WWUTT 044 The Gospel Is Spreading (Colossians 1:1-8)

From the first day that the Holy Spirit came into the people of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ was preached,

Christianity has experienced rapid growth around the world. Today, more than 5 billion people have been reached with the gospel.

But it's not enough. We must do all that we can to preach the gospel more and more when we understand the text.

You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to the sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

And don't forget our website, wwutt .com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. Men who delight in God desire or ask for nothing but what will please

God. That was Charles Spurgeon who wrote that, and indeed as we are studying through the book of Colossians, we want to mature our understanding of that very thing, that which delights the

Lord, and we want nothing else but Christ, knowing that Jesus is enough and we are completely satisfied in our

Savior. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians that they might know Christ as preeminent.

It's the only letter of his where he uses that word, Colossians 1 .18. And that's the understanding that we want to have as well, what it means to make

Christ preeminent in our lives or to know Christ as preeminent above all things.

So as we are studying this week in Colossians 1, verses 1 through 8, let's go to the

Lord in prayer before coming to our text again today. Our gracious heavenly Father, thank you again for this word that was imparted upon the

Apostle Paul by your spirit, that we might be able to study these things and know

Christ more and more, growing intimately in our knowledge of you and our relationship with you through our

Lord Jesus Christ. We know that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us.

So Lord, if we are in Christ, you hear our prayers and it is said for us in the scriptures that the reason why we don't have is because we do not ask.

And so Lord, we are asking for your wisdom that you would show us these things according to your spirit so that we might know you more deeply, more intimately as your children.

And we pray and ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Colossians 1, verses 1 through 8,

Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God, our

Father. 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 the truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world, 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, 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.

We go back to verse 1, Paul identifies himself as an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.

And so as he identifies himself that way with the Colossians, we talked about this yesterday. It's a, it's an endearing term.

He is saying to them that I am here for your need and for your service, just as I would call myself a pastor to my church.

I don't call myself that. So they know, Hey, this is my authoritative position and you need to listen to me.

It is a title of service. I am a shepherd for their need, for their benefit. And so Paul, as an apostle, as this calling has been placed upon him by God, it is for the service of the

Colossians that he is writing to them and identifying himself as an apostle. Yes, it is an authoritative position.

Absolutely. To be an apostle is, is a great authority. In fact, we continue to submit to that authority even now, as it says in Ephesians chapter two, it is the apostles that Christ chose to, uh, to be the foundation of his church with himself as the cornerstone.

So the church is built upon the testimony of the apostles. That's the authority that we submit to every time that we come to the word.

When we read the new Testament, it was the word of the apostles that was given by Jesus Christ and through his spirit.

So it is an authoritative position, but it is also a title of service. Yes. As Paul is identifying himself this way to the

Colossians so that they would know that he is there for, uh, for their need.

And Timothy also being identified with Paul as our brother, uh, is also being submitted to the

Colossians in humility to their service. He writes to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God, our father.

And as we talked yesterday, Paul knows that they are faithful saints, that their fellow brothers, uh, in the faith because of the testimony of Epaphras who has spoken about their faith in Christ Jesus, the love that they have for all the saints because of the hope that is laid up in heaven.

And that's verses four and five. So Paul 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, the love that you have for the saints because of the hope that is laid up for you in heaven.

We talked about faith, hope, and love yesterday. And, uh, the most popular verse probably that has to do with faith, hope, and love is first Corinthians 13, 13.

These three remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. So in that context,

Paul is talking about love and highlighting that one of those three Christian virtues as being the greatest here where these three are being discussed.

It's rooted in hope. So love is the greatest because love goes on forever.

Whereas faith and hope are only things that we experience in our sanctification here in our earthly life.

We will not have faith and hope when we get to heaven. If you remember the, the song, uh, uh, the great hymn, it is well with my soul.

Horatio Spafford writes, Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight.

So when we get to heaven, there won't be faith, but there will still be love. The continuing love of God that goes on forever, which is why

Paul says the greatest of these is love. But here he says that faith and love are rooted in the hope that is laid up for us in heaven.

Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you is indeed in the whole world.

It is bearing fruit and increasing. So the faith and the love that we experience as the saints of God is because of the hope that is laid up for us in heaven.

We have faith and love because of the hope that we have, which is eternal. It is a, it is an eternal perspective.

Our eyes focused heavenward. We are seated with Christ as we're going to talk about later in Colossians chapter three, we are hidden with Christ in God.

So where our treasure is there, our heart may be also. And as we look toward those things that are in the eternal, that is the foundation of the faith and love that we exercise in Christ Jesus while we are here on this earth.

So it is because of the hope that is laid up for you in heaven. And of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, the gospel is our hope, the promises of God, the expectation that Christ is going to do everything that he said that he would do.

He is going to come, he is going to come back and usher in the new heavens and the new earth and establish his peaceful kingdom.

We are looking forward to those things. That is our hope and the promise that is in his gospel, which has come to you,

Paul says, as indeed in the whole world, it is bearing fruit and increasing.

Even at this time when the apostle Paul was writing to the Colossians, which was, you know, something like 30 years after Pentecost, the gospel was experiencing this rapid spread and expansion all over the globe.

There are various maps that you can look at that'll give you kind of a timeline of how the gospel was spreading from that first century on.

But a lot of those maps that I view, there's some on YouTube so you can watch the videos and it kind of gives you some idea, but I've never really felt like they were terribly accurate because there are things that I've heard about the spread of the gospel that aren't necessarily reflected in those maps.

For example, legend has it that Thomas, the disciple Thomas, the apostle

Thomas was murdered in India. So he was martyred in India. So he would have gotten all the way that far east with the gospel.

And yet when you're looking at a gospel map, it doesn't show the gospel as having reached India by the second century.

You know, it's it's some hundreds of years later. So those maps can can provide a pretty good timeline, a pretty good idea of how the gospel is spreading.

But I don't think they're terribly accurate. I believe that I shared the story before about how when my dad was looking into our ancestry and our our family lineage goes back to the

British Isles and he was able to trace stories back all the way to like the second and third century.

It was pretty incredible. But there are stories within our family lineage that talk about the gospel, making it to the

British Isles by the second century. And there's a lot of people that think that the gospel didn't get there until St.

Patrick did. But it was actually much earlier than that, over 150 years before St. Patrick ever got to the

British Isles. And yet I was watching an animated map just the other day that was showing, you know, the gospel spreading over certain centuries and whatnot.

And it didn't show the gospel making it to the British Isles until about the fourth century. So anyway, I think that the gospel spread very rapidly.

And there are many factors that contributed to this. Of course, it was the work of the Holy Spirit. Absolutely.

But God just set everything in motion in a certain way. As we read in Acts chapter 17, he's determined the times and places, the boundaries in which everybody would live.

And because God has preordained these things, he set it up so that the church growth would experience rapid expansion.

When you just look at the Roman Empire, just in the first couple of centuries A .D., how things were set up to allow for that rapid expanse of the gospel, the political unity that the

Roman Empire had. There was military and trade routes that made for easy access for the apostles to utilize those routes.

Of course, we know that the Apostle Paul made it to Rome on a ship in which he was being held prisoner.

But it was one of those very routes that that ship would have taken to deliver him to Rome that allowed him to go and spread the gospel the way that he did.

You also have the universal use of the Koine Greek language that Alexander established long before Christ even was born in Bethlehem.

So with the Koine Greek language that the Romans decided this was going to be the universal language, it made it that much easier for the gospel to spread.

The entire New Testament was written in Greek and you had the Old Testament that was translated into Greek in the

Septuagint. You also had the testimony of the things that Jesus did, that they were eyewitnesses to the things that Jesus did, that there were people who had been raised from the dead by Christ who were still alive even after Christ ascended into heaven and could testify of these things.

And people knew that. Eyewitnesses to the things that he did so that when his gospel was spread, there were people that went, yeah,

I saw it. I was there. I saw the miracles. I know that this man could come back from the grave because I saw him raise people from the grave.

And so it was through these testimonies and these things that the church experienced this rapid expansion.

Historian Edward Gibbon wrote a work called The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And in that particular book, he talks about some of the things that contributed to the rapid expansion of Christianity, the zeal of the early

Christians, the confidence that they had in communicating their faith on account of the forgiveness of their sins illustrated by Polycarp.

He talked about that, the miraculous happenings that occurred wherever they went. So it wasn't just Jesus who did these miraculous things.

The apostles did the same thing. The good character of the Christians, their behavior was attractive.

This prompted Peter to say, don't let others revile you for bad behavior, but conduct yourselves in such a way so that when they revile you, they'll be put to shame because of their slander.

That's in first Peter chapter three. So the good character of the Christians and their behavior was attractive to others that attracted people to the

Christian faith. And there was also the unity and the discipline of local churches that Gibbon talks about.

People's lives got better as a result of believing in Christ. And indeed, throughout the centuries and even the millennia, we saw

Christianity spread through the good behavior of Christians. Hospitals were a

Christian invention when people would not care for the sick, but rather disposed of them, putting them to death or dumping them into pits to control an epidemic.

Christians actually cared for the sick and the poor because of the words of Christ that commissioned them to do so.

They laid hands on them. They touched the sick and cared for them out of love, not shunning them out of a self -centered fear, caring for the elderly.

Same thing. Life expectancy is highest and suicide rates are the lowest in places where Christianity is flourishing through an active evangelistic church.

And note that I say the church, not merely the number of people in an area who claim to be

Christians, but regular churchgoers who, through their church, minister to the area where that church is planted.

I remember reading an article a number of years ago, as a matter of fact, I even went and dug this article up just for this episode.

It was written by Chuck Colson, entitled Good for Business, dated September 23rd, 2010.

And here's what Chuck Colson had to say in his commentary. The man who owns the industrial valve company makes no secret of his religious faith.

He's a committed Christian. Once a week, he gathers together his senior staffers for prayer. Employees are invited to attend

Bible studies on the premises and pray for one another's needs. The factory owner is also quite open about another fact.

When it comes to hiring, he would choose Christians over non -Christians every time because he thinks they make better workers.

You may think this company is located in South Carolina, but you'd be wrong. It's in southeastern

China. The company is Exhibit A for the argument backed up by social researchers that Christian faith is responsible for much of China's productivity.

The valve company's owner, Wang Jen Wow, believes that the more Christian employees he has, the better his business will prosper.

If you're a Christian, you're more honest with a better heart, Wow says. And if they do something wrong, they feel guilty.

That's the difference, he notes. An employee at Wow's factory agreed. If everybody became a Christian, he said, it would have a very big impact and would really help the development of our factory.

Wow and his employees are not alone in believing this. The Chinese government is studying the impact of Christian entrepreneurs and Christian -run businesses.

A professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told a reporter that it's clear to him that the growth of Christianity and economic prosperity are taking place simultaneously in a city deeply influenced by Christian missionaries in the past.

An American sociologist named Rodney Stark would not be surprised at this finding. He's been saying the same thing for years.

Stark is the author of a book entitled The Victory of Reason, How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success.

Stark writes that without Christianity's commitment to reason, progress and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non -European societies were in, say, 1800.

This would be a world lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys and pianos, not to mention scientists.

Amazingly enough, at the end of his book, Stark quotes a published statement by Chinese scholars who said they had no doubt that Christianity is the source of Western prosperity.

The Christian moral foundation of of social and cultural life, they said, was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and the successful transition to democratic politics.

For some time, I've been saying that America's economic collapse. This is Chuck Colson talking, was the result of a moral and ethical collapse and the abandonment of Christian principles in public life.

I find it amazing that a Chinese factory owner can understand this, but our businesses in America, academic and political elites cannot.

The simultaneous rise of Christian faith and economic success in China is just one piece of evidence that worldview matters and that the

Christian worldview above all others allows us to thrive in and make sense of the world that we live in.

Now I share this article with you, not for you to think, oh, well, you need to spread the gospel so that we can make the world a better place.

Rather, it's so you see the work that the spirit does through the rapid expansion of the gospel.

As we go out with the gospel of Jesus Christ, there will be a change in the world, yes, but that's not our expectation.

That's not what we're out there trying to do. That's the work that God does. We share the gospel so that we might see the lost get saved to glorify

God who saves us. We share the gospel out of obedience because we've been told to go and spread the gospel.

Jesus gave his great commission to the disciples, Matthew 28 verses 18 and 20. Jesus said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and the

Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold,

I am with you always, even to the very end of the age. We should expect that as we go and spread the gospel, there would be changes in this world.

But again, we don't spread the gospel to see the world change. We spread the gospel to glorify our great

God who has saved us because he told us to do it. So out of obedience, let us do it.

Paul said to Timothy, first Timothy four, five, always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

In Hebrews 13, 12 through 14, we read Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach that he endured.

For here we have no lasting city. You got that right? That's Hebrews 13, 14 here on earth.

We have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

Peter says first Peter five, eight and nine, be sober minded, be watchful using the same words that Paul said to Timothy, be sober minded and be watchful your adversary.

The devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

And indeed folks, we should not forget our missionaries, but regularly being in prayer for them as they go out spreading the gospel.

Paul says it is the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you is indeed in the whole world.

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.

So it's not just that we go out with the gospel, but we continue to preach the gospel even in the places where it has come as it is through the gospel that we will grow in maturity and faith and understanding of the things of God.

We grow deeper in our relationship with God, knowing that he is enough and we are fully satisfied in our savior

Christ. I believe it is from the international missions board that has put out these statistics, but over 5 billion people in the world have been reached with the gospel that leaves 2 billion people in unreached people groups that still need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Folks, it is the work of the church to take the gospel to unreached areas and then also to preach the gospel in those places where the churches exist.

We still need the gospel even today need to hear the gospel so that it continues to bear fruit and increase among us since the day that we heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.

The people in Colossae learned it from Epaphras and he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf,

Paul says, and has made known to us your love in the spirit. That concludes our study of Colossians 1 verses 1 through 8 in that talking about Epaphras there.

But we continue to submit ourselves to the understanding of the gospel and knowing that it needs to go out even more.

There are other reaches on earth that the gospel is not yet made it to. So let us be diligent and faithful to seek the

Lord as a church as our churches and see how we need to work to see that the gospel is going to go into those unreached people groups.

We've been called to it. So let us do it just as our Savior Christ did just as the apostles did.

So we must also. How can we work and labor to facilitate the growth and the spread of the gospel?

Let us be sober minded to know exactly how to do those things. Our gracious heavenly

Father, thank you again for this word. Grow it in us as we go. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.

Jeremiah 29 11 reads, for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, a plan to prosper and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future.

What a beautiful promise from God's word, right? Slap it on a coffee cup and fill me up with some of that. We love that verse.

In fact, according to BibleGateway .com, it is the second most searched Bible verse on the internet after John 3 16.

There's a problem with the way we tend to use it. Jeremiah 29 11 isn't addressing us. The verse appears in a letter written by the prophet

Jeremiah to Israel, who at the time was under Babylonian captivity, having been exiled because of their sin.

In verse 11, God was assuring them that they would not be annihilated by Babylon, but instead needed to pray that they would benefit from the welfare of their captors.

He then says that they will call out to him and he would restore their scattered nation. But that was a promise that wouldn't be fulfilled for another 150 years.

The Israelites hearing that letter weren't even of the generation that would receive the things it promised. So what we have is a proclamation given to a specific nation in a particular situation that prophesied the restoration of a future generation.

It was not written to individuals promising health and wealth. It's true that to those who love

God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. That's Romans 8 28, by the way, the third most searched verse on the internet.

But we need to see the fulfillment of these promises the way the Old Testament faithful did. As it says in Hebrews 11 16, it wasn't an earthly land they desired, but a heavenly one.

And that's what we should be looking forward to when we understand the text. Our question today comes from Regina in Jefferson City, Missouri.

She says, dear, what? Thank you for making me unable to enjoy my pastor's sermons anymore.

I'm sorry about that, Regina. Just this past Sunday, he referenced Jeremiah 29 11 and talked about how

God is going to turn this bad thing into something good. And he has good plans for my future, a future job, a future relationship, a future place to live.

At one point, he looked right at me. I hope that I had on a good poker face because it was hard for me to say that's not what that verse is about.

I don't mean to speak ill of him, though, because he really is a kind and genuine man who loves his church.

How can I correct his thinking without being disrespectful or coming across like some kind of legalistic fundamentalist?

Well, Regina, I appreciate your question. And this is like the question that I got yesterday. I don't want to assume something about your pastor that may not be his intention.

I don't really know the context in which he was using Jeremiah 29 11. But I'm guessing on the way that you're reporting on it, he was talking about temporal fulfillment rather than an eternal significance.

I think it is OK for us to use passages like Jeremiah 29 11 or Romans 8 28 or any of these other passages to to speak of the character of God, as long as we understand it from an eternal perspective and not temporary fulfillment or temporal earthly fulfillment.

God is not working this bad thing out to make us richer or give us a better job or any of these other things.

But he is working in such a way that even enduring an illness can be for his glory and can be for our sanctification or taking away this job and moving us to another location where our job may not be as good in this other place.

But he is working this out for his glory that we would glorify him through this trial. So there are ways that Jeremiah 29 11 and Romans 8 28 still apply as long as we have an eternal perspective in mind and not temporal fulfillment.

But how but that wasn't your question. Your question was, how can I correct his thinking without being disrespectful?

I think you got a great approach already or coming across like some kind of legalistic fundamentalist. Well, I'll tell you, this is one of the reasons why we made what videos so that you would have a resource to correct some wrong thinking that has come about by misusing passages like Jeremiah 29 11.

So why not send him the video through an email or through Facebook or Twitter? Now, one thing I want to caution you on, though, as I give you that piece of advice, don't just leave your interaction with your pastor to the email or the

Facebook page, because then you take that personal interaction out. You need him to hear your voice and see your eyes and know that you genuinely care about the ways that he is using scripture in his sermons, not just throwing something at him and him would probably receive it as some sort of a condemnation.

But go to him and personally say, Pastor, it concerns me a way that you used a passage of scripture this past Sunday, and I want to direct you towards something else so that you can understand the context a little bit better.

So have that personal interaction behind correcting his thinking. Don't just let it be a read this email, watch this video and change your thought.

You know, we do need to be personally interacting with with one another. Our conversations constantly seasoned with salt with one another.

Don't remove that personal interaction. Thank you again for your question, Regina. If you have a question, send it to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

Thank you for listening to when we understand the text. Pastor Gabe is the author of the book, 40 of the most popular

Bible verses and what they really mean. Available in paperback or for your Kindle. He's also authored a

Bible study through the book of First Corinthians. Both books can be found at our website at www .utt

.com. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in the study of God's word when we understand the text.