Today on the verdict with Pastor John Monroe. Pan lepers. Ten are cured. Yet, only one goes back to Jesus. Praises God.
and give s thanks. If we're honest, we often have to admit that we like the nine levers. We receive the blessings of God. We receive spiritual cleansing from Jesus. But we often do not say thank you, Lord.
Welcome to the Verdict, featuring the Bible teaching of Pastor John Monroe, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. We often hear, count your blessings. But as followers of Christ, some of the most important reasons that we should be thankful have nothing to do with our circumstances or possessions. Today, on the verdict, we're continuing in Colossians and learning about the implications of our eternal inheritance. Here's Pastor John Monroe.
None of us like to be taken for granted. Even if you are the most generous of people, It gets a little tiresome if no one ever says thanks. we feel taken for granted. I fear we often take God for granted.
So I'm encouraging you to be thankful. thankful to God and also thankful to others. Of course, There are many things to thank God for. Paul writes that we are to give thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Listen to the message today with a thankful heart.
Don't dwell on the difficulties of life. But allow God to open your eyes to the wonder of what He has provided for you through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now we're going to concentrate on verses 12, 13, and 14, but for the sake of connection, let's start reading again in Colossians 1. Verse nine. Paul writes, and so from the day we heard We have not ceased to pray for you. asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. In all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
So, as 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. May you be strengthened with all power. According to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience.
With joy 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 to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom. We have redemption.
The forgiveness. of sense. Doesn't Paul write brilliantly? We will see then That we are to thank God the Father. For your inheritance.
for your deliverance and for your transfer. To use the words here. First of all, verse 12: Thank God the Father. For your inheritance. Verse twelve again, with joy, giving thanks to the Father.
who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. But there's something else we need to thank God the Father for. Verse 13. He has delivered us. From the domain of Darkness.
By nature we don't belong To the light, do we? To the darkness. All of us are aware of that dark side to us. We're born spiritually blind. Jesus said that we love the dark rather than light because our deeds are evil.
We like to operate in the shadows. We like to have our secrets. We like to cover up things. That's human nature apart from the grace of God and the light of God. Remember Our Lord said to Nicodemus in John chapter 3, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Did you get that? Do you remember? When you were first delivered. From your spiritual darkness? When we're saved by the grace of God.
We have different eyes. We see things differently. Why is that? Delivered out of the power, out of the domain of darkness. By Christ himself.
And once that happens, We see things that we never saw. before. Delivered out of the darkness by the light of the world. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life.
Before I was married, I stayed for a short time in the home of an elder elderly widow. She was attending. Mm-hmm. Uh the church. Where I started going.
She had pity on me. I was staying in a miserable place, didn't have much money. And um She invited me. To stay with her for a few weeks until I got other accommodation. And she's a very godly woman, an elderly woman.
And Over an evening meal went to our master. Her name was Mrs. Peterson. I said, Mrs. Peterson.
I was twenty-two years old. I said, Mrs. Peterson, how did you come? to Jesus Christ. She had been saved for many many years.
And she told me. Then she had been saved on one of the small Shetland Islands in the north of Scotland, an island called Bressey. And she said it was quite amazing. And she's telling me the story. That eyesight was going.
Soon she was gonna go blind. And she told me that the day after her conversion as a young woman, She had sailed from the island of Bresse in a little boat over to the mainland. the main island of Shetland. And she said to me, John, I'd been on that boat trip many, many times. Really, all of her life, she'd made that boat trip.
But she said, the day after I was saved, It was totally different. I said to her, What do you mean? She said, It was an incredible Voyage. She said, I looked at the sky. And I'd never seen it so blue in all of my life.
She said, I looked at the sea, and it seemed the most beautiful sea I'd ever seen. And now, as an old woman, many, many years after that event, which in her mind was as vivid as it had happened yesterday, she quoted to me. The hymn that we have in our hymnal 490, George Robinson's wonderful hymn, which the second verse says this: Heaven above. Is softer blue, earth around is sweeter green.
Something lives in every hue, Christless eyes have never seen. Birds with gladder songs o'erflow. Flowers with deeper beauty shine, since I know, as now I know, I am His and He is mine. And when she passed away, I said to our family, and this, and had the privilege of saying a few words at our funeral, and we sang that beautiful hymn. You say, What had happened?
Had the sky really changed? Uh had the the waves really changed overnight? No, no, they were just the same. Ah, but now she saw them. with different eyes.
Everything belonged. To Christ. She was saved by his grace. She had been delivered out of the domain of darkness. And she looked around at the very physical world and saw it differently.
She looked at people differently. Because of Christ's tremendous deliverance in her life, she had been delivered out of the domain of darkness. Peter says in that wonderful verse, 1 Peter 2, verse 9, he talks about being called out of darkness. into his marvelous Light. We like the light, don't we?
And we are saints. and light. And we look at things differently. Because now We've been transformed by the glorious gospel. of Jesus Christ.
Thank God the Father for your inheritance. Thank God the Father. for your deliverance. But there's a third one here. Also in verse 13, thank God the Father for your transfer.
For your inheritance, for your deliverance, for your transfer. He has delivered us, verse 13. From the domain of darkness. Ah, but he's done more than that. and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son.
Not only do we have an inheritance, Not only are we delivered, We have been transferred into the kingdom. of the Son of His love. Literal translation. into the kingdom of the Son of his love. The Father loves the Son.
And in love sands, his son.
so that we may be transferred into this Kingdom. This word transferred that Paul uses here in verse 13 was used when a king removed people from their homes to form a new colony. He transferred them from this region to that region. And when God delivers us, And when God saves us, He never ever leaves us where we are. We were once in the dark, once in Satan's kingdom.
once addicted to sin, but now We are in the kingdom. of his beloved son. The son of his love. is also the king, as Paul talks here about the kingdom. Of his beloved son.
The son of his love, of course, is the great messianic king. In fulfillment of the Davidic covenant in Second Samuel seven.
Now, notice. We have already been transferred. to literally into we have been transferred We have been delivered out of the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of His beloved.
Son. What a place to be. Child of God. That we are So, we have to do that. Christ's kingdom.
And let me say that there are two aspects of the kingdom. There is a present aspect and the future aspect. When Jesus Christ came at his first coming, The kingdom in one sense. has already come. Turn back with me, for example, to Mark.
Mark chapter 1. Verse fifteen. The first recorded words by Mark of Jesus as he begins his public ministry. What does he say? Mark 1, verse 15.
The time is fulfilled. And what? The kingdom Of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. The kingdom of God is at hand.
With the coming of the king. into history, into human history, into time-space. The kingdom of God has has come. But there is also a future aspect of the kingdom. Turn to Revelation chapter 11.
Revelation 11. There's Fifteen. This is yet future, obviously. Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven saying, The kingdom of the world. Has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign.
Forever. and ever. A present aspect of the kingdom, the king has come. And the rival Into the world of Jesus Christ the Messiah. But there's also a future aspect of the kingdom.
That we thought of this morning, when Christ comes with power and with great glory. The already aspect and the not-yet aspect. Christ has already come, but he has not yet come in the fullness of his power and glory and his open display to the whole world. world. And it may be that What the New Testament sometimes calls the kingdom of Christ may refer to the present aspect, and the expression the kingdom of God may refer to the future aspect.
For example, turn to 1 Corinthians 15. To see this very quickly, 1 Corinthians 15, the great chapter of the resurrection. 1 Corinthians Fifteen. Verse twenty three. But each in his own order, Christ, the first fruits, He's the first one raised from the dead.
Then at his coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end. When he, that is Christ, delivers the kingdom to God the Father. after destroying every rule and every authority and power.
Now has every rule and every authority and power yet been destroyed? Answer: No. But one day they will. And the Son will do that. He will destroy every rule and every authority and power, and then will deliver the kingdom.
to God. The father, the future aspect. of the kingdom. And so we pray, thy kingdom come. We look forward to the future millennial kingdom when Jesus Christ will reign as King of kings and Lord of Lords on the earth for a thousand years.
But with the coming of Jesus Christ as God incarnate, the kingdom of God in one aspect has come. Christ presently reigns in the hearts of his people. He reigns presently in his church as the head of the body. Where Christ rules, where he is obeyed, there is his Kingdom. And Paul is saying.
Back to Colossians 1 verse 13. That when you were saved by the grace of God, you were not only delivered from the domain of darkness. But praise his great name. We have been transferred Into the kingdom of his beloved Son. This present kingdom, then, is an invisible kingdom over which Christ presently rules.
That rule, that kingdom, the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of His beloved Son, is not obvious to the world. But now Jesus Christ the King. voluntarily calls on us to obey to him. To submit. to his rule.
to acknowledge in every aspect of our life. That he is king of kings. And Lord. Of Lords. And so we, as the people of God, are not only delivered from darkness, but we're transferred to His kingdom.
And for that brilliant transfer, we say thank you. Father. I thank God the Father then for our inheritance, for our deliverance, and for our transfer. But what's the basis of this inheritance? What's the basis of this deliverance, of this transfer, for which we thank God the Father?
How are they accomplished? Verse 14. In home That is, in his beloved Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in whom We have redemption. The forgiveness. of sense.
Christ paid the price. for our deliverance and forgives all our sins. God's beloved Son. on the cross paid the price for our deliverance. And forgives our sins.
And in verse 14 and following, Paul is now moving from what the Father has done. To what? His wonderful Son accomplishes. First, in Christ, in whom? In Christ, His beloved Son, we have.
Redemption. And God's beloved Son, We have Redemption. Redemption is one of the great words of the gospel, isn't it? It's a word which comes from the slave market. The basic idea of redemption is release.
And freedom. on the payment of a price. Why do we need that? Because of Satan, he makes slaves of us all. Slaves to darkness, captives to Satan himself.
And we can't free ourselves, but Christ comes. And he has redeemed us. He's purchased us from the slave market of sin. Paying The price. with his own blood.
on the cross. And so as we sang. There is a Redeemer. And our Lord Jesus Christ is our Redeemer. And just as prisoners of war are freed from captivity, When their nation is victorious, so we have been freed from our sin and from our bondage because our Lord Jesus Christ is.
victorious and has redeemed us. With his blood, he pays The costly price. of our sins. God made us. He owns us.
And we've sinned, and we've become sin's slave, but now, through the work of His beloved Son, He has bought us back. to himself. Redeemed. Not with corruptible things like silver or gold, but with his precious. Yeah.
He gives himself. to redeem us. What? A redeemer.
So in His beloved Son we have redemption. But also in verse 14, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. In his beloved Son, we also have forgiveness. of sense. Isn't that a sweet word?
Forgiven. Surely it is. to think that when God looks down on you and me. He writes that word. Forgiven.
Redeemed. Freed, delivered, transferred. Forgiven. We have forgiveness of sins. I hope you understand.
That when we trust Christ for salvation, all of our sins are forgiven. by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our Transgressions. Christ is the one who has redeemed us. Not only have we been redeemed, not only have we been set free, but our sins have been forgiven. Our sins have been sent away.
They've been let go, they're forgiven. The power and the authority of sin and Satan in our lives has been shattered. Formerly, we were gripped by sin. And darkness, now we're freed, now we're forgiven. Because our Lord Jesus Christ not only frees us from the guilt and the shame of sin, but He also frees us from the power.
of sin. We have been delivered out of darkness into the kingdom. of His beloved Son. And so we thank God the Father tonight for our inheritance. for our deliverance, for our transfer.
Which were accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ, God's beloved Son. Who forgives? Our sin. G.K. Chesterton said, when it comes to life, The critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
What do you do? This evening, don't take things for granted. Be grateful. We as the people of God should be the most thankful. the most grateful people on the face of the earth tonight.
as we close. Take a moment. to thank your Heavenly Father. For your marvelous inheritance. It's kept in heaven for you.
for your incredible deliverance. for that amazing transfer. to the kingdom of his beloved Son. Thank God for all of his saving acts. and give thanks to the Saviour who redeemed you.
who has forgiven you. And once again, may we consecrate ourselves. to serve him. And the only way to be delivered from the domain of darkness The only way to have this inheritance of the saints and light is to be eternally united with our Lord Jesus Christ. This Christ who has invaded the kingdom of darkness.
and has rescued us, delivered us, saved us from its power.
So that now we're called out of darkness into his marvelous light. Let us with great joy give thanks to the Father. For all that He has accomplished through our Lord Jesus Christ. Have you been forgiven? Have you been delivered?
Have you been transferred to the kingdom of God's wonderful Son? If not, this evening, receive him. Believe in him as your Saviour and Lord, and bow before the King of Kings. And Lord of Lords and with joy Give 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 to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption. the forgiveness. Of sense. Let us pray. Eternal God and our Heavenly Father, we do give thanks.
We stand amazed at your grace. Amazed at your kindness, amazed at your love. May our homes, our lives always be places of praise. of joy, of thanksgiving. as we praise the one who loved us.
and gave himself for us. And in whose name we pray. Amen. This is the verdict, featuring the Bible teaching of Pastor John Monroe. There's still more to hear when John returns in just a moment, so stay with us.
From matters of truth and identity, to the subjects of love and grace, our world seems more confused than ever. but to find truth and certainty about who we are and find peace, we must turn our attention away from the world and look to the Word of God. To help you do that, John wrote a booklet titled Eternal Security, Finding Certainty in a Chaotic World. Through this special resource, John shares his personal testimony, along with a careful examination of Scripture, to offer us clarity on matters of eternity. Get your copy today by visiting our website at theverdict.org.
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Now, here's Pastor John Monroe.
Well, what's your verdict? Are you giving thanks to God? Are you giving thanks to Him for your inheritance, for your deliverance, and for your transfer from darkness into light? I'm thankful that I'm in the kingdom of God's beloved Son. For you?
Jesus says that unless you're born again, you will not enter the kingdom of God.
So, Place your trust. In the Lord Jesus Christ, He's the Son of God. Live a life of praise and you will experience the joy of the Lord. Don't miss next time as we focus on the magnificence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks for joining us today on The Verdict.
I'm Michelle Davies. Today's program with Pastor John Monroe was produced and sponsored by Calvary Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
