We're going to transition into opening the word this morning
together and we're going to be digging back into our Colossians
series here. And if you've been around for a
while, you'll know that we've been working our way through the
book of Colossians and we've had various portions unpacked so
far. And, and actually the week
before Easter, Eduardo brought a phenomenal word around how Jesus
is the center, that he is the supreme one that isn't Jesus
plus something else. It is that it's just Jesus.
He's sufficient. He holds all things together.
He brings order when he's put in the center of our lives.
He brings order to our disordered worlds.
And there's no secret mystery. Jesus is it.
And this was super vital for that Colossian church because
they were in a world where there was all kinds of things
swirling, all kinds of narratives around them, from
Greek philosophy to Eastern mysticism and Roman imperial
culture and Jewish tradition, all mixing up in one big pot.
And the danger for them was that it wasn't that they were going
to reject Jesus, it was that they could easily fall for this
idea that Jesus was a good start, but they really wanted,
they really wanted to be spiritual.
There was something else that was needed.
And so Paul is writing this letter to the Colossian church
while he is imprisoned. And essentially it's to speak
clarity through that fog. He wants them to understand that
spiritual maturity is found in the understanding of what it
means that Christ is in US. And so Paul is pulling back the
curtain for us in this room this morning to show us what it's
really like to live in the Kingdom of God and grow as
followers of Jesus. So I want us to open up the word
together. We're going to read from
Colossians. It should come up on the screen.
Or you can open up your Bible and follow along.
And it says this Colossians 124 is where we're starting.
Now. I rejoice in what I am suffering
for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in
regards to Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, which
is the Church. I have become its servant by the
Commission that God gave me to present to you the Word of God
in its fullness the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages
and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord's people.
To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the
glorious riches of His mystery, which is Christ in you the hope
of glory. He is the one that we proclaim,
admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so
that we may present everyone fully mature to Christ.
And to this end, I strenuously contend with all the energy that
Christ so powerfully works in me.
I want you to know how hard I am contending for you and for those
at Laosidea. I can never say that word.
And for all those who have not met me personally, my goal is
that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so
that they may have the full riches of complete understanding
in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ in
whom is hidden, or the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
And I tell you this so that not one may be deceived by fine
sounding arguments. Amen.
Well, as I sat with these verses this week, what struck me was
how poor brings to life 3 of many dynamics that we experience
living in the Kingdom straight shaped lives and the invitation
that those give us to grow, to become more and more mature
followers of Jesus. And so we're going to do our
best to get through these in there, the short time that we
have left. But the first one is this.
And it's the dynamic of participation, moving from
confused wise to Commission house.
One of the things that blows my mind on a regular basis about
God is that He chooses to partner with people like you and
me. Not only did out of His great
love did He give His Son Jesus to open the door so that we
could be restored in relationship with Him, He
audaciously decided that it was a good idea to use ordinary,
messy humans like you and me to carry His presence to the
corners of the world. And here in Colossians, we
quickly see that this participation in the mission of
God can get costly and it can be uncomfortable.
And Paul describes it in a way that at first sounds completely
upside down and bizarre. If we look at Colossians 124, we
only have to get about 6 words in and we've already hit a
sentence that quite frankly doesn't sound normal.
Paul says I rejoice in what I am suffering, not I'm tolerating
it, not I'm hanging in there and surviving it.
He says he's rejoicing in it. And if I'm honest, that is
definitely not my first instinct when things get hard and I'm
guessing it's probably not yours.
And then comes that second line. I fill up in my flesh what is
still lacking in regards to Christ afflictions.
Now hold on a second, that actually sounds slightly
heretical. Read it again.
I was reading it a few times in a row as I was preparing,
thinking, Lord, what is that about?
It almost sounds as though Paul is saying that Jesus didn't
quite finish the job, like the cross was a good start and he
needs to fill up some gaps that were missing.
Now obviously we know that that is not true because when we hit
a verse like that, we have to recognise that we need to read
any verse in Scripture in the context of the rest of the
Bible. And we know we've we've
celebrated the table this morning.
We know that the work of Christ on the cross was full, complete.
There was absolutely nothing to add to what he did.
The gift of life is the result of sin fully paid for through
Jesus. So we absolutely know that Paul
is not saying that he's adding something to what was missing in
Jesus. And so we get this invitation in
a moment like this to dig a bit deeper.
Now, you will all know that I am not a Greek scholar or a Hebrew
scholar or any other kind of scholar, but we do have amazing
tools at our hands to study the Bible.
And so when I hit a verse like this, this is how I approach it.
I go, OK, God, like I'm going to look at some of these words and
try to understand what you might be saying through this word.
And when I looked here, Paul uses when when the word
afflictions come up. Actually in the original, Paul
used a word called philippus, which literally means pressure
or tension or crushing. It's the pressure that in the
ancient world represented when two things collide.
It was used, for example, when crushing grapes to produce wine.
The Philippus wasn't something to destroy you, it was something
that would produce something in you.
And crucially, it's not the word that was used for the sufferings
and the afflictions of Jesus. Sacrifice, sacrificial death on
the cross. So again, we know Paul isn't
talking about anything to do with payment for sin here.
And notice too, that he puts the the suffering in the context of
for the sake of others and for the Commission that God had
given him to bring the word to them.
And I was like, OK, I resonate with that.
Like I, we are given when we say yes to Jesus.
When we've given our lives to Jesus, we have been given a
Commission. You've heard me say it from this
stage many times. We have this Commission of God
to go into all the world to make disciples, teaching them his
ways. And he promises to go with us.
And so when we put all of this together, we recognise that Paul
is talking about moments or seasons like his being in prison
in the current moment that he's in where we where when we are
participating in the work of seeing the Kingdom of heaven
breaking into the Kingdom of earth here, there is a tension
moment. You could think of it this way,
right? Jesus won the victory on the
cross. We know that.
But this Philippus, this squeeze, this tension is as that
victory is lived out in the world that still resist it.
Jesus was clear, right? He told us that if we wanted to
follow him, we'd have to pick up our cross.
He never promised that our lives here on earth would be all
comfortable and happy and going great in every way, shape and
form. But then it we get to the really
crunchy bit because we haven't actually talked about the
rejoicing part in this, right? I can wrap my head around that.
It might be a bit uncomfortable to participate in God's mission,
but rejoice in it. Well, I was deeply relieved
because the word for rejoicing is the same root word as the
word for grace. And so with all of that
together, I think what Paul was actually saying to us is that
when we participate in the Kingdom of God, he's saying that
when Christ is in us, the hope of glory, when he is central in
our lives, we get to encounter the grace of God.
Even when we walk through sufferings and afflictions,
tension, pressure points, the crushing that comes as we step
into fulfilling the purpose of God has placed on our lives.
Paul isn't some crazy person. He's telling you to celebrate
and somehow just love suffering for the suffering sake, right?
And deny that it's hard or it's difficult.
This kind of rejoicing, this kind of biblical rejoicing is
grace. And grace isn't the absence of
discomfort. It's the reality of the presence
of God in your life who brings the presence of purpose in all
things. I'm going to say that again, it
grace is not the absence of discomfort or pain or
difficulty. Grace is the reality of the
presence of God, Christ in you, the hope of glory, and he is in
you. And because he is in you, you
have purpose and there is a purpose.
He's working all things. He's holding all things
together. NT Wright puts it really
beautifully. He says the afflictions of
Christ are not the atoning sufferings of the cross, but the
birth pangs of the new world. Paul is called to share these,
to be the means by which the love of the cross is translated
into the language of the present world.
And I was thinking about a friend of mine I know who works
in global logistics. And there's a term, if you work
in that world, you'll know it, called the last mile.
You know, a company will have a warehouse full of a product, a
gift ultimately that somehow solves a consumer's problem and
the warehouse will be stopped. All the hard work has been done
and it's finished. And then there's a logistics
system that is well oiled as they transfer from the the
warehouse to their depots. And the last mile is what they
call in that world, the description from the local depot
and to the specific front door that it needs to be delivered
to. And the last mile is the
headache piece for a logistics company.
It's where the traffic comes in, the rain and the, and the
weather systems can impact things.
There can be Rd. closures, there can be confusing GPS
instructions. There can be a delivery driver
who just wants to Chuck your package over the hedge because
they can't find your house. There's, you know, there's all
these dynamics involved. And if the driver isn't willing
to navigate those dynamics and gives up, the gift remains
undelivered. And I thought, gosh, isn't that
like us? We are Kingdom delivery drivers.
We have received this gift of Christ in US, and we're
commissioned to deliver the beauty of who He is to the world
around us. And we might be jars of clay
that feel fickle and broken, but we carry a treasure.
And when we move from what feels like the warehouse part of that
of our Sunday mornings into the last mile of our Monday through
Saturday, we hit Philippus the pressure.
You know, we might feel that in the awkwardness when we offer to
pray for a colleague and we're met with silence.
Or we pray for healing. And maybe we don't see what we
hoped for. I was thinking about this for
myself, like back to the days when I was trekking in the
Amazon jungle, taking the gospel, the good news of Jesus
to a people that had never heard his name before.
And we saw incredible fruit. But my Philippus was the
thousands of mosquito bites that caused my body to literally make
me cry because they hurt so bad. We can feel it in the cost of
forgiving someone who hasn't even said sorry, in choosing
integrity in the boardroom or while you're writing an essay as
a student when others are cutting the corners and you are
trying to do what you know is the right thing.
We can feel it when staying faithful to the calling, when
nothing seems to be changing regardless of what the part is.
Paul is reminding this church, and I want to remind us in here,
there is a shift in our maturity when we're becoming more and
more aware of Christ in US, Christ in us, the hope of glory.
We have two choices When we hit those precious spaces, our faith
can act like a a mirror. And when the pressure hits, we
can just see ourselves and we can start asking ourselves, why
is this happening to me? Why is this so hard?
What did I do wrong? Or our faith can act like a
window where we stand side by side with God and we look at the
pressure and we say, God, what are you doing through this?
What are you doing that I can't see?
How are you shifting something in me or forming me?
Or how is your grace, God being delivered through this right
now? This shift from the mirror like
faith to a window like faith develops a growing maturity as
we move from confused wise to understanding that we've got a
God who's on the move and he's commissioned us to partner with
him. Secondly, we see another dynamic
at play in this Scripture and it's the dynamic of the Holy
Spirit's power that invites us to move from striving should
do's to empowered get to's. Who in this room would love
every person they knew to encounter Jesus?
Hands up, it's good. Who in this room would love to
become more and more like Jesus themselves and grow in their
faith? It's good, it's good.
This is encouraging as a pastor, but you know, I think often we
desire those things, don't we? But somewhere between what we
desire and what we actually do, things can get a bit mixed up.
And in verse 28, Paul says he is the one we proclaim Jesus so
that we can become fully mature in Christ.
And to this end, Paul strenuously contends with all
the energy Christ so powerfully works in him.
And he goes on to say, I want you to know how hard I am
contending for you. Now, first up, I love it because
Paul is reminding them yet again.
It's Christ in you. Christ in you.
And I feel deeply reassured that other people have to be reminded
of the main thing over and over again because I definitely
easily forget. But Paul hits another nail on
the head around our wrestle that I think most of us face in one
way shape or another. We know in our minds that Christ
is central and we're aware that the Holy Spirit lives in US.
And yet somehow we still fall for this trap that we've got to
work it out on our own. And I'd like, why is that our
default? I mean, I'm sure there are many
reasons, but one of them I was thinking about is because I
think as a human race we're conditioned by merit and a lot
of cultures, our earliest school days, we're taught do the work,
get the great, perform well, get the promotion.
Our world continually teaches us that value is always tied to
output. And subtly we bring that world
view and mindset to our relationship with God.
But the Kingdom of God is an upside down Kingdom and that is
not how God works. And so we fight this belief that
God's pleasure or even our own spiritual growth is something
that we have to buy with good behaviour.
We think that the Holy Spirit is a reward for our hard work
rather than the gift of power that we have been given to do
the work of the Kingdom. And I was thinking about our
faith and and how we grow our faith.
And I was thinking about gyms. Now I am not part of a gym.
I would love to kind of fall in love with the gym, but I'm not.
But I do have boys who have really come to love the gym in
reason. So I, I feel like I'm a bit of
an expert because I sit like a good mum and listen to the many
things about the gym. And I hear that, you know, there
are all kinds of personalities at the gym.
You've got the socializers, you know, they, they love to go in.
They know about the machines. But oh, there's my friend.
Maybe I'll lean on this one and I'll talk to her and have a
catch up. You've got the quiet workers,
the ones that put the headphones in.
They've got the routine. They're going to do their
routine and then they walk out. You've got the flexes as well.
I've called them those who love to go big or go home and they
love to show everyone else in the gym just how strong they
really are. And my boys may love to come
home and show me their muscles, but you know, and if we think
about growing our faith, and I asked you how you might grow it,
you might talk about praying and reading the Word and fasting and
worship. And I want you to imagine like
those things, like they're the machines in the gym.
They're all good. In fact, they're all designed
for our formation and they're wonderful.
But I think if we're honest, we can be all of those different
persons, gym personalities in our faith, including the
flexors, dare I say. Because I think at times we fall
for this trap where we treat prayer in our quiet times like a
performance review. Did I give God enough minutes
today? We can slip into thinking that
the Bible reading is like a textbook that we have to master.
Like one day we're going to stand before God and we're going
to have to pass a test on our knowledge of the Word.
Or we can think that certain ways of worship or or certain
language somehow makes us a better Christian than others.
And we enter this world of striving.
We shift from receiving a gift freely given to trying to lift
the weight of our own growth by our own sheer will.
But Paul's description reminds us that Christ is the centre,
the free gift, that the source is the Holy Spirit, Christ's
power in US. And that is how he puts to
action, strenuously contending, because that is action and
effort. It's definitely not complacency.
John. Mark Cromer says it this way.
The spiritual disciplines are not a bar that we have to jump
over to be a good Christian. They are the way that we
createspace for the Spirit to do in us what we cannot do in
ourselves. And just to bring it home a bit
more, I was on Hollywell Hill parked in my car waiting for the
traffic light the other week, and there was this guy who was
cycling up the hill on a bike and man, his legs were peddling
right. You know, Hollywell Hill, it's
not a joke and he's putting all the effort in.
But the reality is if he stopped peddling, that bike would stop
peddling. And then before I knew it, there
was this other bike that came up the hill, only he seemed to be
just like no effort at all. And then I realised he was
peddling an E bike, but he was still peddling, right?
But he had this surge of power in that frame that together was
multiplying his effort. And church this morning, I want
to remind us in this room that the power that raised Christ
from the dead is alive in you. It's not out there, it's in you.
And so as we give God our lives, as we set to prayer and worship
and fasting and all of these dynamics, they are good things.
But we don't do them to earn the Holy Spirit.
We don't do them to earn God's pleasure.
We do them because they allow us to make space for the Spirit in
our lives and for us to become responsive to His Spirit.
There is a work in US forming us and helping us to become more
and more like Jesus. And you might catch yourself
striving and or you might think, I don't strive.
Claire. No, I know, I know, I know I'm
loved by God and I definitely don't strive.
But one of the ways that caught my attention on this in my own
life, super practical. Out of the heart comes the words
of our mouth. And I realized I started
listening to myself and how often I was saying I should pray
or I must read my Bible rather than I get to.
I get to communion with the Father.
I'd love to spend time in His presence.
I should come to space or I'd love to come to space and be in
His presence. Do you see that difference?
One is rooted in I need to do better for God, and one is
rooted in, and I understand that He's in me and that because He
loves me, He's given me this incredible gift of His power.
That means I want to be with him and I want to develop this
responsiveness of His work in me and me responding to Him.
And thirdly, as time races away, the third prox, the third
dynamic, I wanted to bring it to our attention this morning in
the scripture is proximity, moving from isolation to being
connected. I'm sure there this is this is
probably not a great joke. I'm sure there are many men and
women who love the show. How's it made?
I don't know who watches that show, but I've definitely put
some wife tacks in in my years with our husband, who loves to
watch shows like How's It Made? And I lovingly sit in our living
room occasionally and we'll watch the show with him.
But in that show, they unpack all kinds of things.
And one of the things that I do remember from one episode was
unpacking what carbon fibre is. And you will know if you know
anything about carbon fibre, that if a single strand of
carbon fibre is on its own, it's like a piece of hair and it will
snap and it's very fragile. But carbon fibre is made-up of
1000 thousands of strands that have been knit together and
they're compacted together and they're in close proximity to
one another as they are woven together.
And that is how the strength comes for them to be able to
make racing cars and, and like hold up for normal airplanes and
all kinds of things. Carbon fibre is extremely strong
and here in this last portion of the Scripture, Paul after after
being quite a hardcore leader, I think in the rest of his letter
laying out the the hard dynamics of what it means to be a
follower of Jesus, we see a bit of his pastoral heart kicking
in. He says my goal is that they
would be encouraged in heart and united in love, full of the
riches of complete understanding.
Christ in whom all the hidden treasures of wisdom and
knowledge come. And I tell you this so that none
of you would be deceived by fine sounding arguments.
Paul wants us to grow, but he knows that we need to be
encouraged. He knows that we cannot do it on
our own and that we have to be united together in love, which
that united together literally means being knit together.
And in 2026, just like that Colossian church, we need each
other more than ever because we live in a super disconnected
world and so we have to be ultra intentional about drawing
together in proximity. To truly encourage someone, you
need to know them and you need the heart of Jesus to to be
knitted together. With all of our different
cultures and our messy uniqueness, we sure need Jesus,
and we literally need each other.
You cannot be knitted together on your own.
The Bible is so clear about this weave.
Ephesians 415 to 16. It talks about how from Him the
body is joined and held together by every supporting ligament,
and it grows and it builds itself in love as each part does
its work. Proverbs 2717 says as iron
sharpens iron, no person sharpens another.
You cannot sharpen iron from across the room.
There has to be contact. There has to be friction.
Dare I say it? Proximity to each other is a
gift. In fact, a friend of mine used
to say this all the time, that proximity produces passion,
distance produces distortion. And in the context of scripture,
I would rephrase it to say that proximity to Christ and his
body, you and me, cultivates passion.
And when the distance, when we distance ourself, the truth we
root our lives on becomes vulnerable to distortion.
And think about what God is passionate about.
He's passionate about people. He's passionate about seeing his
people restored to himself. He's passionate about you.
He's passionate in his love towards you.
He's passionate about the person sat next to you.
He's even passionate about your annoying neighbor and the person
that you cannot stand. He loves them, right?
And he's passionate about seeing all people restored.
And he's passionate that we would grow in our love for him
and our love for each other. And he's passionate about us
when we ask hard questions and when we wrestle in our faith.
And he loves it when in the middle of those wrestles, we
stand next to each other and we don't condemn each other.
We say we're here for you and we're going to work this out
together because he is a relational God.
And so Paul is reminding us that the temptation when we're human
is to withdraw when things get messy or heavy.
And we think, maybe I won't go to church this week because I'm
not, I'm not doing well. I don't, I don't feel quite
together enough. I won't meet that friend for a
coffee because I'm just going to cry my eyes out.
And she doesn't need that. But distance is how we're going
to fall into spaces where we see God and ourselves and each other
through warped lenses. Paul's inviting us to cheer each
other on and make our lives the spaces where we can show up for
each other and know that we will encourage with love and truth
and grace so that we can each grow to find the full riches of
understanding Jesus Himself. Amen.