Sunday Morning, January 13, 2019 AM

Thanksgiving to the Father for the Church’s Purpose

What a joy it is father to be brought here together. Thank you for arranging all of this as a good heavenly father meeting the needs of your children. Father I pray that you would help us to appreciate what you have put in front of us and we would be a people full of thanksgiving.

I pray that you bring clarity to our minds about what it is that you've called us to do reason why you've saved us brought us together as a church. What I pray that you would fill us with your affections your priorities.

We would be a people zealous for what you're zealous about and although we may in our choices and in our words and in our interactions we may seem far different from the people around us the culture that we live in but in doing so we would be the salt and the light that you so desire us to be.

And I pray these things looking only to Christ the one with whom you are well pleased. Amen. Well we're going to continue on thinking together from the bible about the purpose of our church the purpose of sunnyside baptist church.

There is a handout I think we've ran out of them by now so I'll put some more out about the purpose statement. It's uh just a few paragraphs long and it details some of the truths in the bible about why we exist as a local church what is it that we're supposed to be doing.

The Church’s Design in Colossians 1:3-20

And last week we began to think about that by way of explaining the underlying assumptions of our church. When we talk about the local church we talk about God we talk about the gospel we talk about the person and work of Jesus Christ.

They these things need to be explained. And we did our best to talk about the designer of the church last week that Christ is the one who constructs his church so what Matthew 16 says. Christ is the who directs his church as we learn Matthew 28 18 through 20.

And that Christ is the one who supplies his church as we've seen from Ephesians 4. And now we should put our attention to the design of the church and for that we could look at very great many different passages.

But I've decided to look at Colossians 1 verses 3 through 20. So if you would please stand with me as I read this passage. And these are the words of our Savior and King Christ they are from the Apostle Paul by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But this is the word of our Lord Christ to us who we are to be as a church beginning in verse 3 of Colossians 1 we give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven of which you previously heard in the word of truth the gospel which has come to you just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing even as it has been doing in you.

Also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth just as you learned it from a path for us our fellow our beloved fellow bond servant who was a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf and he also informed us of your love in the spirit.

For this reason also since the day we heard of it we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you will walk in a worthy of the Lord to please him in all respects bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience joyously giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

For he rescued 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. He is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of all creation.

For by him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things have been created through him and for him he is before all things and in him all things hold together.

He is also head of the body of the church and he is the beginning the firstborn from the dead so that he himself will come to have the first place in everything. For it was the father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him and through him to reconcile all things to himself having made peace through the blood of his cross.

Kudzu as a Picture of the Gospel’s Growth

Through him i say whether things on earth or things in heaven this is the word of the lord. You may be seated. Do any of you know what kudzu is. Yeah. Um i've got a few pictures of kudzu we can take a look at.

Yeah. Kudzu is known as the plant that ate the south. Um why is that it can grow up to one foot a day. Its roots can reach 15 feet down into the earth at a four inch diameter. Each root can supply 30 vines.

There's no quick way to get rid of kudzu. You have to repeatedly cut it off as low as you can try to burn it when it comes back. Set your livestock on it. Hope they eat enough of it and hope you get it before.

It produces seeds which can lay fallow in the ground for years before they sprout. Some people try to disc down to the roots as best they can and pour poison all over their land trying to get rid of the kudzu.

Others have embraced kudzu. They make dishes out of it baskets even jams and jellies. Some throw it into some honey. But how in the world does such an invasive species take over whole swaths of our country.

Kudzu came from japan. It was introduced through the 100th anniversary celebration of the united states in 1876 at the centennial celebration in philadelphia and japan had a part in that believe it or not.

And they built themselves a traditional tea house and garden and featured this vine kudzu. And from there it spread and ate the south. Now japan was not trying to ruin the agriculture of the south. Why did they bring this vine over and promote it.

Because its root and flower and leaf are used to make medicine. Kudzu is used to treat alcoholism. It is used to correct headaches upset stomach dizziness vomiting. It's used for heart and circulatory problems including high blood pressure irregular heartbeat heart failure chest pain upper respiratory problems including sinus infections the common cold hay fever flu swine flu skin problems such as allergic skin rash itchiness psoriasis.

You can also use it for weight loss muscle pain measles dysentery gastritis fever diarrhea thirst neck stiffness. And also you can use it to treat polio myelitis and encephalitis and migraine deafness diabetes nerve pain vision loss.

Never knew that about kudzu. Did you. So while everyone's trying to kill the stuff off some of us could use it and feel better. It's amazing the difference of opinion on kudzu. You literally love it or you hate it.

It's very hard to keep it at bay. It's very hard to get rid of it. And it seems like you know this plant so so so quickly spreading so thoroughly expanding in an area taking over everything you see how it hangs from the trees and it just it completely controls an area.

It seems like a menace to many if not most. But it turns out it could be a very gracious gift from god. When i think of the gospel described here in colossians 1 constantly bearing fruit and increasing in all the world even as it has been doing in you i think of kudzu going growing expanding controlling spreading taking over.

And here's some good news. As christians we're called to plant seed. Are we not. I've got good news. We're kudzu farmers. We're not amazing farmers. We are not agrarian experts. We just have one powerful seed an amazing amazing growth of the gospel.

Now our purpose described this way. We must proclaim christ from all the scripture until his spirit renews all god's people into his image. We are to proclaim christ. We are kudzu farmers. We're not coming up with something inventive.

We're not. We're not cobbling something together that is man-made. We are taking a very powerful seed that god has designed and saying what he wants us to say in the spirit that he wants us to go. And his purpose is achieved in the church.

Let's think about the design of the church and how important it is for us to trust in the message that god has given us the design of the church. We see a lot of the design in the church of the church in colossians 1 we see it all throughout the scriptures.

But here in colossians 1 we are reminded of the father's purpose for our church. We are reminded of the son's proclamation through our church and the spirit's renewal that happens in our church and our faithfulness that that we are we are called to.

I'm talking about the trinity. Obviously we mentioned god the father god the son and god the holy spirit. We cannot speak of the church and think about the design of the church without recognizing god in his trinitarian economy the way that he in three persons relates.

The Father’s Purpose, Thanksgiving, and the Preeminence of Christ

There are different types of planning conversations. Some planning conversations are scheduled. You have to meet with people you work with. Sometimes you you meet as a husband and wife. There are some things you have to plan out.

And these scheduled things can be somewhat reluctant maybe dull maybe even combative. Hopefully not. But other planning conversations can be spontaneous born out of a passion that you have with these other people for something good and that there is a spontaneous joyful unified plan that just this unfolds to some great good.

And when we read psalm 10 and john 17 and ephesians 1 we get glimpses just bare glimpses into the triune conversation which joyously and lovingly and unanimously design the church all right. We need to think about the father's purpose.

The father's purpose in the design of the church is highlighted for us in our text by way of thanksgiving. We see in verses 3 and 12 that thanks is given to the father. Paul says we give thanks to god the father of our lord jesus christ.

Verse 12 giving thanks to the father he says. And he paul's giving thanks to the father because it is the father's purpose that the son faithfully performs. And the will of the father and the work of the son are faithfully applied powerfully applied by the holy spirit in our world.

So paul can easily give thanks to god the three in one. But he also gives thanks to the father to highlight the father's purpose in the design of the church. And we need to think about that a little bit that what the triune god says in creation let us make man in our image.

He also says of the church let us renew man in our image. And this the father's purpose is accomplished through the work of christ applied by the power of the holy spirit. The purpose of the father is is highlighted by the thanksgiving in our text.

But i think you can see very clearly what this all leads to in verse 18 that everything that god has done in in saving us in giving us the gospel and in raising us up in christ. And then and really giving us to christ is all summed up in verse 18 at the very end so that the purpose statement so that he himself that christ himself will come to have the first place in everything.

That this is what the father is. After that jesus christ will have the preeminence in everything. Perhaps you've heard of the chief end of man from the westminster shorter catechism. What is the chief end of man.

It is to glorify god and enjoy him forever. This never happens unless christ is preeminent. You never glorify god unless christ is preeminent in your life. You never enjoy him either unless christ is preeminent in your life.

I want us to pay attention to the father's purpose by looking at the gratitude that is in the text. We give thanks to god the father for what he's up to and what is he up to exalting christ preeminently.

And he does that through the gospel going and the gospel growing so that he will glorify himself through his son. That's what we're after this morning. And we begin with gratitude. We give thanks to the father of our lord jesus christ.

Verse 12 joyously giving thanks to the father. I've been thinking a lot about thankfulness lately. Thankfulness is the second most important thing we do in prayer. The second most abundant thing that should be present in our prayer is thankfulness.

The first is adoration of god. You realize that there was there is way more air out there than what you're breathing. And there's far more of god to adore than is restricted to the blessings he has given to us.

So there's always war of god to adore than there is to thank him. For that's why adoration should be the most abundant thing in our prayer life. But then comes thankfulness and we should be full of thankfulness and thanking god far more than we confess our sins.

And we ought to be confessing our sins. We have a lot of things to confess to repent of to flee. But where sin abounds grace far more abounds. So we've got more to thank god for than we do to confess to him.

And when you think about the the the nature and the character of god and all the blessings he's poured out upon us and the degree of our sinfulness which is great to behold we realize that all these three are are to be far more in abundance in our prayers than the last thing which is simply asking god for stuff is what we tend to do the most.

But back to the illustration of the air. There's far more air out there than what you're breathing. Right. Sometimes you get some bad air you know what i'm saying and you got a cough. That's not all the time is it.

That's kind of like confessing of your sin every once in a long while. You wonder am i getting enough air or i better get some more air. That's your supplication. That's your asking from god. We are to ask god for things.

But what does that compare to the confession of our sin and the thankfulness that we offer to god and the adoration that we that we offer to god. Now this thankfulness notice what paul is thankful for.

He is thankful both for the subjective and the objective. The subjective is in verses four through six he says he gives thanks to god our father the lord jesus christ praying always for you. Since we heard we're giving thanks to god.

Since we heard about some things about you that make us thankful to god we've heard of your faith in christ jesus and the love which you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven of which you previously heard in the word of truth the gospel which has come to you just as in all the world it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing even as it has been doing in you since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of god.

In truth when i say subjective i'm not talking about the radical individualized mysticism that is plaguing our church. I'm talking about subjective in the sense of i didn't know which way to go right or left the other day.

But i got goose bumps on my left arm so i knew god was telling me go this way. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the experiential personalized transformation that occurs when the gospel is growing in your life like kudzu taking over everything.

There is fruit bearing in your life. When the gospel expands in your life that fruit is listed as faith love and hope in our passage. Faith love and hope. This fruit is observable. It is experienced by all christians and it is observable by others.

It's not something that is radically privatized that nobody would ever know about it. The faith love and hope is obvious to epaphras who sent the word who gave this message to paul and paul is thankful to god that these things are evident in their life.

Now faith love and hope comprise the christian experience what we personally experience as followers of jesus christ and these for these three we ought to be thankful to god faith love and hope. Now think of a river maybe this is a river that you have uh you have floated in a canoe a river you have driven over on a bridge.

Think of the river. There are three three things about this river. There is the shape of it you know the banks the the bar the sandbar the rapids the rocks the shape of this river the curvature is what this river looks like there's the stuff of the river there's the water that fills it up and then there's the flow of the river this thing's moving there's three things about the river is the shape what fills it and it's on the move and that is faith love and hope.

Faith is the shape of our Christian lives like the way the shape of the river, the banks of the river, defines us, defines the way we think. That we think about Christ in this way, we think about the world in this way, that we relate to one another in a particular way because of the things that we believe.

Because of the way that Christ and his person and work, the truth of that shapes our thinking. Shapes our value system, our faith is the shape of the Christian life. And the love is like the water of the river.

What water is to a river, love is to the Christian life. If you don't have love, you don't have the Christian life. That's basically the letter of 1 John in a nutshell. Loving God supremely, loving others rightly, and by the way we love God and love others determines how we handle the things that God has entrusted to us.

I mean that's everything, it's the love that we have as Christians. And also the hope that we have a direction. Now if you have a shape in the ground, a depression in the ground, but no water, you've got a ditch.

If you have a depression in the ground, a hole in the ground that's full of water but it's not moving, you have a pond. Only when it's on the move do you have a river. And Christians we're on the move, we have hope, we have a purpose, we have a direction that we're supposed to be going.

We're not supposed to be static and still and not going anywhere. We're supposed to be doing everything that we do in our life with the hope of what is yet to come. Christ's return, the setting of all things right.

Are we involved in the greatest work that he is doing? So Paul says I'm thankful for the faith and the love and the hope that is in your life. And we need to be thankful for these things in our lives, but we have to be honest about it.

To be honest about it. Is that truly your experience? That you have faith in Christ? That you love God, you love Christ, you love the saints? Is it true that you have hope, that you're moving in a direction, the direction that Christ has shown us?

That the hope laid up for us in heaven, who is Christ himself, our resurrected Lord and Savior. The firstborn of the resurrection that we too have this hope. You know sometimes it's hard for people to come to church and sing hymns.

And it's not just because the hymns are no longer the representative of our cultural milieu. It's because the things that the hymns say challenge us to wonder is this true of what I'm saying? Am I really praising God from the heart?

Or is this just going through the motions, just voicing the words? It's hard to sing hymns because they're convicting. There are choruses that can be the same way, but the songs that we sing can be very convicting sometimes.

Am I truly praising God and giving him thanks for these things? Am I really grateful for that? Is this true of my life? We need to be honest in our thanksgiving. And notice our thanksgiving is heavenward.

Paul says, I give thanks to the Father. I give thanks to the Father for the faith, love, and hope in the Colossians. Now faith, love, and hope are intensely personal. The things that you believe are so personally worked into your inner person.

What you believe, the faith that you have is so worked inside of you that it's incredibly personal. So also is your love. How much more personal can you get? The love that you have for others, the love that you have for God, and the hope, the sense of purpose, and direction, and destiny of your life.

How personal these things are. But Paul says, when it comes to faith in Jesus Christ, and the all-defining belief that comes from the all-defining direction in your life that you have when you have faith in Jesus Christ, your hope and the love that you have for God and for the saints, that when it comes to this faith, and this love, and this hope that is so personally experienced in your life, he says there's only one place that you give credit for, the only one person you give credit for, and that's God.

This is not something that the Colossians came up with. Paul's not writing to the Colossians and says, thank you so much for validating my missional efforts in training men to plant churches, and you all have such faith, and you all have such love, and you all have such hope that you are really making this program fly.

He doesn't give thanks to them, but for them to God. We've got to give credit where credit is due, and that saves us from being hypocritical in our thanksgiving, but humble, helps us to be humble in our thanksgiving.

You know, we don't want to be like the Pharisee in Jesus' parable of saying, I thank you God that I'm so full of faith, and love, and hope. Not like that poor sap who can't get it together. That's not very good thanksgiving.

That's hypocritical, prideful kind of thanksgiving. It's a showcasing of ourselves, not really giving glory to God. But our thanksgiving should be more like what Paul says, I am what I am by the grace of God, and that's all that I am.

He gets all the credit. We've got to be thankful for the subjective, the experience of the Christian life, but also thankful for the objective. Notice that Paul gives thanks to God not only for the faith, love, and hope in the life of the Colossians, but he gives thanks to God for what God has done to save them.

Not the experience of their salvation, but what God did objectively to save them. Verses 12 through 14. It is giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

For he rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins. So what Paul is saying, I'm thankful to the Father for these things that God has done.

And he lists doctrines of salvation. These are the things that the Colossians had heard, that they had learned, that they had understood. Paul gives God thanks for these objective truths. These objective truths are about the Christian status, not our Christian experience.

These things are true whether you feel like they're true or not. These things are true no matter what you're thinking in the moment. These doctrines of salvation should not be treated like detached reference material, something that you go look up in a dictionary from time to time.

The doctrines of salvation are also not to be vague, unclear murmurs about, oh yes, well God loves everyone, we're all his children, and we all go to a better place. But the doctrines of salvation are vital, clarifying, specific, and useful in the Christian life.

I want you to think about the status that is mentioned here. We begin with rescued, verse 13. He rescued us from the domain of darkness. Here's some good news, Christian. You have been rescued from the domain of darkness, from the authority of the enemy.

You have been snatched out of his hands. You have been cut free from his ropes. You have been broken out of his prison. You have been rescued from the authority of darkness. This is what God has done through Christ.

Jesus says he binds the strong man and then plunders his possessions. Also, we are transferred, not just rescued from the authority of darkness, but transferred. It says in verse 13, transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son.

Transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son, so that once that we were under the bondage of darkness, so that we were always against Christ, that we would join the nations in raging against Christ. Now, having been rescued from that, we are transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son, so that we are subject to the authority of Christ and rejoicing in that authority.

That there is a full transition. And being in his kingdom, being in Christ's kingdom, means that in Christ we have redemption. We have salvation. We have the forgiveness of our sins. We are bought and paid for.

That's what redemption means. Forgiveness of our sins. We are accepted to God, not guilty. Our sins removed from us as far as the east is from the west. Here's good news. Here are these objective truths.

No matter what you're feeling and experiencing in the particular day that you're going through, Christian, you have been rescued from darkness and you have been transferred to the kingdom of Christ. That word transferred in the Greek was used to describe the practice of Roman generals who had had to reconquer a very tough area, a volatile area.

A place full of people who were so tied to their land they would never give up fighting. A place where insurgencies would break out again and again against the Roman Empire, and so the Roman general made a decision, these people will no longer live here, and he would take them all by force and he would move them to some other land and settle them there, and thus endeth the insurgency.

That transport, that transfer, that forcible relocation, that word is what word is here. We have been delivered from the domain of darkness. Brought in to the kingdom of the victorious king, Jesus Christ.

Now this is an explanation. Verses 13 and 14 are explaining something of verse 12. We are to give thanks to the Father. Not only has he rescued us and transferred us, but we give thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

And how in the world he would ever qualify a group like us to be inheriting what the saints inherit in the realm of light is explained by the rescuing and the transferring. Verses 13 and 14. So this is really the third thing.

We are rescued, we are transferred, and we are qualified for inheritance of saints in light. We were in darkness, now we're in light. We were rebels against God, now not only are we subjects of the kingdom of his beloved Son, we are counted as his beloved children as well.

You don't get an inheritance unless you're an heir. This is the language of adoption. What do we do with these objective truths of salvation about our status? We need to appropriate them by faith, first of all.

Too often we berate ourselves for the lack of experience. When we do so, we tend to forget what is true, whether we feel like it or not. There are many times in every single day, I do not feel like God the Father would ever say of me, welcome, I'm so glad you're here.

You ever feel like that? But the objective truth of the matter is that I've been rescued and transferred and qualified. We need to appropriate these truths by faith, and this immediately makes it applicable to our prayers, that we pray this way.

Yes, when we're praying and adoring God, when we pray and thank him, let us thank him for these truths. And sometimes we don't feel what we know that are true. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

And when we appropriate these things by faith and when we apply them in our prayers,.

Do you know what happens?

The objective truths about our salvation become the snow melt for our subjective experience of salvation. When we hold fast to the objective truths of our salvation, justified, being sanctified, we will be glorified.

All the truths of the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the sovereign grace of God, the fact that he loves us as his own children because he's adopted us, that he's filled us with the Holy Spirit. All of these objective truths, when we mount them up like heaps of snow upon the mountainside, they melt in the glory of God and become snow melt for our river.

And it's the faith, love, and hope experience that we enjoy. We ought to be grateful. We ought to be grateful. Paul is grateful to the Father for the subjective and objective parts of salvation. And why does he highlight this?

Because when we are thankful for these things, when we are thankful for the salvation that God has brought to us, this forms us, this changes us, this helps our values to be in line with God. When we are grateful for the going and the growing of the gospel, we ourselves will be involved in the going and the growing of the gospel.

The Gospel Going and Growing in the Church

Notice the gospel going in verses 5 through 7. First of all, it is verbal. In verse 5, we see it's a word of truth. And it speaks of the gospel, which is literally a good message. These things are verbal.

Words are necessary. We hear that Colossians heard this word. It was spoken to them. It was shared with them. They received this message. They understood it and they learned it. So it is verbal. We're losing that as the church moves along.

We're losing the verbal necessity of the gospel. But I want you to see what a generous communication goes on here between Epaphras and the Colossians. How he spoke to them again and again and helped them to learn and help them to understand.

So they would hear it again and again. What a generous kind of communication. Why do you have to say things over and over, by the way?

I'll ask the wives.

Why do you have to say things over and over again? My husband is hard of hearing.

Right?

Yeah.

Well, you know, it would be a very gospel thing for you to love the hard of hearing. All of us are hard of hearing. And God says his gospel again and again and again and again. That's how the gospel goes.

That's how it grows in our life. It's because of the generous communication. Also, notice how powerful this gospel is that goes. This is what reminds me a little bit of the kudzu. It remains. It sticks with them.

Verse 6, it says, which has come to you. In the ancient Coptic translation of this, they used the word for abiding and dwelling. Meaning this stuff has come to you and it sticks with you. You can't shake yourself from it.

You can't get away from it. It remains and it's global. Verse 6. Just as in all the world. This gospel goes anywhere. It's not indigenous to one place. It's transcendent to all the cultures. Look how powerful it is.

It can go anywhere. And notice that it's constant. It is constantly bearing fruit. It just doesn't stop. It just keeps on going. It's fruitful. It is constantly bearing fruit. It's like a tree planted by rivers of water.

It's spreading. The word increasing means spreading. It's spreading in our lives and it's spreading in the world around us. And it is effective because it does not fail. It has been doing this in you since the day you heard of it.

It didn't fail. The work that God began in them continued. Look how powerful the gospel is. So why do we distrust it? Why do we distrust it? I've lost count of the many times people have said that in very educated, credentialed people, influential people have said that we've got to find a different way, a better way, a more contextualized way of preaching the gospel.

Look, we don't have to do anything to the kudzu. It's just going to grow. We don't have to do anything to the gospel to make it better. We don't have to add to it. We don't have to take away from it. We have to actually sow it.

And if we sow it, then God promises His work will be done. Notice that the gospel going is a personal thing. Paul says over and over again, You heard it. You learned it. You understood it. It was a personal going of the gospel.

In fact, in verses 3 through 8, ten times Paul talks about you and your. Very personal. Epaphras came himself to teach them. It was a very personal thing. I'm not against the use of tracts or books or any other kind of impersonal media to spread the gospel.

But you've got to see that it's a personal thing. It's a personal thing. And Paul was always trying to be extremely personal in the letters that he sent. Remember that Satan deals personally. Have you ever found anything in the Bible where Satan deals impersonally with somebody?

He deals personally. The enemy deals personally with people and we better too. Have a better reason to deal personally with folks in the going of the gospel. Christ did. Christ dealt personally with people.

Thirdly, the gospel going is cooperative. In verse 7,.

Paul says,.

You learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bondservant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf. So here is our fellow slave. We're all in this together. We're all following our master Jesus Christ and he's helping us.

Paul didn't have to do it all. We can't do it all. It is cooperative. And as we unify in this, Christ has us doing his Father's will by the Spirit's power. When we say that it is personal, that doesn't mean we're doing it in isolation.

Do it cooperatively.

Thirdly, the gospel is growing. It's growing. We're just never done. Every time the Christian cake is taken out of the oven, the middle is still squishy and it hasn't pulled away from the sides. It's just never done.

Put it back in. None of us here are done. We'll die and be absent from the body to be present with the Lord and we're still not done because we're going to wait for the resurrection of the body. What are we going to grow in?