things? So if you can actually work with people not only giving them questions but evoking them to ask questions in return, then they can kind of pull out of you what they want to know about the gospel without you having to be kind of holier than thou and pushing it on top of them. And so it's got a greatly different approach to doing this kind of thing, but it takes a little bit of training and skill to figure out how do you have a conversation based mostly on evoking questions. Well, it requires listening. Absolutely.
Pay attention to the person you're in conversation with and not just spouting your stuff. That's the number one job, yeah. Well, we are coming down to the end of our time right here today. And so what are we going to next?
It's an interesting close on the book. Oh, Paul's going to talk about all the people he's been serving with who've been serving with him. Yeah. He's going to call out lots of them by name and tell us something about them. Yeah. And they're not names that we haven't come across in the New Testament.
No. So one of the funnest things to do is to actually, if you've got a tool like a concordance or something like that, is to use these names he's going to come up with in this next section as he closes the book and see where else they show up in the Bible and you can actually create a story about these guys because of that. So if you've got time, do that before we come back. I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad you're with us. Do a little homework and we'll have fun looking at those names next week here on More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you're there, take a moment to drop us a note.
Remember, the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself and you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. It was a snort.
It was a snort. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
