What the Gospel Can Do

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

0 comments

00:02
I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Colossians.
00:11
Hold your place in chapter 1, verse 3.
00:22
As has already been mentioned a few times, today is Reformation Sunday.
00:30
And for many in the church, that does not mean a whole lot, because we have become a people who are disconnected from and ignorant of the history of the church.
00:48
Currently, I'm teaching a survey of church history and I always begin with the old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown comes to Lucy and she's writing a paper and he says, what are you writing about? And she says, I'm writing about church history.
01:07
And he says, well, what are you starting with? And she says, my pastor was born in 1930.
01:15
And that is the attitude that so many people have about church history.
01:20
They feel like it began and ends with them.
01:25
And they are very disconnected from the past.
01:29
And they don't know much about it.
01:31
And sadly, often don't care much about it.
01:37
But understand this, we stand on the shoulders of giants.
01:42
We did not begin the church, neither is the church going to end with us unless the Lord comes.
01:52
We stand in the tradition of what is known as the Protestant Reformation.
01:59
And the reason why that is important is because for for almost a thousand years, the Roman Catholic Church brought false teachings and corruption into the church.
02:19
And as a result, the gospel was shrouded, hidden, not lost.
02:32
But it was difficult to find.
02:37
And on October 31st, 1517, a German priest who was a monk and a scholar saw what was happening within the church.
02:51
He saw that the church was extorting the people by essentially making salvation a commodity that could be purchased with silver.
03:02
And he took his pen and he wrote ninety five arguments opposing the sale of indulgences and he nailed them to the door of the church in Wittenberg.
03:18
To him, it was simply a request for a debate.
03:27
But for the world, it would become the spark that would light the fire of the Protestant Reformation, a fire that will not go out and continues to this day.
03:46
And often the question is raised, was the Reformation necessary? In fact, Roman Catholics see the Reformation much the same way as Britain sees the Revolutionary War.
04:01
You see, if you ask a British person about the Revolutionary War, they'll say it's the Great American Rebellion.
04:06
They don't see it as the revolution.
04:08
They see it as a rebellion.
04:10
And if you ask a Roman Catholic about the Reformation, they don't see it as a positive thing.
04:15
They say, oh, Luther just came in and split the church.
04:18
But understand this, Luther's purpose was not to split the church, but was the rediscovery of the gospel.
04:24
It was about taking away the shroud.
04:30
It was about eliminating the covering and allowing the gospel to shine forth.
04:40
One of the mottos that came in that time in history was the Latin ad fontes.
04:46
Ad fontes means to the sources or to the fountains and to the reformers, the sources were the scriptures.
04:58
That was the fountain of truth.
05:00
That was why they proclaimed sola scriptura.
05:05
The Bible alone is our sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
05:16
And again, some would say the Reformation was a bad thing.
05:21
Famed commentator Matt Walsh, who is a Roman Catholic, he said last year, I can't believe anyone would celebrate the Reformation.
05:28
I can't believe anyone would celebrate division.
05:33
But understand this, we celebrate today not division, but the gospel.
05:41
The gospel is powerful, and when it was unleashed, it could not be stopped.
05:51
And the men of the Reformation made it their mission that even the plowman would have the scriptures so that he could know the gospel.
06:03
And it was said by William Tyndale, one of the later reformers and Bible translators, he says, if I if God shall spare my life, I will see to it that the simple plowman knows as much of the scripture as the pope.
06:22
Beloved, this is a day to celebrate.
06:24
Every week we celebrate the resurrection and this is the Lord's day and we must never set that aside.
06:32
But it's also a day to be reminded of the recovery of the gospel and the fact that the gospel will always bear fruit and increase in the world.
06:42
And that takes us to our text today, because last week we began to study the book of Colossians, and this week we're going to continue into Paul's greeting of the Colossians.
06:53
Now, oftentimes I imagine some of you, when you begin reading in the New Testament letters of Paul, you read the beginning sort of quickly trying to get to what you might think is the good stuff, because it always begins the same way.
07:09
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, always starts somehow with a greeting.
07:14
And we say, well, we know who wrote this and we know what it's about.
07:16
We know who he is.
07:17
And we sort of jump to the to the part that we want to get to.
07:20
And I know that many of you really, really want to get to verse 15, because verse 15 is where the body of this letter really begins to light up.
07:28
And Paul's argument for the deity and supremacy and sufficiency of Christ really gets going.
07:32
But we're not going to get there yet.
07:35
We're going to look at his greeting and we're going to see that even in Paul's greeting, there is a wealth of information and a focus upon the gospel.
07:49
The power of the gospel is discussed in his greeting.
07:53
And so today we're going to ask the question or we're going to look and see rather what the gospel can do.
07:58
And Paul tells us in this greeting.
08:02
With that being said, we're going to read the scripture now.
08:04
So I invite you to stand to give due honor and reverence to the reading of God's word beginning at verse three.
08:18
This, by the way, verses three through eight is one long sentence in Greek.
08:23
And so this is this is even though it's five verses, it's one long sentence.
08:30
We always thank God, the father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven of this, you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world, it is bearing fruit and growing as it always does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God and truth.
08:58
Just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit.
09:11
Let us pray.
09:12
Father, I thank you for your word.
09:14
I thank you for your truth.
09:16
I pray even now that you would keep me from error, for, Lord, I am a fallible man.
09:22
I'm capable of error and I don't want to preach error for your people's sake, for your name's sake and for the sake of my conscience.
09:30
I pray, Lord, also that as we consider the importance of the gospel, that we would also answer the question in our own heart, do we truly understand the gospel? Are we growing in our understanding of the gospel? Do we make the gospel the very centerpiece of our theology? Lord, may it be that today we, as a church, in a sense, rediscover the power of what the gospel can do.
10:01
Lord, I pray for the believers that they would be challenged by this message and for the unbelievers, Lord, that you would, by your grace, open their hearts to believe.
10:12
Do what only you can do, Lord, granting them repentance that leads to life.
10:16
And we pray this in Jesus name and for his sake.
10:20
Amen.
10:43
As I mentioned in the introduction, Paul has a very common way that he begins his letters to the churches that he writes to, and it almost always begins by an identification of himself and his authority.
11:01
Paul, an apostle, and he addresses the people of God and he begins to go into some form of greeting.
11:10
The different letters that we have from Paul all offer up different types of greetings.
11:15
Many of them are positive, but some of them are not positive.
11:19
And in fact, the first letter that we have of Paul, the first letter that Paul wrote, at least the one that I believe came first, is the book of Galatians.
11:28
And if you read the book of Galatians, you will find when you open up that letter that Paul does not give a positive introduction or positive greeting to the Galatians.
11:40
He goes right into a negative about them.
11:44
And the reason was is because the Galatian church had allowed within it the heresy of the Judaizers that had come in and had begun to create a misunderstanding of the gospel.
11:56
And that's why Paul says in Galatians chapter one, he refers to them by saying that there is no other gospel except for the gospel that was preached.
12:04
And if anyone preaches another gospel, let him be what, accursed.
12:09
So Paul begins Galatians as a man on fire.
12:14
He begins Galatians as a man who's who's upset and and focused upon what he wants to say.
12:19
But then we move to other letters and we see like in Philippians and and other letters, we see a grand greeting that he provides to the church, often one that encourages them in what they are doing.
12:34
And that's what we see here in the book of Colossians.
12:37
Paul speaks highly of the Colossians.
12:40
In fact, he says that he gives thanks for them always in his prayers.
12:47
And so what we're going to do, we're going to look today at verses three through eight.
12:51
As I already mentioned, this is one long sentence in Greek, but we're going to break it into three parts because it does ostensibly come to us in three sections.
13:00
The first thing we're going to look at is the virtues of the Colossians, which is verses three and five, three to five.
13:07
Then we're going to look at the power of the gospel, which is the end of verse five and verse six.
13:11
And then we're going to look at the blessing of discipleship, which begins in verse seven, ends in verse eight.
13:18
So let's first look at the virtue of the Colossians, the virtues rather.
13:23
He says in verse three, he says, we always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.
13:40
The very first word in that sentence is the word Eucharist to men, Eucharist to men is the word that is translated into English as Thanksgiving.
13:51
The actual etymology of the word, though, is the is the idea of a good gift.
13:57
When you put the prefix EU on the beginning of a word in Greek, that means good.
14:02
Like if you say a eulogy, that means a good word, you say something good about someone when they die.
14:09
And the word Eucharist is the root word is Keres, which is the word for gift.
14:15
It's the same word that we use for grace when we talk about grace.
14:19
That is the word Keres.
14:20
So so Eucharist to men is the idea of we give thanks for you.
14:27
Now, some of you who are good Bible students or maybe have spent time in other churches, you maybe have heard the word Eucharist.
14:34
Where does the word Eucharist often get associated in Christian life? With the table.
14:40
Often, in fact, often people connect that with Roman Catholicism because Roman Catholicism refers to the mass as the Eucharist.
14:48
But understand this, the word Eucharist for the table actually predates the false teachings of Rome about the table, because it was very early on in the Christian church that they understood that what we were doing at the table was we were celebrating a thanksgiving for what Christ had given to us.
15:09
We were celebrating what Christ has done, and therefore it was called the Eucharist or the giving of thanks.
15:17
You know, we have a holiday coming up called Thanksgiving where we're all going to gather around our table and argue with our liberal relatives.
15:23
I mean, we're going to gather around table and feast.
15:26
Sorry.
15:29
But during that feast, we offer a word of thanks.
15:34
Well, this is how Paul begins his greeting to the Colossians.
15:40
He says, we give thanks or we thank God.
15:48
And then he identifies who God is, which seems to us maybe somewhat superfluous.
15:53
We know who God is.
15:54
We know who Paul is and we know the God he's speaking of.
15:56
But Paul wants to ensure that his audience knows exactly to whom he is giving thanks.
16:02
He says, we give thanks to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
16:11
Now, to us, that seems very simple.
16:15
If we say God is the father of the Lord Jesus Christ, no one bats an eye to us.
16:20
That is normal.
16:21
Jesus is the son of God.
16:23
That's normal.
16:24
But I explain this on Wednesday night because I'm preaching through the Gospel of Mark.
16:28
The beginning of the Gospel of Mark says the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.
16:34
That's the very first line in the Gospel of Mark.
16:36
And you have to understand how revolutionary that sentence was.
16:41
The pharaohs believed they were sons of God and the Caesars believed that they were deities on Earth.
16:48
But no, the Christians came out and said, no, they are not God.
16:52
There is one God, maker of heaven and Earth and one son of God, and that is Jesus Christ.
17:00
And so Paul is identifying God as the father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
17:07
May we never, I said this Wednesday night, I'm going to say it again, may we never find that to be humdrum or basic.
17:13
It's not.
17:14
This is the very heart of what we believe.
17:15
God has a son.
17:17
You know what the Koran says, Cursed is he who says Allah has a son.
17:24
It's written right within the Koran, it says, Cursed is he who says Allah has a son.
17:30
You understand, this is a just saying that Jesus is the son of God is an absolutely otherworldly cosmic expression of truth.
17:40
If it's true, it's the greatest truth in history.
17:43
And if it's false, it's the greatest lie of all time.
17:45
And we know that it's the truth.
17:52
So Paul says we thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you.
18:02
But notice, he also says he says we always thank God in the ESV.
18:07
The word always comes at the beginning.
18:08
But in the Greek, it actually comes later.
18:10
But it's focused on the idea of thanks.
18:13
He says we always thank God when we pray for you.
18:19
And you say, why, why does Paul thank God? And this leads to the virtues.
18:25
As I said, this section is the virtues of the Colossians.
18:29
And this is what we see here is Paul is going to tell them why he thanks God for them.
18:35
And just for a moment, I want you to think about that, think about the fact that Paul is saying to this church every time we pray about you, we are thanking God for you.
18:50
Are there people in your life you thank God for? Are there people in your life you don't thank God for? Don't be honest.
18:57
Don't be a bunch of pious gasbags.
18:58
Are there people you don't thank God for? Yes.
19:03
Because some people, it's like some people come as a bless.
19:05
Some people come as a test.
19:06
You know, whatever you want to say.
19:07
However you want.
19:11
But Paul's saying we always give thanks to God for you.
19:15
And then the very next thing he says in verse four, he gives three reasons.
19:21
He says, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, that is a wonderful triad of virtues that Paul is very fond of.
19:39
In fact, how many of you remember this verse? God has given us three things, faith, hope and love.
19:45
And the greatest of these is love.
19:47
Right.
19:48
Paul is fond of this triad of virtues.
19:51
And he uses this triad of virtues here to describe why he gives thanks for the Colossians.
19:58
He says, we give thanks always for you since we heard first of your faith.
20:05
Since we heard of your faith.
20:07
The word faith there is the word pistis or piston.
20:10
It is the root of the idea of belief.
20:12
When Jesus said in John 316, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
20:22
That word believeth is the same word here for faith.
20:25
It's the word to believe.
20:27
It's the word to trust.
20:28
And he says we give thanks to God because you trust in Christ Jesus.
20:36
During the time of the Reformation, the greatest dispute was over what was known as the material principle of the Reformation.
20:46
The material principle of the Reformation was the doctrine called sola fide.
20:53
Sola fide means what church? By faith alone.
20:57
We sang earlier by faith alone, we come to you.
21:01
Right.
21:02
Because we believe that we believe that we are saved by faith alone and not of our own.
21:07
Not of works, lest any man should boast.
21:10
Right.
21:10
Paul tells us that for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourself.
21:14
It is the gift of God and not of works, lest any man should boast.
21:18
What Paul says here, he says we give thanks to God because of your faith.
21:23
And notice it isn't just blind faith, but it's your faith in Christ Jesus.
21:28
Understand this.
21:29
If you have faith, but it's not in Christ Jesus, you have a false faith.
21:33
You have a misplaced faith.
21:35
You have a faith which will lead you only to hell.
21:37
You have a faith which James says is a dead faith.
21:42
There is only one faith that saves, and it is the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
21:47
And any other faith.
21:48
That's why people say, oh, all roads lead to God.
21:50
No, Jesus didn't say that.
21:52
Jesus said there is a broad road that leads to destruction, and many there are who find it.
21:56
But there is a narrow road that leads to life, and few there are who find it.
22:00
And that narrow road is Christ and faith in him alone.
22:07
He says, since we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love.
22:14
So he says we give thanks because of your faith.
22:17
We also give thanks because of your love that you have for all the saints.
22:23
Now, we should know what the word love means.
22:27
Love in the Greek is agape.
22:29
Many of us are familiar with that Greek word agape.
22:31
And this is what I think we need to understand about what Paul is saying here.
22:37
He says, we've heard of your faith, but it isn't just words.
22:42
We've heard of your faith, and your faith is shown forth in what? Love.
22:47
Jesus said, by this all men will know that you are my disciples.
22:51
If what? If you have the biggest church in town? If you're broadcast to 14 different satellite locations? If you've got a Bible named after you? No.
23:00
He says, by this will all men know that you are my disciples.
23:01
If what? If you love one another.
23:06
So Paul says to the Colossians, he says, I give thanks to God.
23:11
We give thanks to God because of your faith and your faith is being shown in love.
23:17
And love for the saints.
23:19
I mentioned this this past week.
23:21
I posted something on Facebook.
23:24
I said a Christian who does not love other Christians has no right to the title.
23:29
And somebody immediately.
23:30
Well, Christians are supposed to love everybody.
23:34
I said, yeah, we are called to love all men, even our enemies.
23:39
But the church comes first.
23:41
Paul calls us to love the brethren first.
23:46
And if you don't think that's true, you didn't read 1 Corinthians.
23:49
Paul calls us to actually put our brethren in Christ first.
23:55
What's that? That's right.
23:57
We have a special love here.
23:59
Yes, I love my neighbors.
24:00
Yes, I love my enemies.
24:02
But that which is among the people of God is the love that's going to go into eternity.
24:06
I have family members that I love, but are on the way to hell.
24:10
And it breaks my heart.
24:11
But I know this.
24:12
You all are my eternal family.
24:16
And there is a distinction to be made there.
24:21
And we may not always get along.
24:22
We may not always see eye to eye.
24:24
And we may bump into each other and scratch each other and hurt each other at times.
24:28
But we love each other in truth.
24:32
And we should love each other enough to forgive one another.
24:34
As the Bible says, love covers a what? A multitude of sins.
24:40
So Paul tells him, he says, he says, we thank God because of your faith.
24:45
We thank God because of your love.
24:48
And then he says, we thank God because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.
24:53
Now, this one is a little bit different.
24:56
Because this one in the construction of the Greek.
25:02
And this may be hard to explain.
25:03
I hope I don't I hope I don't make it harder than it needs to be.
25:06
The word here, hope.
25:10
Is the is the reason for the faith and the love? Because if you notice the ESV says because of the hope, he says you have, he says here again, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, understand what he's saying.
25:31
He's saying that in this sense of this triad, we always think faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love.
25:35
But what he's saying, if you think of the triad, faith, hope and love, it is hope that inspires the faith and the love.
25:42
You understand one of the reasons we can put up with one another is because we know we ain't always going to be this way.
25:49
One of the reasons we can love each other is because we know this isn't all there is.
25:53
And one of the reasons we can continue in faith is because we have a hope and that hope, by the way, when a Christian uses the word hope, understand this.
26:01
It's not like the world.
26:02
When the world uses the word hope, it means a possibility.
26:05
Like, I hope I'm going to, you know, make enough money to support my family or I hope I'm going to get a job or I hope I'm going to have a wife or kids or whatever.
26:13
That's the way the world sees the word hope.
26:15
But the word hope, Elpida in Greek, it means a confident expectation.
26:20
It's the reality of something that you don't yet have, but you feel as if you have it.
26:24
Faith is the evidence of things unseen and the hope of things or the things hoped for.
26:30
Right.
26:31
This hope is not simply vain pie in the sky nonsense.
26:36
But this is the trust that this is actually going to happen.
26:40
Therefore, I can live in love and I can live in faith because I have an other worldly address that one day I'm going to make it there and I have the confidence that I will.
26:50
Paul says, because of the hope that you have, that you're able to live in love, it's because of the hope that you have, that you have this faith.
27:00
Now, all of this, as I said, is Paul's threefold virtues.
27:06
He tells us in First Corinthians 13, there's three things that abide faith, hope and love.
27:10
And the Colossians are being commended for all three of these things.
27:14
Wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be great if that was how we were known in our community? Wouldn't it be awesome if someone were to say, what do you think about that church, Sovereign Grace? I know it ain't that big and I know it ain't that fancy, but what do you know about that church? I know that they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
27:40
They love one another and they have a hope of heaven that drives them forward.
27:44
Wouldn't that be great to hear of us? And that's what Colossians was.
27:50
There was a church that had a faith in Christ Jesus, a love for one another and a hope for heaven that drove them forward.
27:58
So that's the virtues of the Colossians.
28:01
But now Paul moves on and that could have been the sermon, but we're going to continue.
28:07
Because Paul moves on now to the power of the gospel, because he says of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed the whole world.
28:18
And it is bearing fruit and increasing as it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.
28:26
See what Paul is doing in the second section.
28:28
And by the way, I got a group of guys who are with me trying to memorize this text.
28:32
We're doing this memorization thing.
28:34
If anybody wants to join in with us every week, we're trying to memorize what the text is I'm preaching.
28:38
And this week it was super hard.
28:40
Those who are doing it, amen.
28:42
Don't amen if you don't want to.
28:44
It was hard because this section, this middle section, especially the ESV is very choppy.
28:52
But understand what Paul, this is one long sentence in Greek.
28:55
And what Paul is doing is Paul is showing that these virtues that they have, faith, hope and love are connected to a single point in time.
29:07
And that point in time is when they receive the gospel.
29:12
You see, the gospel came into Colossae and transformed them.
29:18
The gospel came in and gave them hope.
29:21
The gospel came in and gave them a reason for faith.
29:24
The gospel came in and gave them a foundation for love.
29:28
And these virtues are based on the gospel.
29:31
And what he says in this text is he says the gospel is bearing fruit and increasing.
29:37
Now, that may not seem like a normal phrase for us, but I want you to think for a moment.
29:45
When he says it's bearing fruit and increasing, this is actually a biblical theological statement that ties this to an earlier idea in Scripture.
29:56
What was the first command given to the first man and woman? Be fruitful and increase.
30:07
Or multiply.
30:09
To be fruitful and multiply.
30:11
After God calls Abraham, he calls Abraham.
30:15
And what is he says? You're going to be fruitful and multiply.
30:18
He later on with Jacob, his grandson, you're going to be fruitful and multiply.
30:23
We see this phrase throughout the Old Testament.
30:27
As an expression, an expression of the blessing of God and the call of God to be fruitful and multiply.
30:35
And so Paul is now saying about the gospel that when the gospel came to Colossae, you know what it did? It bore fruit.
30:47
It bore fruit in their lives.
30:49
And what was the fruit? Faith, hope and love.
30:51
That was the fruit that was bore out of the gospel.
30:55
And it's increasing.
30:57
They're increasing in faith.
30:59
They're increasing in love.
31:00
They're increasing in hope.
31:02
All because of the gospel.
31:03
You see, the gospel is the answer to the question, how do we fulfill the command? And the command is to be fruitful and multiply.
31:10
And how do we do that? Through the gospel, which goes out into the world and multiplies in the world and changes lives.
31:17
Let me just give you, because you might think, I think that's a little weird.
31:21
Let me just give you what Jesus said.
31:24
Jesus, when he was describing the kingdom.
31:28
And he used parables to describe the kingdom.
31:34
He would say things like this.
31:37
And Mark 4, he said, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.
31:43
Why? Because the mustard seed is real little.
31:45
But when you put it into the ground, it grows up into this very large plant.
31:50
And he said, the kingdom of God, the gospel is like that.
31:55
It's planted and it grows.
31:58
He says, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet.
32:02
He says this in Matthew chapter 13, 47.
32:05
He says, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet.
32:08
That when the net is put into the water and the ship pulls the net along.
32:11
It begins to fill up with fish and more and more and more to the point where it's overfilling.
32:17
He said, that's the picture of the gospel.
32:18
It goes into the water and it comes up full of fish.
32:24
By the way, Jesus did that as a miracle, didn't he? Put your nets down on the other side, pull it up, pull up full of fish.
32:29
And what did he say right after that? I'm going to make you fishers of men.
32:36
Right.
32:38
The kingdom of heaven is like leaven.
32:40
What does leaven do? It goes into a lump and it permeates the whole lump.
32:45
Right.
32:45
The leaven goes into the flour and it makes all of the flour rise.
32:52
Beloved, that's a picture of the gospel.
32:54
I was talking to Brother Mike about this this week, and he brought up a good point I hadn't even thought of, but I wrote it down.
33:01
It's not plagiarism if you give a credit where it's due.
33:08
But he brought up Daniel 2.
33:10
I hadn't thought about Daniel 2.
33:11
It was a good point.
33:12
In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream.
33:16
And in that dream, you remember there's a statue and the statue had a head of gold and arms of silver and a chest or legs of bronze and and then feet of bronze and clay.
33:27
And what that represented, it represented the nations of the world.
33:30
It represented the Babylonians and then the Medo-Persians.
33:33
And then it represented the Greeks and then the Romans.
33:38
But then there's a point in the dream that a lot of people forget.
33:42
There's a point in the dream where there is a mountain, where a stone is cut out without hands.
33:49
And that stone crushes the feet of the statue.
33:53
And all of the world's system comes crashing down because of that stone cut without hands.
34:02
Beloved, that stone is the kingdom of God.
34:05
It's the kingdom of Messiah.
34:07
It's the kingdom that will have no end.
34:10
Beloved, I'm not a post-millennialist.
34:14
If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it.
34:16
But if you do, listen up.
34:18
I'm not a post-millennialist, but I can get down with this.
34:21
The gospel is increasing and bearing fruit and will continue to do so.
34:27
See, that's my problem with dispensationalism.
34:30
Dispensationalism is always about the we're going to be defeated and the church is going to be defeated and we're going to have defeat.
34:35
No, the gospel says it's a mustard seed and it's growing and it's growing and it's growing.
34:40
And it's going to bust down the governments of men and it's going to grow.
34:49
What if? People always think we're at the end of the age.
34:53
Oh, Jesus is going to come back tomorrow.
34:55
My world's so hard.
34:56
My bank account's empty.
34:57
Jesus got to come back tomorrow.
34:58
I can't pay my bill.
34:59
I mean, people are always so like Jesus has got to come.
35:04
What if we are still in the early church? That's right.
35:09
What if 2,000 years of church history is only the first step of 10,000 years of church history? You understand there are 2 billion people in the world that right now identify as Christians.
35:23
I know many of them are not really Christians.
35:24
I know many of them follow a false gospel.
35:26
But 2 billion out of 8 billion identify as Christians, the largest religion in the world.
35:31
What if this is just the first step? And what if the gospel is going to continue to increase throughout the world? People say, oh, well, it's not happening in America.
35:42
Churches are closing.
35:43
Things are closing.
35:44
Guess what? America ain't the end, Jack.
35:46
America is not the end.
35:48
We are not the tip of the spear.
35:51
We are a dot.
35:52
There are houses in England that are older than our whole country.
35:56
You understand? We are not the tip of the spear.
36:00
We are not the end all be all of all things.
36:01
If America falls tomorrow, Jesus will still be on the throne and the gospel will not fail.
36:12
That's Paul's point.
36:13
It is bearing fruit in the Colossian church.
36:18
But he says, and in the world.
36:21
It's bearing fruit and increasing in the church and in the world.
36:26
Beloved, that should give us joy.
36:28
That should give us happiness.
36:29
That Christ is not going to lose.
36:33
Christ is not going to fail.
36:35
His kingdom will stand.
36:44
Do you understand that this is why tyrants do not want Christians in their nation? This is why places like Russia and China want to eliminate the Christian influence, especially China, because they know when the gospel gets a foothold, people are changed and they become different people.
37:07
They become people who will not bow down, but would rather take the sword to the neck than to bow down to a false God.
37:17
See, the gospel changes people.
37:20
The gospel changes the world.
37:21
When the when the apostles preach the gospel in Acts 17, the people who heard it said, who are these men who turned the world upside down? Would their preaching again? I can't help but again, remind you of the Protestant Reformation.
37:35
The Protestant Reformation turned the world upside down.
37:38
Why? Because the gospel was unleashed.
37:42
And that's what Paul says is happening here.
37:43
Notice verse six.
37:46
He says, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.
37:54
That's the gospel, the grace of God in truth.
37:56
That's what happened.
37:57
That's what changed them.
37:59
That's what caused the bearing of fruit and the increasing.
38:01
They understood the grace of God in truth and that changed their life, changed the world.
38:07
Now, finally, verses seven and eight, we see the blessing of discipleship.
38:13
Notice what he says.
38:14
Just as you learned it, that is the gospel or the grace of God.
38:18
That's what the antecedent of it would be, the grace of God in truth.
38:22
He says, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit.
38:33
Understand this, Epaphras.
38:37
I mentioned this last week, probably the one who planted the church, even if he's not the one who planted the church, he is the one who has discipled these people.
38:46
It's the word learned there.
38:47
It says, just as you learned it from Epaphras, that word learned comes from the same root as the word discipled.
38:53
And it means that he didn't simply go in and proclaim the gospel and leave, but he taught them the truths of the word.
39:02
What is, by the way, what is evangelism? Evangelism isn't just telling somebody the gospel.
39:06
Evangelism continues.
39:07
Christ said, go into all the world and do what? Make disciples, not just make converts, make disciples.
39:15
Teaching them what? To observe all that I have taught you.
39:19
And that's what Epaphras did.
39:21
He went in and taught them the gospel.
39:24
Paul says he was a faithful minister on their behalf.
39:29
I want to say this.
39:29
I hope you're all listening.
39:30
This is very important.
39:32
God's message goes out through messengers.
39:40
And God's method is simple.
39:44
Preach the gospel.
39:47
First Corinthians 1.22.
39:49
It says it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to bring salvation.
39:58
Romans 10.13 asks this question.
40:01
How will they hear unless someone preaches to them? Colossae would not have heard the gospel likely if it had not been proclaimed to them by Epaphras.
40:15
They would not have learned and been discipled in the gospel if not through Epaphras.
40:19
And so I ask this question.
40:21
Our friends and our relatives, how are they to hear unless we bring the gospel to them? I love gospel tracts.
40:31
I brought one with me.
40:32
This is one that I love to give to people because it's more than just a card.
40:36
It's got a little message that's attached to it.
40:39
And we give out hundreds of these every year at the fair.
40:42
We give out many, many gospel tracts.
40:45
And I've heard people say gospel tracts are their old hat.
40:49
Gospel tracts are not valuable anymore.
40:54
Let me tell you this.
40:56
The gospel is never unvaluable.
40:59
The gospel, even if all you do is hand someone a card, if that's all you can do because you don't have the ability to speak or maybe you're afraid or maybe whatever, I tell you, take these cards and hand them to somebody because the message will get through and God will use it to His glory.
41:16
Sybil Taylor, who many of you remember, Sybil Taylor was a lovely saint of God.
41:22
She was a member of this church for many years.
41:24
She was in a wheelchair.
41:25
She used to sit right back over there.
41:26
And Miss Sybil, she'd been in a wheelchair since she was 12 because of an accident.
41:35
And when she was an adult, she was married to Richard.
41:38
And she was sitting in the lobby of some establishment one day.
41:43
Neither one of them were Christians.
41:45
She was sitting in a lobby in her wheelchair, probably waiting for Richard to go out and get her because he would always come and pick her up and put her in the car and all that.
41:52
It was a beautiful relationship that they had.
41:54
A lady walks by her and says, listen, I know you don't know who I am, but I want you to know Jesus loves you and so do I.
42:04
And gave her a tract, just a basic little gospel tract.
42:10
And Sybil began to read that gospel tract.
42:13
And that became the impetus that changed her life.
42:17
She got saved.
42:18
Her husband got saved.
42:19
Her husband went to Dallas Theological Seminary, came out the other side, a Bible teacher.
42:26
And through many years eventually came here and he was one of our elders for many years.
42:32
All because someone cared enough to hand them a gospel tract.
42:39
You understand? That's what I'm saying.
42:41
What can the gospel do? The gospel can change the world and the gospel can change a life.
42:48
The gospel can change a nation, but the gospel can also change a person.
42:56
And that's the beauty of what we proclaim.
43:00
We don't proclaim a message that doesn't have any power.
43:05
We proclaim the most powerful message in the world.
43:09
What does Paul say about the gospel? I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation.
43:18
For everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith.
43:35
Beloved, we never outgrow the gospel.
43:39
I hear so many people, oh, I want to get fed the deep stuff.
43:43
Well, deep stuff is good and I like to go deep, but you will never be so mature that you don't need the gospel.
43:51
And you will never go deeper than the gospel.
43:56
Every glass of theological water you drink will always take you to the bottom, and at the bottom will always be the gospel.
44:06
Luther said this, I preach the gospel every week because every week my people forget it.
44:15
We have to hear the gospel over and over.
44:19
And I say this to you, you know, if you did the fair, you know, we got a wide wooden sign.
44:24
I carved it with my router several years ago, and it says right on the front of that sign, it says, do you understand the gospel? So I ask you this morning, do you understand the gospel? The word gospel means good news.
44:40
Do you understand what the good news is? Do you understand that you are a sinner, that you are separated from God because of sin and that you deserve God's wrath? You say, that doesn't sound like good news.
44:54
No, it doesn't sound like good news.
44:55
But before you can understand the good news, you have to understand the reality of your condition.
45:00
And the condition is bad news.
45:02
And the bad news is apart from Christ, you deserve to go to hell.
45:06
You deserve the wrath of God.
45:09
But God in his infinite mercy and grace sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, that through him keeping the law, we could become adopted as sons and be able to cry out to God as our father.
45:23
You see, you understand the gospel is Christ died on our behalf.
45:31
And he gives us a righteousness we didn't have.
45:36
Paul says, I stand in a righteousness that does not come from keeping the law, but a righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
45:45
Do you have that righteousness this morning? Do you have the righteousness of Christ? Are you clothed in his righteousness alone? If you are not, if you're holding on to something else, if you're holding on to a virtue, a good work, a gift, something that you think you have that is going to make you fit for the king, you need to discard it and take the garments of the king because that is the only garment that will allow you into his feast.
46:10
It's the garment of the king, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
46:14
If you don't understand the gospel, please find somebody to talk to.
46:17
Please come find me.
46:19
Please come find Brother Mike.
46:20
I know Brother Andy's not here today, but we have other men in this room who know the gospel.
46:23
Find them, talk to them, pray with them.
46:26
Don't leave this place today.
46:27
You don't understand the gospel.
46:30
The gospel is the power of God and the salvation to everyone who believes.
46:35
And it can save you if you believe it.
46:39
Let's pray.
46:41
Father, I thank you for your word.
46:44
I thank you for your gospel.
46:46
I thank you for the celebration of the gospel that we get to have right now as we get ready to prepare for this table.
46:53
But Lord, I know that there are those in this room who do not know you.
46:56
I know that there are those who are bound up in false understandings, false teachings.
47:01
I know that there are those who have maybe just come to an age where they even understand their sin.
47:05
They're young and they don't understand.
47:07
I pray, Lord, that today they have heard the gospel and that they would be saved.
47:12
And I pray it in Jesus' name.
47:15
Amen.