This morning after that slightly, I feel like everyone's
looking at me like, oh, this morning we're kicking off a new
series and I hear some of you say, hey, didn't we just kick
off a new series? We did.
We have kicked off the series on Axe or Impact series, but we're
actually kicking off a second new series on Colossians.
And we're going to be weaving these two series together over
the next couple of months. And they're quite dynamic
actually, when we look at the topics of the Holy Spirit and
who we are in God, who He is and who we are in him as we look at
our impact through the power of the Holy Spirit into our world.
So we're in for a dynamic few months of really digging into
the Word and we're excited for what God is going to do in us.
But I'm going to pray and then we're going to open the Word
together. In fact, I'm going to ask you to
just hold out your hands if you're open in this room to hear
from the Lord today. Holy Spirit, we simply ask you
to come. We thank you that it's you who
breathes life to the words of Scripture.
You open our hearts and we invite you to open our hearts
right now that not one of us would walk out of this room
within an encounter with you this morning through your living
active word, man, man. So turn with me and we're going
to be looking at Colossians. We're actually going to be
working through Colossians essentially few verses at a time
in this series. And this morning we're going to
be looking at Colossians one versus 1 to 8, and we're going
to read it together. 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 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 all God's people, the faith and love
that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and 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
it has, as it has been doing among you since the day you
heard it and truly understood God's grace.
You learned it from a Pafras, our dear fellow servant, who was
a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf and who also told us
of your love in the Spirit, love the word of God.
So to give us a little bit of context as we head into this
series, you know, the book of Colossians is a letter written
by a man called Paul to a young church in a place called
Colossae, which is a small city that you'd find in modern day
Turkey. Paul is likely and probably most
certainly is in prison for his faith at the time that he's
writing this letter, alongside a guy called Timothy, who was
another respected leader in the early church.
To this body of believers who were living in a world at the
time that was shaped by a lot of competing worldviews, you had
Greek philosophy, you had Eastern mysticism, Roman
culture, and Jewish tradition all wrapped up and swirling
around everywhere they went. And the danger for believers
wasn't that they were rejecting Jesus, it was that they were
slowly and potentially subtly drifting if they didn't stay
alert to a faith where Christ was no longer supreme, the
highest in their life, he was no longer fully sufficient that
everything, it was like Jesus and a bit of extra stuff.
And I think in some ways, if we're honest, we can probably
resonate with that a little bit, right in our own noisy
information opinion aided drenched world.
You know, even in the last week, we were listening to the team
that had been out to the Himalayas.
And they they saw this like really apparent as they were
ministering in those in the nation that they went to where
Christians could say yes to, where believers would say yes to
Jesus, but they'd love to mix in with all the other spiritual
things that they're open to. And there was this real need to
acknowledge that Jesus was lured not just another God in their
life. And so when this letter opens
with the phrase, that first phrase, Paul, an apostle of
Christ Jesus by the will of God, you know how easy it is to read
a sentence like that and throw it away.
When we read our Bibles, we're like, let's skip to the good
stuff. But that was a deeply
intentional statement of identity and authority because
Paul is saying into this mixed up world, I'm not bringing my
own ideas here to the mixing pot.
I'm speaking as someone who's sent by Christ Jesus, which is
confirmed in Galatians 11. It says that Paul was sent from
God, not from a man who is rooted in Christ, having
encountered him himself. And he was speaking under the
authority of Christ Jesus. And it's really poignant that we
recognize that because it's what he's saying is this is a heads
up, everybody. The stuff I'm about to say is
really important, not because of who Paul is in his own merit,
but because of who Christ Jesus is.
And what a timely reminder for us church.
We not only live in a noisy world, we actually live in a
really noisy Christian world where the insta reels and the
access to endless sermons and podcasts and people's latest
commentary on scripture can be all really helpful.
But you know what? They do not replace this right?
Picking up the scripture for ourselves, not taking our
theology second hand because in here is the truth and the truth
anchors us and it's not just an idea about who Jesus is.
This reveals who He really is and the Spirit in helps us more
and more. The more we drench ourselves in
here, the more the Spirit is going to make Jesus real in our
lives. And so this passage is off to a
super intentional start. And actually, interestingly, I
think it reveals a lot in that first sentence about what is to
come about being rooted in Christ Jesus.
And this morning I just want to unpack 3 things that the Lord
just highlighted to me as I sat in these few verses about what
happens in us when we are rooted in Christ Jesus.
And they're kind of like an introduction to the rest of the
amazing speakers that are going to come after me who are
unpacking the rest of this book. But but I want to start this
morning with these three things and maybe whet your appetite for
what is to come. And the first one is this, that
being rooted in Jesus means that we get a new identity.
Look at verse 2 with me. It says to God's holy people in
Colosse, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and
peace to you from God our Father.
Before Paul addresses anything that this church needs to watch
out for, before he corrects any off track possible theology,
before he addresses any behaviour or gives an
exhortation for their growth and maturity, what does he do?
He speaks out their identity in Christ.
Notice it. How does he describe this
Colossian church? God's holy people, faithful
brothers and sisters in Christ. And that's pretty remarkable if
you think about the context that we know this church is living in
and what he's about to address in them.
And if I'm honest, deeply reassuring, right?
Because Paul doesn't start by saying because you're getting it
wrong or because of the dangers surrounding you or the mixed
messages in the world, you need to listen up carefully.
He starts by saying church, this is who you are in Christ.
And I want us to slow down for a minute and just notice it
because we hear these phrases. God's people holy all the time.
If we're in church a lot and I think we sometimes we don't let
them just resonate in us a little bit more.
You know, maybe even now you just want to close your eyes so
you're not distracted and hear it.
God's people, we belong to him, our incredible Father in heaven,
the one who is full of love and joy and delight over you.
You belong to him, you are his. I belong to Him.
And as believers, as those who have acknowledged our need of a
Saviour Jesus, we have been saved and adopted into his
family as his kids into this new life, as Co heirs alongside
Jesus, his Son. Let me show you how.
I am his Son, I am his daughter. Hear it this morning in your
heart. And that means that you have
unhindered access to him at all times.
You know, just like my kids used to.
They didn't care whether their dad was sat in a meeting at work
or in our lounge with friends or anything.
If they saw him when he was a toddler, they would run at him
unhindered because they knew that he was their dad.
We get this new life church completely forgiven, the chance
to be free from the power of sin and death that wants to entangle
us through the blood of Jesus, created with purpose and
intention and meaning. To live a life full of joy as
overcomers with the promise of a life eternal.
To enjoy endless beautiful relationship, communion with God
forever and all because of Him. All because of his deep,
unconditional, radical, undeserved love for each one of
us. It's mind blowing.
That's how we can sing. Yes, you are.
You're the most beautiful. There is no one like you.
And that's why Paul was able to go on and call this body of
believers holy and why we are declared in this room holy
because it's our inheritance. And yet if I asked any one of us
in this room this morning before I got to speak and I said to
you, you could you describe yourself?
I can't see none of us would have put our hand up and be
like, I am holy. Because when we hear the word
holy, our sub, our subconscious translates that into I've got to
be doing everything right? But you're called holy this
morning because you're God's child.
And not because of anything you've done or you're doing
anything special, but because he is holy.
And now you've been grafted into his family and it's like you
carry his DNA, so to speak. Like my kids, my girls look like
my triplets. So you often know, there's no
denying that my twin girls belong to me, right?
They look like me. We look like our Father in
heaven, and Paul calls them faithful, drumming home this
truth because he definitely did not mean that this church was
flawless, as we uncover reading the rest of this letter.
But even in their mess, they were postured with a desire to
follow Christ while they were still working out and learning
and stumbling and coming back to Jesus and asking for the Holy
Spirit help again and again and again.
And this morning I just felt in my spirit, the Lord wants to
remind us in this room who we are.
He is who he says He is, and you are who He says you are in him.
And perhaps this morning you're in the room and you've never met
Jesus before. Perhaps you're like, what is
this girl talking about? I thought church was about rules
and doing the right things. This is what's on offer for you.
Jesus is for every human being on this earth, including you and
his invitation to you this morning.
If you would love to give His life, give your life to Him and
let him lead you, recognizing that you can't do this life on
your own. He's saying, I want you to
become one of my God's kids and this life of joy and freedom
and, and just being accepted and loved and adopted can be yours.
But some of us have already done that in this room.
We love Jesus and but we forget, right?
We forget the reality of the truth because we get so
distracted in how we aren't adding up to what we think we
need to be. And it's why Paul goes on to
confidently declare that grace and peace come to you from God,
our Father, because he's reminding us that he knew that
even in their imperfect journey, that we have a Father in heaven
who loves to pour out his free gifts upon us.
This gift of a beautiful life in him, not out of us performing to
acquire it. And I just think it's really
poignant that Paul does this before he goes into the rest of
this letter, because what he's speaking to us here is that when
we we have this new identity in Christ and it pierces into the
core of our human reality, into the world full of lies of the
accuser, who even as believers continues to try to convince us
that we have to live for acceptance.
But in Christ Church we no longer have to live for
acceptance or with an uncertainty that if we mess it
up somehow, we have the power to change God's mind, that somehow
we can make him reject us. And yet we sang it this morning
when he went sent Jesus to the cross, He said it is finished.
And when he said it is finished, he ended this for us.
We no longer live from for acceptance.
We live from acceptance in Christ and everything changes in
our future as a result. And that means that as we delve
into the rest of this book, God is reminding us this morning
when he calls us higher and deeper and convicts us and
challenges us in our discipleship.
It's never from a voice of do better.
It's always from a voice of saying you're mine, you belong
to me, and therefore you have access to the fullness of who I
am. And together we're going to go
at this thing, we're going to press into this area, we're
going to go on this adventure in the Spirit.
We're going to do this and that. We do it together, empowered by
God. Or as NT right puts it, Paul
does not tell people how to behave in order to become more
Christian. He tells them who they are
because they are a Christian in Christ, and then draws out the
implications for how they are to live.
So here at this morning church, you are in Christ.
You are adopted and accepted and loved in this place.
And I hope that gets you to sit up a little bit stronger this
morning, because you should, because you're in the presence
of your Father. Point #2 Being rooted in Jesus
changes us from the inside out. Verses 3 to 6 you know, in these
next few verses, we start to see some of the fruit of a life
grounded in Christ. We see it in poor we he in the
way that thankfulness, gratitude is overflowing in him, right.
We thank God always for our the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
when we pray for you his he is grounded in Christ and he's full
of thankfulness. And it's why we exhort us often
in this room that we have a reason to be thankful even when
it feels like we don't. Because we have Jesus and we can
thank him always for what he has done.
But Paul goes on to talk about faith and love and porn, only
names the fruit that we start to see growing in them.
But I noticed something. This is the moment when he
connects it back to the truth that the fruit of our life
springs up. It overflows from the reality of
a hope stored up, secured in heaven, the hope that Jesus
secured through his death and resurrection.
And it speaks to this eternal promise that we have that is a
part of our inheritance that we receive as one of his kids when
we say yes to Jesus. But let's have an honest moment.
You know me, I like an honest moment, right?
You know, as a pastor in this place, I've sat with many of you
and I know from my own journey with Jesus that we can hear all
these amazing statements about what our what is ours in Christ
Jesus. We can know we've got this hope
for the future. We can know that we're accepted
and loved, and then we can look at our lives and desperately
want to become more loving. I would love to become more
loving to everyone around me. I'd love to be more patient,
more gentle. All those fruits of the spirit
that we know. But we find ourselves, don't we?
Or maybe it's just me in moments of frustration or Dan Rabbit
Warrens wondering, like, why can't I seem to grasp it?
And then subtly in those places, we end up trying to fix it in
our own strength. We'll cover it up a little bit.
Gosh, if they knew what was really going on in here.
Uh oh. Almost like sticking like the
good fruit on the outside. We do all the right things.
You know, if I show up at all the prayer meetings, they'll
think I'm really prayerful. A bit like the day that one of
my boys brought me a dead branch in the garden and had attempted
to try to tie apples onto it and they declared that they now had
an apple tree for their den. And I had to smile like any good
mum does. And but I thought, gosh, how
easily we fall into that trap in our faith of trying to tie all
the good stuff on. And yet we know deep down, don't
we, that that's not what we really want or how it works?
We know that an apple tree is only a living apple tree if we
get the seed and we plant it and we it bears roots and they grow
and then it starts to form the trunk and the branches and the
apples come empowered with water and sunlight.
And I want us to notice something as I sat in the
Scripture going, OK, God, what? What are you saying here?
Let's look at this verse further down.
It says in the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and
growing throughout the whole world, just as it has been doing
among you since the day you heard it and truly understood
God's grace. And something struck me in this
little phrase at the end of verse 6.
Fruit had been growing in them since the day they heard it, the
good news of the gospel and truly understood God's grace.
And what we're reminded is that fruit doesn't just simply come
from simply hearing the good news.
How does it come? It says since the day you heard
it and truly understood God's grace.
And in another version, it says understood God's grace in truth
and the and is so important. And I want to unpick this little
sentence. So come with me on a little
journey, OK? Understanding God's grace.
What is God's grace? Well, essentially as his
unmerited favour. It's his is our and His his gift
to us. It's in the what we don't
deserve. He's giving it to us anyway, and
He's given it to us freely. This in the case of God's grace,
a new life in Him, a new identity.
But I loved when I looked at this word because there's also a
reflection in the original that this came with dynamics of
kindness and great joy. So God's grace is God giving us
this gift, delighted to give it to us.
He is joyful in giving it to us. And then the original word for
understood is I love it. I love a good word that I can't
pronounce, Epigenosco, which means if we break it down, EPI,
it means to come upon, which intensifies the word that
follows, which is genosco, which means to know.
And together they literally point to something being known
deeply, thoroughly, through personal, lived experience,
embodied knowledge. Not just hearing information,
just acknowledging the truth, but a truth that speaks to
receiving it, wrestling with it, engaging with it so that it's
life changing, heart shaping reality transforming,
understanding. And for that to happen, it's not
a one hit wonder and suddenly you're going to live and have
this amazing fruit in your life. It's an active, growing, never
ending journey to deeper and deeper understanding.
And there is the catalytic truth that the enemy fights for us not
to embrace. And my grandparents, my step
grandparents, they, they were foster parents.
In fact, they fostered over 50 children in their lifetime and
they received an award for it. And I got to meet some of the
foster kids because I was a teenager at the time.
And these children were coming to their home and they were in a
home that loved Jesus. But because their future was not
secure, and even though they were surrounded by love and
security, there was a guardedness in them.
And I think watching that unfold actually impacted me.
Because now whenever I see a picture or a video of an
adoption court where the judge puts the hammer down and he
tells a child that their new name, that they have a future
and a security in this family, it like gets me every time.
And I get really emotional watching it because in that
moment there is a truth that pierces into the reality of
their trauma, that they belong and there's big smiles.
But it struck me that even in that those children go home and
the parents have to keep making space for the truth that
happened in that moment to sink in and change their trust and
their behaviours for the long haul.
And the parents have to keep doing it on repeat.
And as believers, it's true of us too, right?
We can hear this truth that we're in God's family, that
we're accepted and loved, but we have to keep making space for
the Holy Spirit to just make it go deeper and deeper and deeper
until it sits in every cavern of our horror.
And it's why on Sundays, we're making space for the Holy Spirit
in here so that we can just say host.
But I need your help to know this is true of who I am in Him.
In fact, it's completely changed my approach to prayer.
I used to pray. Can you help me become more
loving? Can you help me become more
patient? And now when I'm impatient and
I'm unloving, I say, Holy Spirit, will you help me to know
the Father's heart for me? Will you help me to know who I
am in you? Would you help me to know that I
am loved, that I don't have to strive for His attention or His
affection? Would you help me to know when I
mess it up, that I can run unhindered to this Father in
heaven? Because there's nothing that I
can do that will change His mind for His love for me?
And it's why in these days church, we need each other.
We need to create spaces where we can wrestle it out.
We can get in the scriptures, we can hear the truth.
We can encourage one another and hear someone else's testimony
and pray with each other and stand next to each other and
say, Holy Spirit, come and help us know this truth of who we are
in Christ because that is where grace takes root.
And that is how fruit begins to grow in our lives.
We don't conjure up the fruit. We allow God's truth to resonate
in our heart. And from that place, the fruit
comes naturally. And so we need you.
We need you to make more spaces. We are going to see hundreds and
thousands of people saying yes to Jesus in this town and our
city, right? Do I hear ya?
And in order for us to help people know who they are, to
truly understand God's grace, we need spaces for people to come
in and walk beside us. And we do it together.
And so we're going to need more of you to, to run groups, to
open up your homes, to make spaces to disciple each other,
not because you're a perfect leader and you have all the
answers, but we wrestle this side by side.
The Holy Spirit is the one that brings the revelation.
We just want to create spaces for that to happen, right?
And you don't do it because you're ticking a box in your
Christian faith like it's a good Christian thing to do to run a
group, right? We do it because we want the
Holy Spirit to bring a revelation of the truth in this
place so that we become more like him.
Amen. Because as Paul goes on to say,
when the gospel is alive, the gospel isn't just something to
admire or acknowledge is true. When it's alive in US, it
changes not just what we believe, it changes who we are
becoming from the inside out. And thirdly, being rooted in
Jesus enables us to be faithful followers.
Paul turns in verses 7 to 8 our attention to a name guy named
Epaphras. And at first glance, Epaphras
might seem like a pretty minor character in the Bible story.
You may never have even heard of him.
In fact, I bet if I'd asked at the start of this how many
people had heard of him, there would just be a few hands that
raised in the room. But when?
But this guy, he wasn't introduced as an apostle or a
big name leader, but he gave his life to Jesus in Ephesus when he
heard the good news. And then he faithfully went out
and carried the message to people, his people in Colossae
and day in and day out, even when he wasn't physically
present in the church. You read further on that he
fervently prayed and contended for them because he loved them,
because he loved God. And I absolutely love finding
individuals in the Bible like this because they're so
relatable, right? And it reminds us that
faithfulness is what we're all invited into as a follower of
Jesus, being available, willing, humble, ready, persistent, both
in the seen and the unseen, faithful in our homes and our
workplaces, just as I come in to end.
It reminded me of a her time our niece in the US when she was
born. Just a couple months after her
birth, she was diagnosed with something called Botulism, which
is a rare but seriously dangerous condition that affects
a baby's ability to breathe. And essentially it was life
threatening if untreated. And she needed a really specific
life saving, super expensive medicine that wasn't available
locally on the East Coast where we were.
In fact, it was only on the other side of America on the
West Coast, and it had to travel all across the US.
And I can remember being sat in this hospital room and we were
thanking Jesus for the medicine that was going to save my niece
life. We were thanking him for the
doctors that knew what to do. But as I was preparing this it
struck me that I don't think once we ever thank God for the
pilot that threw flew that medicine across the to the US.
So we didn't thank him for the Porter that brought the medicine
through the hospital building to get it into the right place or
the lab technicians that were making sure it remained active.
But each faithfully did their part so that that medicine could
reach her and most of them would never have been thanked or
remembered. But without their faithfulness
in the part that they were asked to do, that life giving medicine
would never have arrived and saved her life.
And that's what Epaphras minds us, reminds us of Paul would be
perhaps the first name that comes off our lips when we think
of Colossians. But it was Apaphras who
faithfully delivered the gospel, nurtured them as a church,
carried them in prayer when he couldn't be there.
And he was in many ways unseen, Yet God worked through him to
build a church marked by what spirit produced love.
And finally, I just want to say this, there's a verse.
So, you know, our heart is the everyone.
Everyone would have the opportunity to encounter Jesus,
not because we want a big church and be a big name in the nation,
but because we believe the body of Christ is marked by the Holy
Spirit. And that allows us to
demonstrate a love that literally changes everything.
And we want everyone to have the opportunity to know this love,
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whose presence is the
answer for every single human being on this planet.
And so from his love and in His love for one another, we walk
and steward all that He's placed in our hands to be faithful in.
Just like my niece's life that was saved by the many unfaith,
many unseen faithful hands, we Church are just a group of
ordinary humble people giving our yes to do our part
faithfully, prayerfully, persistently, to bring the life,
giving good news of Jesus to the whole world.
Amen.