WWUTT 061 How Great a Struggle (Colossians 2:1-5)

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that being a Christian is not easy.

The Christian road is not the easy way, in fact it's the hard way. Wide is the road that leads to destruction and many will find it, because that's the easy way.

Narrow is the road that leads to life and few will find it. But it is the road that leads to eternal life 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 .wutt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you Becky and congratulations long time Kansas City Royals fans,

World Series Champions 2015. I especially want to give a shout out to my friend Andrew, whose name has popped up on our

Twitter feed every once in a while because he's contributed some material to When We Understand the Text. Some of his suggestions have actually been our most watched videos, believe it or not.

But he is a true dedicated fan. You talk about being a dedicated sports fan through thick and thin, that is

Andrew. And so Andrew, I know that you are living up this Kansas City Royals World Series Championship.

Don't let it go to waste, man. I live just two hours away from where the Kansas City Royals play. Yes, I've been to many games.

Yes, I love the team. Although I wouldn't necessarily call them a team that I've long suffered with my entire life.

That would be the Atlanta Braves. But I still love watching the Royals and it broke my heart when they didn't win it last year.

So loved watching that entire series. What a team. Every single one of those victories in the World Series, all four of those games were come from behind wins.

They sure were a very exciting team to watch. All right. Well, this is not a sports program and I don't even know that I've talked about sports yet on this program.

We're talking Bible here. We do exposition. We read the scriptures. We study them together. Thank you so much for joining me for when we understand the text.

My name is Pastor Gabe and we are in Colossians chapter two, right? We finished chapter one last week, didn't we?

No, I'm just kidding. I know. I know the answer to that question. Yeah, you can tell my voice is struggling again.

I still have not totally kicked this thing and I'm still going day to day. I'm not able to work ahead because of of the

I just don't know where my voice is going to be from one day to the next. So here we go pushing through this again, just like I started last week with barely any voice.

But we're going to get through this Colossians chapter two verses one through five.

We're just going to get through those first five verses here today. So let's come to the Lord in prayer. Our gracious God, we thank you again for your word.

And as we're going to read in this text today, we come to know that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Such a storehouse of wisdom that we find in Christ Jesus, our Lord. There is nowhere else that we can find such a plethora of wisdom than in Christ.

And this just furthers this understanding that we are coming to as we read through Colossians that Christ provides for our every need.

He is sufficient and we need nothing else but Christ. Help us to be fully satisfied in our

Savior as we store up the treasure of your word. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.

What a wonderful section of verses. This is Colossians two, one through five, Paul saying to the

Colossians, I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea.

And for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all of the riches of full assurance and understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is

Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.

For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.

Okay, so going back to verse one, if this sounds like one long sentence, it is verses one through four.

So Paul starts off in Colossians two, for I want you to know how great a struggle

I have for you. Going back to Colossians one, 24, Paul said, now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh,

I am filling up what is lacking in Christ afflictions for the sake of his body that is the church. So you see these words that Paul uses to describe the work that he is doing for Christ, sufferings, okay, a struggle that he has for the

Colossian church. We see the word labor used by Paul. He also uses the word toil, toil, struggle, labor, suffering.

Being a Christian is hard work. This is not just because Paul is an apostle and yes, indeed for the apostles, there was a hard road out in front of them, but we are told to imitate

Paul. We're told to be like him and we're told to rejoice in the sufferings that we go through because we share the sufferings of Christ.

Being a Christian is hard work, folks. It is not an easy thing to be a Christian. You go all the way back to the

Sermon on the Mount and Jesus told us this in Matthew chapter seven, where he said, enter through the narrow gate for wide is the way that leads to destruction and many are going to find that way because that's the easy way.

But narrow is the road that leads to life and few will find it. So right from the beginning, from his very first famous sermon that we have recorded for us in scripture,

Jesus was telling his followers, this is going to be hard. And I will tell you straight up that in this life, being a

Christian is going to be harder in a lot of ways, in a lot of cases, in most cases, let's put it this way.

Being a Christian is going to be harder than being a non Christian than being an unbeliever. Now, the reward is far greater for the

Christian than it is for the unbeliever. There's no reward for the unbeliever. Hell is the only thing that they have to look forward to.

But for all of us who are in Christ, the great reward that we have of being with our God forever with him in glory and his peaceful kingdom, where there is no more suffering, no more struggling, no more toil.

These are things that we experience in this life only because it is producing something great in us. We talked about this last week.

So as we struggle through this life, we know it is producing something. It is shaping us more in the image of Christ.

And we're sharing in something that Christ went through so we can celebrate

God because we know that the suffering that we're going through has been sanctified by Christ.

It's producing something. Everything that we go through can be lifted up in praise to our

God. He has us going through this for a reason, all right? So I want to encourage you in that, no matter where you are in your struggle, no matter what it is that you're going through.

And please do not hear me just offering a vacant platitude, you know, saying to you that, oh, you know, everything works out or everything happens for a reason.

Everything works out for good for those who are called according to his purpose, Romans is true, but we got to be careful in the context in which we use that kind of a verse.

There could be a person that is going through a really difficult struggle. Maybe they've just lost a loved one. Maybe they have received a very serious diagnosis from the doctor.

And what they need from us is not for us to slap them on the back and go, hey, God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

They don't need to hear that. They know that verse. They know what it means. What they need is for a person to weep with them.

Okay. An instruction that comes later in Romans 12, weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice.

Sometimes what a fellow Christian really needs is just for us to come alongside them and just be with them, just pray with them and long suffering with them, showing them that your struggles are my struggles and I am here with you, whatever it is that you're going through.

I want to go through this with you. Okay. Sometimes that needs to be our reaction and not, not saying that everything works out for a reason.

So, so it is necessary for me to tell you that whatever you're going through and no matter how bad it is,

God is still using it ultimately for his glory. So give glory to God in whatever, whatever the circumstance, whatever the circumstance that God would have you go through this for his glory and maybe even see someone come to Christ as a result of your faithfulness while you are going through this trial.

And I gave an example of that on Thursday. If you want to listen to a Thursday's episode to hear me expound upon that a little bit more, but but anyway, that's not for me to insensitively say to you that it doesn't matter what you're going through, man, just buck up and grin and bear it.

I mean, sometimes you got to weep. Andrew wept last night when the Royals won the world series.

Yeah, not that kind of weeping, but anyway, sometimes the, the tears that we have that are through the experience that we're going through are genuine and necessary and they just help us abide.

It just helps us to fall into Christ, to fall into him more and more and give more of ourselves, surrender all of ourselves to God and let him carry our cares for us.

So as we go through this life as a Christian, it's going to be a struggle and it is going to be difficult.

This is one of the reasons why the theology of easy believism is so annoying to me.

You know what I mean by easy believism is that idea that, that, Hey, you just got to pray this prayer and that's all you got to do.

Say these magic words and poof, you are in the kingdom of heaven, man, you are rescued from hell.

No matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, no matter how you live your life, you are still getting into the kingdom of God, right?

That's not what the doctrine of eternal security means that as long as you pray this prayer that you're getting into the kingdom of God.

If a person has truly been justified, meaning that they have a legal, innocent standing before God because of the righteousness of Christ on the cross and they are a follower of Christ.

So they have been justified. If Christ's blood is upon them, they're justified, right? If a person is justified, they're going to also show that they are being sanctified, meaning that they're in this process producing fruitfulness, all right, growing in holiness, in maturity as they desire to be shaped more and more in the image of Christ, which is

Romans eight 29, right after Romans eight 28, God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

And then Romans eight 29 for those whom he foreknew. He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

So that's the good that God is working in those who love him and are called according to his purpose, that they would be shaped in the image of the son.

So a person that truly desires to be a follower of Christ is going to show that they've been justified by the sanctification that goes on in their lives for the rest of their lives until they die and go to join the

Lord in glory. But sometimes we pitch this gospel with this, you know, say these magic words, sort of formula, as long as you pray this prayer, then you're going to be saved.

And the Bible says nothing about that altar calls and sinners prayers. They're not anywhere in the

Bible. Now your walk of faith can begin with a prayer. And sometimes you need somebody to help to show you how you pray those words to God.

That's okay. A person sitting next to you and saying, do you want to pray to God? Is this your first time praying to the

Lord, calling out his name? Let me help you with that and can guide a person in a prayer. But that person needs to understand that that prayer did not save them, that if their conversion is genuine, if their declaration of Christ as Lord is genuine, then they're going to need to show with their entire lives that they are a follower of Christ.

I just baptized a girl in our church yesterday, eight years old. But when

I sat down with her and talked with her about baptism and what it meant to be a Christian, she understood that to be a

Christian meant more than just praying with her mom, that she needs to be committed to doing this with her whole life.

And now she's going to grow in it more and more as she continues in her life to learn about Jesus Christ.

And so I made sure of these things as I was visiting with her and talking with her. And she said that she wanted to make a declaration of her faith by getting baptized.

And so we did that. But she's got a long road ahead of her. And she understands, as was taught to her by her mom and by myself, that her

Christianity has not been signified by a prayer, but it's that she's going to live this out with her whole life.

Her entire life is committed to following Christ. Jesus said, if anybody would be my disciple, this is

Luke 9, 23. If anyone would call themselves my disciple, he must deny himself. He must take up his cross daily, and he must follow after me.

So it is a struggle to go through the Christian life. The ways that we have

Christ described, in fact, we read this in 2 Peter 2, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

It goes on to say the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.

That's how Christ is described. He's a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

This isn't an easy thing to believe. It is a very difficult road that we walk on as Christians, but yet we've paved that stone of stumbling and rock of offense over with easy believism.

You just got to do this, pray this prayer, meet these requirements, and then you get into the kingdom of God forever.

It's a long road. And few will find it because that's the difficult road.

But we have this assurance, and I want to come back to this verse, which I mentioned at the end of last week, the

Apostle Paul mentioning in Colossians 1, verse 29, for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works in me.

The strength that we have to endure comes not from ourselves. It is from Christ. Jesus said in the

Great Commission, Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20, Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Christ is always with us. He will not leave us nor forsake us. In the book of John, as he said to his disciples,

I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. So our Lord is with us.

Even though the Christian life is a struggle, it is a toil, it is complicated.

And there are times that we're not going to understand. Even though we've got the answer book right in front of us, all right, there are times when it is not going to make sense to us.

But Jesus says, You don't have because you did not ask. Ask and it will be given to you.

Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. Now that's significant also as we continue in this section because we're talking about the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are hidden in Christ Jesus, okay?

Colossians chapter 2, verse 1, I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face.

Now, if you'll recall, Paul is writing to the Colossians, which is a church that he's never been to before.

He's never met the Colossians. This is one of few churches that he wrote to that he actually didn't even plant, okay?

So he's received word from Epaphras about things that were going on in Colossae. So that's what Paul is writing to address.

But this is only one of two letters that we have of Paul's where he is writing to a group of people that he's never met before.

Romans is the other one and this one being Colossians, having never been to Colossae.

Now Paul has never been to Laodicea either, but we don't have Paul's letter that he wrote to the

Laodiceans. That one has been lost and is not part of canon. Colossians 4, 16, when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the

Laodiceans and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.

So we know that Paul wrote a letter to the Laodiceans. He's written one to the Colossians as well. And Paul is basically telling them, okay, now you guys do a letter swap because there are things that I have said to you that the

Laodiceans would benefit from. And there are things that I said to the Laodiceans that you would benefit from.

We also have a suggestion here that the apostle Paul may have written to even another church that was in close proximity to Colossae and to Laodicea.

And that's Hierapolis in Colossians 4, 13. It says, hang on,

I got to find the verse, for I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis.

Now all of these towns, these cities were very close to one another. Colossae and Laodicea were only nine miles apart and Hierapolis is also in that location as well.

So Paul may have written letters to all three of those locations and has instructed the

Colossians to do a letter swap with those locations so they would also know the instructions that Paul gave to those individual churches as well.

I remember listening to a guy, oh, this was last year sometime,

I encountered this individual very hung up in numerology. So if you understand numerology, it's going through different numbers in scriptures and thinking that there's hidden messages written in the numbers that we have all throughout the

Bible. And one of the things that he said to me, he was going through some eschatological explanation and he said that, you know, because we have seven letters from the apostle

Paul and that's that perfect number, the seven churches that Paul wrote to. And I contested with him on that and I said, no,

Paul wrote to many more than seven churches. And he was having to include

Hebrews in order to come up with seven churches there saying that Paul wrote Hebrews depends on whether or not you believe that nobody knows for certain who wrote the book of Hebrews.

But anyway, I said to this individual that no, Paul wrote many more letters than just what we have in scripture.

In fact, you can read in Colossians four, how Paul says that I wrote a letter to Laodiceans, go read that letter and let them read the letter that I wrote to you.

We also have the apostle Paul say to Timothy, this is in second Timothy at the end of the letter where Paul asks for him to bring his scrolls.

And the interesting thing about scrolls, this is not the same as parchments, but scrolls are rolled up and inside the scrolls you have all of your writing utensils.

So this was with the understanding that Paul was meaning to write more letters. There were there were more letters that he meant to write to other locations.

And so there are probably dozens and dozens of letters that Paul wrote that we just don't have.

They were just lost. But these are the ones that we have preserved in Canon so that we might study these things and know what it is that we are supposed to understand as Christians when it comes to living out the gospel life.

And so here in for today, we've only gotten as far as Colossians two, one, I want you to know how great a struggle

I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face.

And, you know, folks, I think that this should encourage us further also in how we are supposed to pray for our missionaries and those that we do not know face to face.

There are Christians that we can lift up and pray for. But, you know, and I just want to impress this upon you because I've been convicted about this at various stages in my

Christian walk. We are so caught up and distracted by technology and some other things that we don't even find the time to pray for the people we know.

And here, according to the example and the witness that we have in Paul, we should even be praying for people that we don't know.

How much time are you making in your day to spend in prayer with God?

To actually struggle to see others come to Christ and grow in Christ in long suffering in prayer, sharing with their struggles as you struggle for them in intercession.

These are things as Christians that we are supposed to do. And we spend way too much time on the computer clicking through dumb stuff and not getting any closer to our

God in the process, not giving any of our time to God or to our brothers and sisters in Christ who need our prayers.

So make an appointment with God. Schedule time. It is not disingenuous to schedule time to be with God.

It's very specific. It's very intentional that you would schedule time to be with God, not distracted by anything else.

But this is the time that I am spending with the Lord in prayer. My mind, my heart, my thoughts, meditating on God and also praying on behalf of other

Christian brothers and sisters or maybe even the lost that they might become saved. Let us do this for one another, struggling as we walk the

Christian life and rejoicing in that, right? Rejoicing in that struggle. Our Lord God, we thank you for the scriptures that you have given to us.

And I pray that as we come away from this text today, we are taking from this study today a truth that is going to continue in our hearts to convict us and draw our minds closer to you, shaping us more in the image of Christ.

Lord, sometimes that can be a painful process. It is a hard process. This is never meant to be easy.

But I pray that we do this struggling with all of your energy, which you are powerfully working in us because to you belongs all of the glory and the honor and the power.

In the name of Jesus, amen. Carl Sagan once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

You know what? We agree. Though not in a way that an atheist might think. If it could be said that an atheist thinks.

The burden of proof is more on an atheist to show there is no creator than it is on the Christian to prove that there is.

Why? Because all human beings inherently understand design. This is referred to as empirical adequacy.

Pick any object and you inherently know it was created. But no atheist will ever be able to refer to anything coming into existence without cause or creator.

Even if he were to cook up some example of random processes, he runs into what is called the implied creator paradox because he had to create his example of non -creation.

The statement made earlier about how atheists don't think, we aren't trying to be derogatory. We're simply following their logic.

If we're nothing but the result of accidental processes, then human beings are just walking sacks of chemicals. And chemicals cannot reason.

They only react. That's a pretty good description of some atheists. Romans 1, 19 -21, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

There's no reason to have to prove God's existence because everyone inherently knows God is real and his word is true.

All of the evidence is already there when we understand the text. Our question comes from Dayton in Oklahoma City.

I trust you know what state that's in. Dear Pastor Gabe, I was hoping you might be able to help me with something.

Romans 1, 20 says that God's invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. And I've heard this verse used to explain that there's no such thing as atheists and that everyone knows that God exists.

So when an atheist says that he doesn't believe in God, he's lying because he actually does believe in God.

Is that the right way to understand that verse? Yes and no. I know that it's become popular to say, well,

I don't believe in atheists, right? And that's the retort to when an atheist says, I don't believe in God.

Well, I don't believe in atheists. And we use Romans 1, 20 to justify that, which

I guess has become a cliche. It is not possible for a human being to deny the existence of God any more than a

Mac computer can gain sentience and deny the existence of Steve Jobs. The evidence of Steve Jobs is written all over the

Mac computer, just as the existence of God is written all over us having been made in the image of God.

So it's simply not possible to get away from the evidence of the existence of God. But when an atheist says to you,

I don't believe in God, are they saying one thing with their mouth, but in their minds that are going, no, I actually do believe in God.

No, that's not necessarily the case because as we see in the context of Romans 1, 20 going on from there in a verse 21 for, although they knew

God past tense, right? They did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise.

They became fools and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie.

Okay, so there it is. So at one point, a person without question sees the evidence and knows the evidence for the existence of the creator

God, but they exchange the truth about God for the lie and they believe the lie rather than the truth.

So when an atheist says to you, I don't believe in God, he is revealing the darkness in his heart that that's what he does believe.

It's not that he's saying one thing in his mouth with his mouth, but in his mind he actually does believe in God.

He's actually showing with his heart that he truly doesn't believe in God. So when we are encountering such a person, apologetics is important, but we need to deliver the gospel.

Be sure you know the gospel and deliver it to those who need to hear it for the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of salvation for all who believe.

Romans 1 16. 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

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