Colossians 1:9-14 Knowing His Will

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan.

Welcome and Church Announcements

We're gonna go ahead and get started here. So welcome to Recast Church. And I know it feels really uncomfortable for some of you because the donuts haven't arrived yet. And so before there's an uprising, know that they're on their way here and they'll be here in just a couple moments.

So we didn't overlook that this morning and they'll be there. I just wanna welcome everybody and say how glad I am to gather together with God's people this morning. And I'm glad that the roads were good this morning and we were able to get in here.

And I'm just very thankful for the Lord's Day and an opportunity that we have to gather together to hear from God's word, to worship him together, and just to be together as a church family. I rejoice and I'm thankful for that.

Be sure to fill out the connection card you received when you walked in. Even if you've been attending here for a while, if you have updated information, you wanna share a prayer request on there. There's a place for comments and suggestions there.

You may notice that we've done some things different recently, that we've got a new format to the worship folder, that the seats are set up a little bit different. If you have any feedback for us on the way that things are changing or are different, or even suggestions that you have, feel free to let us know that on that connection card.

But if it is your first time with us this morning, then we ask that you also fill that connection card and take it out to Leah at the welcome table, maybe during connection time or at the end of the service.

She has something for you there. And do know that by sharing your email address with us, we do send out a weekly email called the eCast. It's all kinds of links and activities and events. It links to our Facebook page, my blog, all different kinds of things there, so you can take advantage of that.

And thank you that you are here. And then also, you received an offering envelope when you walked in. There's a black box out on the table. If you choose to give this week, just continue to rejoice in the way that God has provided for us from day one at the very start of our church, and continues to provide for us as we continue to try to be good stewards of his money, and are just grateful that God has blessed us with a good chunk of money in the bank towards building, and that continues to roll.

And so, we'll be giving you updates as those come in. Right now, we don't have anything, nothing really to report, other than that God continues to bless in that way. And we are talking with some people about some cost things and different stuff about what it might actually cost to build certain types of construction and things like that, so.

Simplicity, Maturity, and Growth in the Christian Life

Here at Recast Church, we believe in a simple model of maturity in the Christian life. But I wanna be clear that when we talk about simplicity, and think about that as a core value, the S in Recast stands for simplicity.

And the goal is that we would have a simple statement of the way that we grow, growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service. But the reality of life is that even if it's a simple statement, it's not always easy for us to apply, right?

How many of you know there's some really simple things that are actually quite complex down deeper at the level? And so, when we talk about simplicity, we recognize that also, when we get together in relationship with others, there's a lot of complexity that's involved in that as well.

But we believe that maturity, when we talk about the simple model of growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, we believe that that growing defines maturity. So a lot of people think of maturity, I was raised to think that maturity is the crossing of a line, that one day I will become spiritually mature and then everybody can look at me and go, oh wow, Don, you're so awesome because you're spiritually mature.

It's like a line that's finally been crossed, right? Any of you raised that way to think of things that way and think in terms of a line that's crossed? Just me or anybody else? I was raised to think that way.

And yet, here at Recast, we believe that it's growing that defines the maturity, that you don't arrive at a line, but that you continue to grow. And so whether you come here with very little scriptural understanding, very, very, like maybe not even brought up attending church or hearing the Old Testament stories in Sunday school, and then some of you were like, I mean, it's like you were born in the church and your mom attended the day that she gave birth to you and you've been in church every day since and you were raised and now you're in your 60s and you're like, man, I've just always been around the church.

How many of you know you can always grow? Did you know that? And you should always be growing and that's what we believe is the definition of maturity here, growing in faith, that is understanding God from his word and applying it to our lives, growing in community, that is with others in relationship, and growing in service, that is using the gifts and talents that God has given us to further advance his kingdom cause and to serve others within the body of Christ.

And so we haven't even been able to develop, by the way, we tried multiple times over the course of our seven year history to develop a logo that defines that and we can't. And part of the reason is that you can't take a snapshot of growing.

Okay, you can't represent that on the page. Now, maybe what we need is, what's it called, the animation that actually moves? Like a gif or what? Is it a gif? Did I get that right? But maybe we should just have like something that actually moves like on the computer so that then you can show it kind of expanding and continuing to grow or something like that.

And then that would be more like a pictorial model of what we're trying to accomplish here. But we're suggesting that maturity is not a static arrival at a snapshot in time. Just like you cross some invisible spiritual line and now you're mature.

But Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as he was writing the book of Colossians, seems to agree with that idea as well. That the Christian life is one of continued and constant and regular routine growth over the course of time.

Now, that doesn't mean that it's not sometimes three steps forward, two steps back, but that there's a growing that occurs in the Christian life that continues and doesn't stop until the day you arrive in the presence of Christ himself.

And so in our text this morning, Paul is gonna expound deeply on the Christian life by showing us the way that he prays for the church in Colossae. He's gonna demonstrate prayer to us. And although a wonderful application to this text is that we should pray deeply and pray theologically informed prayers for one another and pray for other churches and pray for other works in the community and throughout the world, but the content of his prayer is a powerful description of the engine that drives a life that pleases God.

Did you hear me say that? A life that pleases God. I wanna please God. Anybody with me on that? Anybody wants him to smile over you? Anybody want his delight in you? Yeah. I wanna walk in a manner that is worthy of the Lord as this text says.

And if that seems like a lofty statement that seems nearly unattainable to you, then we're on the same page at the start of this text this morning. If that seems like a really lofty thing that God would be pleased with you, that you would walk in a manner that's worthy of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Wow.

You might say, me? Worthy of Christ? Me, pleasing to God? So hold on tight, because I believe that we may just find that the fuel to get there is available to each and every one of us this morning, a life that is pleasing to God, a life that is worthy of the Lord.

Colossians 1:9-14 and the Knowledge of God's Will

So let's open our Bibles to Colossians 1, verses nine through 14. If you don't have a Bible or some way to navigate to Colossians on your lap, Mike is back here with some Bibles. You could just raise your hand and grab one of those.

He'll be happy to bring you one, and then you can just take that out the door with you. We want everybody to have a copy of God's word. But follow along as we read Colossians 1, verses nine through 14, which is what God has selected for us to listen to and to take on board and to grow us in our faith this morning.

So follow along as we read. And so from the day we heard, 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 in 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. Let's go to the Lord in prayer as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning.

Father, what a delight it is to gather together as your people. I just counted a privilege to be here in the midst of these people who are striving and struggling and working to continue to grow in faith, continue to grow in community, to continue to grow in service.

And we recognize that we would be nothing without you and we owe you all the credit for anything that is good in our lives. And so, Father, as we have an opportunity to sing some songs to you, I pray that you would receive these songs as worship to you.

Father, that as we have an opportunity to contemplate and consider our lives before you through this text this morning, and to consider how well we know your will, how much we have lived based on spiritual understanding and spiritual wisdom, and then as that foundation of knowledge of your will increases in our lives, that we might actually act on those things and live out a life that is pleasing to you in a variety of ways as this text spells out.

But Father, thank you. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for salvation in Jesus Christ. Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of your church. Thank you for the chance that we have to gather together and to mingle our voices together in praise to you this morning.

I pray that you would be honored and glorified in our gathering in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen.

You can go ahead and be seated, but remember that I want you to get comfortable at any time. If you need more coffee, juice, donuts, you can take advantage of those. And then restrooms are out the hall at the end.

Men's upstairs, women's downstairs in case you need those and you didn't know where those were. And then also please keep your Bibles open to Colossians 1, 9 through 14. I love to see those Bibles open and just to see you referencing them and looking at them because that's our outline for the text this week.

Every week we walk right through and verse by verse. And sometimes I wonder if you're able to follow that because I kind of go all over the place, but I do walk through the text. And so hopefully you're able to see some of the flow of that.

Prayer, God's Will, and Spiritual Wisdom

But kind of starting off, I'd like to suggest to you that our prayer lives demonstrate quite a bit about us. And before you glaze over and assume this is another one of those, you don't pray enough sermons.

Let me just encourage you to take a moment and genuinely consider your prayer life. I know what it's like to squirm with that question. Do you pray and how often and all those things and how many of you would admit you could do more, right?

Even if you are, even if you have a really great prayer life, even if you're taking large chunks out and then on the drive in and during meetings and stuff, you're kind of praying to God and stuff like that.

You can always improve and we can always grow in that and I recognize that. And really, if we're honest, for most all of us, prayer does not come easy. And I'm not sure that for Paul it was any different.

I'm not sure that he was superhuman and was able to just, just prayer came natural to him. And man, you know, you're never gonna be quite like Paul because he just was a man of prayer and it was easy for him.

For anyone, think about what we're doing when we pray. Think about it in just plain terms. Really, for anyone to take time to speak to the invisible God while the pressing visible concerns are all around us, screaming for our action is never easy, right?

Because every moment you spend praying is a moment that you could be, what? Doing something. Isn't that the way we think of it? Every moment that you spend praying is a moment, every hour that you spend in prayer is an hour that you could be doing something.

And we are a people of doing and the assumption is, well, when you're praying, you're not necessarily doing something. But maybe you could be a part of the solution, right? Have you ever thought that?

I mean, I've been guilty of thinking that. I'm your pastor and I'm telling you, I've been guilty of thinking that before for my own life. Man, I could either just stop and take a minute to pray about it or maybe I could just solve it, right?

You ever felt like maybe you could be the solution? I think there's some reality to that. Sometimes in our prayer lives, from that flows us being a part of the solution, right? But bringing it to God is an essential part of our lives.

Life is a balancing act of being something and doing stuff. But all I'm suggesting so far is that we can learn something about someone by the way that they pray. And Paul, in our text, who was a very busy man, I mean, I think you're pretty busy.

We're all pretty busy. We're Americans and we're running full tilt in every direction. Paul was a busy man. He had a job making tents, according to the book of Acts. He had tons of correspondence with various churches.

He mentored young ministers. He taught in synagogues, preached in open air venues. He traveled bringing the gospel to remote places. And equally, we see from his letters all kinds of indication that he was a man with a deep, rich prayer life.

But I believe he had to work at it. And so in verse nine, we see that from the time he has heard about the gospel taking root in this city, Colossae, he hasn't been there. But from the time he caught wind that God was doing a movement in another community outside of where he lived, he says, I have not ceased to pray for you.

He had not stopped praying for the Colossians. Now, that's not to say that he went without food and went without sleep for however long it was from the time he sat down with his pen in hand to the time before when he had heard about their love in the spirit for one another and how the gospel had taken root there.

But he is bringing the church in Colossae to his heavenly father in prayer very often. I get the implication from this is that when he prayed, he lifted up the Colossians. And I believe, by the way, I think it's important for us to understand that there is, the injunction in scripture is to pray without ceasing.

You guys have heard that before, right? And I wanna be clear that I believe as your pastor that you should be spending time in prayer more than just the prayer that you offer before a meal. That's a great place to start, by the way, because it's a good reminder.

And that's part of Christian culture that's been passed down from generation to generation. Pray in thankfulness before a meal. Maybe even take a moment and infuse that with more than just thanks for the food, but maybe pray for somebody that you know that is hurting.

Or how many of you have ever done this? You've told somebody you'd pray for them and then forgot about it? There's a place for you to put that, by the way. When we changed the worship folder, we intentionally added that on the back because I find that this is the place and the context where more often I find myself telling somebody, man, I understand it's a hard thing.

And in community, we hear where somebody's going through a hard time and we offer to pray for them. Write it on the back of your worship folder. There's a spot there for you to do that. But we need to have some extended times of prayer, but equally we need to develop a habit of praying throughout the day, walking down the hallway to a meeting, on the way to work, in the middle of a meeting, whatever it might be, praying and offering your moment by moment to the Lord.

And prayer is both of those things. But Paul, we see here, was a man who had a deep prayer life and he did not cease to pray for them. He prayed often for the church in Colossae. So a deep prayer life is what sets the stage, but the content of his prayer here describes for us in clarity the things that make for a life that is pleasing to God.

The text isn't easy to outline. It's very, very difficult to outline, actually, because the nature of his prayer that he offers for them, he says, I pray for you without ceasing and here's the things that I pray.

And then his prayer is like a waterfall. He asks for one primary thing and that one primary thing that he's asking of them is composed of two parts of something else and the thing that results from this thing that he's praying for them and praying for ultimately for all Christians in their lives is made up of four parts and then he takes the fourth part and says here's five motivations for that fourth part.

Anybody lost or did you get that? Okay, you're supposed to be lost in that. But let me explain the things as we, and then we'll dig into it. So let me kind of give you the flow with filling in the words instead of just saying the thing that this is.

Paul prays for the knowledge of the will of God.

For his church.

That is the number one main big picture thing in this text. The knowledge of the will of God is the number one thing that he says you and I need, that the church needs. If you're here and you're a part of the church and by part of the church I mean in with Christ, you've accepted him, you've asked him to be your Lord and Savior and you're trying to grow in him, then the number one thing that Paul would be praying for you is the knowledge of his will.

That's where it all starts. But the knowledge of his will is made up of these two components, spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. Spiritual understanding is kind of the content type stuff, like you can read God so loved the world that he gave his only son, but then spiritual wisdom is knowing what to do with it, is actually taking it a step further and going okay, I know he died for me, what am I supposed to do with this information?

And you know the difference between understanding something and applying it, right? You understand that sometimes you understand something but you don't know quite what to do with it? Well wisdom is the know what to do with it, but then he's also gonna take it further than that.

Knowing what to do with it isn't always the end either, is it? Sometimes you know what to do with it and you don't. And so it's this spiritual wisdom, spiritual understanding, and then the knowledge of the will of God, if you have that, which is composed of spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding, results in walking in a manner worthy of the Lord.

In other words, a life that is fully pleasing to him. And a life that is pleasing to him has the following four components. Bearing fruit, increasing in knowledge, being strengthened in power, and giving thanks to the Father.

And this thanks, this last part, giving thanks to the Father, which is a component of what it means to live a life pleasing to God. He wants us to thank him. And this thanks comes about in verses 13 through 14 when we realize these five things he has qualified us to share in an inheritance with the saints.

We have been delivered from darkness, we have been transferred to the kingdom of Jesus Christ, we have been redeemed by him, and we have forgiveness of sins. So you probably didn't get all of that in the first run through, but that sets the stage.

That's what outlining this looked like this week, and it's not particularly an easy outline to follow, and yet it packs a significant punch. And so as we study it, my prayer is that we grab a hold of some of these huge theological concepts and see how they interact with each other, and that we grow as a result of understanding this kind of engine that drives the Christian life for us.

So I hope to break it down so that by the end of our time together this morning, you have a pretty good flow of what the Christian life is supposed to look like. Remember that this is what Paul is asking for God to do in his church.

This is the way he believes that things should go for you and I. This is prescriptive, in a sense. This is like he's written a prescription for us. This is what he wants to see happen and come to fruition in your life.

This is what he wants to see for each and every person in this room, and he was praying it for the church in Colossae. He'd never even met him before, and he was like, this is what I'm praying for you.

This is what I want for you, and it's significant that he wants us to have these things. We are in this, then, seeing a very explicit teaching from God about what it means to please him, and you've gotta ask yourself a genuine question this morning, it's a very easy one to answer in public, right, kind of flippantly, I'm not gonna ask you to show your hands, but do you want to please God?

You've gotta ask yourself that and think it through. Don't just give the first gut-level response because in a Christian gathering, of course you wanna please God, right? That's what you want everybody to think of you, and we understand that, but do you really want to please him?

Do you wanna live in a manner worthy of the Lord? If so, then we have to start here in verse nine with the knowledge of his will. Hear that carefully, it's not just generic knowledge. He's not just praying that, boy, you in Colossae, or you here at Recast, I wish that you had more knowledge.

Okay, how many of you would like that? You'd like to just kind of get a download from God and just get some knowledge, like that would be kind of cool, but it's not some generic knowledge about creation or how theology works or how the Trinity works or something like that, not knowledge per se, but knowledge of his will, a specific brand, a specific subject, a specific content to this knowledge.

Now, if you think about it, what does it mean to know someone's will? To know someone's will is to know something very intimate about them, right? If you know the will of a person, you know their intentions, you know what they want to accomplish, you know what they desire for others and for themselves.

It is to the level of desire and intention to know someone's will. Now, I often assume I know someone's will only to find out that I've got it wrong. Anybody else in the room married? Okay, you think you know their will, you think you know what they wanted to accomplish, you think you know why they said the things that they said and then come to find out it's a completely different intention, completely different will than what you perceive to be the intention of the one who is speaking.

Anybody else got, have you been there? You can raise your hand if you have. Three of us are willing to say that and the rest of you are just locking it down, right? I see how you're gonna be with me this morning.

Yeah, this idea of understanding someone's will. And if I can get this so wrong with someone that I can see and touch and hear and be present with, how much more open is my relationship to God open to misunderstanding?

Would you agree?

That sounds like it's pretty open to misunderstanding. If I can misunderstand the will of my wife who I live with and have spent this last 20 years with, we just celebrated our 20th anniversary and we've spent years together and we've got a good feel for how each other works and we can still misunderstand each other.

Believe me, we can do that from, I don't know, it's probably been two or three years since we did something like that. That was the loudest laugh I heard in the room.

From way back in the corner. That's my wife.

Yeah, she knows. So if we can misunderstand this, I mean, how open is our relationship to God to misunderstanding? And that is why it is so valuable that we have the word of God, a word from Him to us about Him.

This is central. This is key. This cannot be overemphasized, how valuable and rich and important this is to our understanding His will. People will tell you to go all different kinds of places to find the will of God, right?

One of the things that's really popular right now is just your feelings. Do you have peace about it or not?

What is that?

Right, what do you mean, peace about it? I can have, I think Eve had peace when she reached out to grab the apple, whatever it was, she wouldn't have done it if she didn't feel like it was okay or acceptable or kind of like it says in the book, it looked delicious, it looked tasty, so she took it.

Well, she had some kind of pull towards that. How many of you have ever had a pull towards something that you now know was not God's intention for your life, that it wasn't something that He wanted? It was against His rules, against the desire that He had and it was harmful to you at the time, but you just, you had a pull towards it.

And you went for it, you had peace about it.

Where do people go to understand the will of God? Or just some notion, fuzzy sense of love that's out there in our culture? Well, God is just this all-encompassing, He just, everything is all good and have you heard that in our culture today?

You know, in our culture around you this past week, the past month? People go all different kinds of places to know the will of God, but we have a word from Him where He has told us about Himself. And even in our text right here, this is key because it's kind of, kind of cycles back on itself, but even in our text, we are discerning something of His will.

We are not left to guess about what a life is like that pleases Him, because He tells us right here in this very text, what it means to have a life.

That pleases Him.

We read it, we can study it, we can analyze it, we can apply it. So how do we grow in the knowledge of God's will? How do we come to know what He wants to happen today, tomorrow, the next day, or whatever in our life decisions?

We come to His revelation, seeking according to this text, all spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. To know what He desires of us, and to know what we should do to apply it, and then, of course, the next step, then apply it.

But in our text, when it talks about spiritual wisdom and understanding, they don't double up in Greek words, and so spiritual should really modify both words. It's spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding, even though the ESV looks different than that.

But spiritual simply means given by the Spirit. There's a reality in which the Spirit brings to light things in the word of God that convict, that sharpen us, that correct us. Have you ever had that happen?

Also, encouragement as well. It's not just for conviction. Have you ever read the text of Scripture and been encouraged in your heart? The gospel of good news, that He loves you, those kinds of things, but also we find conviction in here.

I'm sometimes deeply convicted as I read, and I recognize, man, this thing is like a mirror that reflects back my heart, and I'm like, man, there's a lot of crud in here, and I can see it as I read the text of Scripture.

And so it's powerful in the way that it's applied, and it gives us spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. But a person who comes to me and says they just don't know what God wants from them, and some of us have been in that circumstance.

Maybe you feel like you're there right now, but if you come to me and you say that, and you're not reading the Bible, it's really like someone who comes to me and says they don't understand their wife, but they never listen when she's speaking.

You gotta listen. How, of course you aren't gonna know what He wants of you. Of course you aren't gonna know anything of His will without coming to the Word of God. You will not know, have knowledge of His will, if you never come to Him for wisdom and understanding.

And I love that the word wisdom is coupled with understanding here. You see, we should not seek the knowledge of the will of God only for understanding. We do that a lot in our culture, in our society.

We love information. Now, I personally, if any of you know Strength Finders, I have input. I could just take in knowledge just for knowledge's sake. I love learning. I would love to always be taking a class.

I'm always reading multiple books. I just love, and some of you are built that way. Others of you are like, I studied once when I was in high school, and it didn't work for me. I don't really need to, I really don't like learning.

And that's, He's created us all different, right? One isn't necessarily better than the other, but at the same time, understanding and knowledge are key. And so we've got to get, we've got to dig in here and understand the Word of God and seek wisdom from Him.

Trying to figure out, trying to figure Him out, the knowledge of the will of God only for understanding. And that would be like going to your wife to find out what she wants for Christmas. So this is an illustration that I lost here.

Say you go to your wife a few weeks ago, and you say, what do you want for Christmas? And the end result of that is just knowledge, right? That's all you're looking for is just knowledge. Of course not.

You're looking for some kind of application. You're not gonna go and ask her that question, like hoping that that question shows up at trivia night at the pub, right? Can you imagine that? I mean, you go to the trivia night, Friday night, they're asking questions, and you're just hopeful that they might ask, what does Linda Filcik want for Christmas?

Because then you're gonna be able to nail the answer. Is that why you ask that question? Absolutely not. There's an application and a wisdom that says, I'm asking this question because maybe I'll buy some of the things that she wants, right?

There's a purpose to that and a way to apply it. I'm obviously being facetious to make a point, but wisdom is the application of understanding. And both are essential components of truly knowing the will of God.

We need the content of what his ordained principles actually are, but we also need wisdom to apply it in our daily lives. Both of those are essential components of what it means to have the knowledge of his will.

Come to scripture to know the will of God so that you can live it out. It's study and practice. Study and practice. Study and practice. An ongoing life course of coming to this in a way of understanding, deeper understanding so that you can live better.

Deeper understanding so that you can live closer to him. Study and practice, study and practice. And the beauty to all of this is that part and parcel to knowing the will of God is an understanding of his grace toward us found in Christ.

If you really dig into scripture to know his will, the gospel is on its way to you. You're gonna find it in here. The gospel is not something that has been perpetuated from mouth to mouth, but it's mouth to ear, person to person, but it's something, and it certainly does that, but it comes from here.

I think a lot of times we have this mindset that the gospel is just something I heard from someone else, but it's in here. I met people in North Africa who had never met a Christian in their life and came to trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Why?

Because they actually stole, one particular guy stole a New Testament from his uncle. He was like, he'd never seen one before, and he saw it on his uncle's shelf, and it was, we were passing these things out in Spain, and people were going over to North Africa with these Bibles, and we were just passing them out, and they would, they'd just throw them on their shelf or whatever.

This guy is a young kid, now he was in his 30s, but he had stolen a Bible from his uncle, read it, never met a Christian in his life and said, this is truth, and gave his life to Christ. It's in here.

So if you study and you're working your way through Scripture, and you're actually pouring over it for the knowledge and understanding of who God is, you're gonna come to an understanding of grace. The one who seeks to know God and his will in Scripture will find that his will towards sin is indeed judgment.

His response towards sinners is indeed condemnation. Not a popular message in our culture, it's in here. You can read it, you can find it, it's all over the place. But his character is such that he has exercised his great mercy and grace in providing a way for sinners to be reconciled to him through his Son.