WWUTT 047 Being Spiritual (Colossians 1:9-14)

Have you ever had a person say to you, well, I'm not religious, but I am spiritual. Well, if they do not follow

Christ, they're not spiritual, they're dead. In fact, only the spiritual person can please

God. And we can only please God if we have the spirit of God living within us when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. Martin Lloyd -Jones said the following, always respond to every impulse to pray.

The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this.

Always obey such an impulse. Where does it come from? It is the work of the

Holy Spirit. Such a call to prayer must never be regarded as a distraction.

Always respond to it immediately. And thank God if it happens to you frequently.

Yesterday, we read Colossians 1, 9 and 10, where Paul says, from the day that we heard about your receiving the gospel, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

There were several different ways that we could have taken this yesterday. We could have picked it apart by looking at why it's important for us to be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding and what it means to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord, which we did talk about those things a little bit. But I chose to take it from the angle of how we are to pray for our fellow

Christians. We need to pray for one another. Not only do we need to be filled with the knowledge of God's will, and not only do we need to come to spiritual wisdom and understanding, we should pray for others that way as well, because it is the way that Paul prayed for the

Colossians. We should pray for our fellow saints, those that we attend church with on a regular basis, pray for them.

You know them by name. You know their needs probably pretty well, I would hope, because you interact with them regularly.

So pray for them by name. Pray for your family members. Know what our missionaries are going through.

If there is a missionary that your church is supporting, pray for them. If you are like a church like mine, where you have a cooperative program, where you're putting money into something that just gets dispersed among a lot of missionaries, well, don't be contributing to those needs in an out -of -sight, out -of -mind sort of a way.

Well, I gave my money, so there, it's benefiting missionaries, so I don't have to go serve over there. No, it is still upon you to know the things that our missionaries are going through.

Read on websites like Voice of the Martyrs, International Missions Board, Mission Network News. Read on those sites to know what things are going on among those who have committed themselves to sharing the gospel around the world, so that you know how you can pray for them.

Long suffering with them in your mind and in your heart. And I think that we obey every impulse to pray at the moment that a person's name pops into our mind, we pray for them.

Any thought that we have that we're supposed to take captive and make it obedient to Christ, as it says in 2 Corinthians 10, we are exercising that discipline when we take that thought and pray it, right?

We are praying and asking God to grow us in our understanding with every thought that we have.

I think this is one of the things that Paul meant when he said, pray without ceasing. You look for the number of people in his epistles that he prayed for.

Every letter he writes, he says in some way, we're praying for you, all right? How is it that he's got this long list of people that he has time to pray for?

I think that he's doing what Martin Lloyd -Jones said here in this quote, and he's responding to every impulse to pray.

Whenever he thinks of somebody, somebody's name pops into his mind, he's praying for them. He is taking every thought captive to obey

Christ because he is praying everything that he thinks and making it obedient to the

Lord in his mind, in his body, in all things. So let us respond to every impulse to pray and understand what it means to pray without ceasing, to rejoice in the

Lord always, that we might grow in the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

We're gonna talk about these things some more today as we come to Colossians 1, verses 9 through 14.

Before coming to this text, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our wonderful heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this word that we might grow in understanding.

How else can we grow in the knowledge of God except for what you have given us in the word of God? We are grateful for this.

And I pray that we hold this in high regard, that we know it as the word of God.

And so therefore we submit to its authority over our lives. Help us to grow in these things, which we can only do according to your spirit, which we're gonna read more about today, but we need your spirit to understand these things.

So we ask for a spiritual heart to discern spiritual things.

And we pray in Jesus' name, may it be so, amen. Colossians 1, verse 9.

And so from the day that we heard about you hearing about the gospel, from the day that we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, the love that you have for the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven that Paul talks about in verses 4 and 5, we have not ceased to pray for you.

Asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the

Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints of light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

There's so much richness in this paragraph. Again, I don't know that I'm gonna get through all of it today, but going back over some of the things that we looked at yesterday.

So Paul's saying from the day that we heard about you, about your faith, about your receiving the gospel, that it is growing among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God and truth, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

How is it that we come to know the will of God? How are we filled with the knowledge of his will?

It's according to spiritual wisdom and understanding. A person who is spiritual will understand spiritual things.

A person that does not have the spirit of God is not able to understand spiritual things.

Listen to what the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, starting in verse 11. Who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him?

So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. So how do we understand the things of God?

That we have the spirit of God. A person cannot understand the things of God without the spirit of God in them.

Okay, you think of people that you might know, perhaps you know an atheist that probably knows the Bible pretty well, right?

They need to for some of the arguments that they make. So there are certain aspects about the Bible they might quote back to you.

Maybe you know an Orthodox Jew, knows the Bible quite well. Maybe you know somebody who is very scholarly and they just have a knowledge of the

Bible because they have a knowledge of a lot of historical texts. Why is it that a person can know that much

Bible and not be changed by it? It's because they do not have the spirit of God.

They are trying to understand the Bible in fleshly ways, not according to the spirit of God, which is not possible.

A person cannot do that. In Romans 8, verse five, for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit.

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. It doesn't matter how much

Bible they know. If they're in the flesh, they can't please God. Doesn't matter how great or nice a person they are or how many great things they do for another person.

If they are in the flesh, they cannot please God. Can't a person who's not a

Christian do nice things for other people? Yeah, they sure can, but their motivation in their heart is selfish and a person will not enter the kingdom of God with selfish motives.

Nobody walks into the gates of heaven going, look at me, look at what I did. I did it,

I accomplished it. I made the right choice. I made the right decision and so now great is my reward.

Nobody's gonna get into heaven that way. No one gets into heaven seeking their own glory. We get into heaven seeking

God's glory. So a person that even does nice things for people, folks, this is why it's so important to understand our salvation is not based on works.

It has nothing to do with anything that we have done on the outside. It has to do with how we've been changed, transformed on the inside because we are rotten down to our cores.

And so a person can show on the outside that they're doing nice things, but on the inside, they are completely depraved.

They are set against God. They think that they can be good enough by what they do on the outside.

That's to exalt yourself into the place of God. I don't need you. I don't need you to be holy and righteous and sanctified and justified and all these other things.

Look at how well I'm able to do it on my own. That's why that doctrine is so destructive.

A person who is of the flesh cannot please God. Their thoughts are hostile to God. Even when they do nice things for other people, they are hostile against God because they've exalted themselves to the place of God and thinking that they are righteous just fine without him.

No one can attain righteousness without God. Righteousness comes only from Jesus Christ. Romans 3, verses 21 and 22.

So only the person who has been transformed by the spirit is able to please

God. A person that is of the flesh cannot please God. So as Paul is saying to the

Romans here, those who have the mind set on the flesh, they're hostile to God. They don't submit to God's law.

Indeed, they can't. Those who are of the flesh cannot please God. He goes on in verse nine to say, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

If in fact the spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.

If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.

You got that? The same spirit that brought Jesus Christ back from the grave lives in you if indeed you are in Christ.

Is that not incredible? So only in the spirit are we able to please

God. Only in the spirit are we able to understand the mind of God. So I'm gonna go back to 1 Corinthians 2 here.

For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

You cannot understand the things of God unless God has given you his spirit to understand those things, period.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught us by the spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The person who is truly spiritual is a person who has the spirit of God in them. A person is not inherently in and of themselves spiritual because if they're not in Christ, they have a dead spirit.

We are born physically alive, but spiritually dead. This goes back to the doctrine of original sin, which you can read in Romans chapter five.

We are all descendants of Adam. And so therefore, since death came into one man, death has come into all men through Adam, and we are born spiritually dead.

We're physically alive, but we are spiritually dead. And it is Christ who makes us alive, born again, all right?

So we're born physically alive, but spiritually dead in Adam. In Christ, we're made spiritually alive so that though the body dies, the spirit goes on and lives forever with Christ Jesus.

So we are born under the federal headship of Adam physically. We are born again under the federal headship of Christ spiritually, okay?

Is that making sense to you? What does it mean to be a federal head? What does that mean? What do you think of when you hear the word federal?

Well, federal tends to apply to like government, right? So you have the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or this federal's this, that, and the other always pertains to government, okay?

So looking at this in terms of government, when you have a king that declares war against another kingdom, that entire kingdom is against war.

So all of the people who are under the authority of that king are now at war with this other kingdom.

So that is what we're talking about when we say federal headship. It applies to everybody that is under that federal head.

So everybody who is physically born is born under the federal headship of Adam. So you're born into sin.

Sin came into all men through that man, Adam. It talks about that in Romans 5 and in 1 Corinthians 15.

So therefore, all who are born in Adam are born into sin. We are born again into righteousness under the federal headship of Christ.

And that is something that only happens by a transformation of the spirit. Only a person who has the spirit of God can call themselves spiritual.

We read in Romans 7, verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

So if you ever had a person say to you, well, I'm not a religious person, but I am spiritual. Well, you can't be, all right?

Because you have a dead spirit. If you don't have Christ, your spirit's dead. You've not been born again.

So you're thinking with a dead spirit, what's the result of that going to be? It's gonna be a physical death and a spiritual death.

They will live eternally in judgment under the wrath of God instead of being delivered into the righteousness of Christ and be able to receive his eternal life forever living with their creator.

We only get that in Christ Jesus. A person who tries to be spiritual in and of themselves is living in a dead spirit, and the result is gonna be a spiritual death.

So if a person is truly spiritual, they will obey the law of God because the law is spiritual. If a person is truly spiritual, then they will be able to discern spiritual things.

They will follow what is said in scripture because they think with the mind of God, not with the mind of man.

A person who is thinking with the mind of man is hostile to God. They cannot please God. It is only those who are in the spirit that are able to please

God. Only those who are in the spirit are able to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

Only a person with the spirit of God is able to do that. A person who is trying to understand the Bible on their own terms will not get it.

It will never make sense to them. I have a brother -in -law who is not a Christian.

He's a deist. He's insulted when I try to preach the gospel to him because he'll say to me,

I'm not an atheist. I say, it doesn't matter. You're still going to hell unless you repent and follow

Christ. So I truly pray that the spirit would convict his heart, would open him up to receive the gospel for real because right now he's trying to understand it according to his flesh.

He's one of those philosophically minded guys, okay? Tries to make sense of everything and he's not going to be a follower of Christ until he can make every argument make sense to another person who thinks according to the flesh because he doesn't want to look like an idiot.

So he's trying to make the gospel work for him on his terms. And as long as he is trying to do that, he will never get it.

He will never be able to please God. It will never make sense to him because he's trying to get into heaven on his own merit.

He's trying to get into heaven, boasting about himself, saying I did it, I made the right choice.

Look, I reasoned all of this out logically and I was able to make it work and so here I am.

No one gets into heaven seeking their own glory. They get into heaven seeking God's glory and the only way that we can do that in a way that is fully pleasing to the

Lord is if we have the spirit of God. If we think with the mind of God instead of with the mind of man.

I'm coming to a conclusion here on the amount of time that I typically give to studying the scriptures on this particular program.

So I wanna share with you this story from Matthew 16. Jesus asks his disciples, who do you say that I am?

And they say, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets. And he said to them, but who do you say that I am?

And Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you Simon Bar -Jonah for flesh and blood is not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.

God gave Peter a spiritual answer and it was the right answer. But look what happens a few verses later.

In verse 21, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.

So he's telling the disciples, I'm gonna go into Jerusalem and I'm gonna be put to death, but don't worry, I'm coming back.

He gives them the whole thing. I mean, what's Peter's response? Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him saying, far be it from you,

Lord, you shall never do this. This shall never happen to you. But Jesus turned to him and said to Peter, get behind me,

Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

So at one point, Peter was thinking with the mind of God, but then he got a little too confident in his flesh and started trying to throw some other answers out there as the teacher's pet.

Hey, look at how much devotion I have for you, Jesus. I will not let you go and die. Jesus is basically going, were you not listening to anything that I just said?

Get behind me, Satan, calling Peter Satan, because he was thinking with the mind of man instead of with the mind of God.

Now we know that Peter repented of this and he changed his thinking, we know that. But at the moment that he was getting confident in his flesh and he was too confident in himself, he was not able to please his savior.

We are only able to be fully pleasing to the Lord when we think with the spirit of God, when we have the spirit of God and the spirit of God is given to us, then we're able to bear fruit in every good work, increase in the knowledge of God, and we'll be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints of light.

That's Colossians 1 .12. How is it that we are qualified for eternal life? It's because God has made us qualified.

We're gonna talk about these things some more tomorrow as we continue our study of Colossians 1. Our wonderful father, we thank you so much for your patience with us and showing us all of the treasures of good work that you have given to us through Jesus Christ, the work that he accomplished on the cross.

By no works of ours could we be saved, it is only by the work of Christ that we could be saved and we know that work according to what is given to us in the scriptures.

So give us your spirit so that we might be fully pleasing and acceptable to the Lord and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

In first century Thessalonica, there were some individuals who decided they weren't gonna work anymore and started living off the charity of the wealthy.

Well, we've sure come a long way since then though, right? When the apostle Paul and his missionary brothers were there, they labored to earn their stay.

It would have been within their right to expect payment for their ministry, but Paul wanted to give the Thessalonian Christians an example to follow.

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, he wrote, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor, we worked night and day.

He said, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies.

Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and earn their own living.

He went on to say, do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. Now, Paul was not talking about people who were infirmed or physically incapable of working.

He was talking about those who were able to work, but wouldn't, preying off the welfare of others and having plenty of time to meddle in other sins.

By giving charity to those who don't need it, such undeserving persons are taken from those who truly do need it.

As we read in Proverbs 18, 9, whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys.

It is the command of God to work. So encourage one another in that very thing and do it for his glory when we understand the text.

This question today comes from Keith, who emailed us and said, dear watch, I watch a lot of your videos on YouTube and just wanted to post a question after watching your video on tithing.

It's one of our four and a half minute videos. You can still find that on our channel. I was wondering when it comes to the homeless,

I know we're supposed to help out, but at the same time, it seems that some have used that as a way to make a living.

They pray off of the charity of others. In other words, I'm infusing that into his email, but that's basically what he's getting at.

I don't remember the verse in the Bible that said if a man doesn't work, he doesn't deserve to eat. So I'm just wondering when it comes to helping the less fortunate, how can one tell who is fit to receive charity from the ones that probably should not be receiving charity?

Well, the passage that you're thinking of, Keith, is in 2 Thessalonians 3, starting in verse seven, the apostle

Paul says, "'You yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, "'because we were not idle when we were with you, "'nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it.

"'But with toil and labor, we work night and day "'that we might not be a burden to any of you. "'It was not because we do not have that right, "'but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate.'"

So the apostle Paul and his missionary brethren could have come to Thessalonica preaching the gospel, expecting the

Thessalonians to wait on them hand and foot and care for their needs because they were apostles, they were committed to ministry, so therefore it would have been good for the

Thessalonians to care for them. Instead, Paul and his missionary brothers decided that they were gonna work so that they would give the

Thessalonians an example to imitate. Paul goes on in verse 10, "'For even when we were with you, "'we would give you this command, "'if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

"'For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, "'not busy at work, but busy bodies. "'Now such persons we command and encourage "'in the

Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly "'and to earn their own living.'" So you had the problem in Thessalonica of certain individuals who are praying off of the charity of others.

The poor were praying off of the rich. That was exactly what was going on there. We don't have that problem in America at all, do we?

Ha ha ha. All right, anyway, so how do we decide a person that genuinely needs charity from a person who is probably praying off of the charity of others?

Here's something that I would encourage you in, Keith. I would say more often than not, you should be saying yes to helping a person with an immediate need.

So if somebody comes to you and says, "'Hey, I need some food,' go to the store and get them some food. Don't give them money.

That's probably not wise. Not to say that you should never give money. There's probably opportunities where that's a great thing to be able to do for a person, but it's even better for you and for them if you show them the genuineness and your kindness for them by taking them to the place to get them the thing that they need, all right?

So take them to the grocery store, get them food or take them to a restaurant, buy them something to eat, sit down with them and share the gospel.

The whole time you're going is you're standing in the aisles at the grocery store, be sharing the gospel with them. Don't miss that opportunity to share the gospel because otherwise you're just helping them with a temporary need and not giving them any eternal fulfillment.

But when you share the gospel with them, you're giving something to them that is eternal. They have a heart that prays off of the charity of others because they're sinful.

So truly the way to call them out of that and to be obedient to the Lord is to make sure they understand the gospel, repenting of their sin and following in Christ Jesus.

But then if they come back again and they say, hey, I need more help and you're not seeing any transformation in that person's life, then with discernment, you're probably able to realize that you need to take a step back and not continue to provide for that person because you're only enabling them in their sin, not actually doing the work that they are supposed to do, but instead praying off of the charity of others.

So it takes some discernment. Sometimes it's not gonna be immediately obvious who you should help and whom you should not, but I would just say, and I would encourage you,

Keith, in all opportunities that you have to help a person charitably, make sure you're taking the gospel with you so that you're not just giving them something that is fulfilling a temporary need, but you're giving them something that is eternal significant in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So I hope that that kind of helps you to understand that a little bit more. Let me pray for you,

Keith. Lord, I thank you for this man's heart and his desire to want to do what is pleasing to you, but may he also know how he is to respond to each one his conversation, seasoned with salt, taking the gospel with him as he does the work of God.

And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

We hope you are a part of a church family committed to gospel teaching, and we thank you for including us in your

Bible learning. If you would consider a gift to this ministry, please visit www .utt

.com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Give online or send a check in the mail.