WWUTT 049 Qualified (Colossians 1:9-14)

Our God, our all -loving Heavenly Father, has given us everything that we need for life through His Son, Jesus Christ, experienced by the

Holy Spirit that is within us. So as we've been studying through Colossians together, we have wanted to grow in our knowledge and understanding that Jesus is enough when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. Hebrews 11, 6,

Without faith it is impossible to please God. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek

Him. We've borrowed some passages over the past couple of days from Romans chapter 8 where it says that only a person who is in the

Spirit of God is able to please God. A person who is of the flesh is hostile to God.

They are not able to submit to God's law. They can't. Those who are in the flesh cannot please

God. So it requires the transformation that comes by the Spirit of God to please God, to do anything that is pleasing to God.

We can't even repent before God if it's not for the regeneration that happens in the Spirit first because repentance is a good thing.

And if we're not capable of doing anything that is pleasing to God except according to the Spirit, then it would take the transformation of the

Spirit in our lives first before we are able to repent, before we even have faith. And those without faith, it's not possible to please the

Lord. So as the Apostle Paul is talking to the Colossians and desiring that they grow in 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, they are only able to do these things because they are filled with the

Holy Spirit. And from the very beginning of this letter, the Apostle Paul was introducing these things to the

Colossians in a very Trinitarian way. We always thank God, the Father of our

Lord Jesus Christ, because of the love that you exercise in the Spirit.

That's just within the first eight verses that we see in this introduction to Paul's letter to the Colossians.

Salvation, sanctification, all of these things are Trinitarian works, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is the

Father who gave salvation. It is attained through the Son, Jesus Christ.

It is experienced in the Holy Spirit. Salvation, our growth in salvation, all of these things, a

Trinitarian work. It is the very work of God. Before anyone can be saved,

God must act. So we continue our study of Colossians 1. This week we've been looking at verses 9 through 14.

So as we come to this text again today, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our wonderful Heavenly Father, we thank you for growing us in the things that we have been learning and I pray that we understand these things all the more.

Why is it important to know that we must have the Spirit of God in order to be pleasing to you?

Can't we have had the Spirit of God before knowing that? Well, of course we can, but in knowing these things, it enhances our worship.

It helps us to give you the glory that you deserve. Not taking any credit for ourselves, but knowing that this salvation that we have in Christ Jesus has been your work from beginning to end, before the foundation of the world.

So Lord, we give you all the glory. And we study these things as we come to Colossians so that we might know all the more that Jesus is enough.

He has given us everything that we need for life through God the

Father, attained through the Son, and experienced in the Holy Spirit. It is in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen.

Colossians 1, starting in verse 9, and so from the first day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, the will of God 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.

So again, back at verse 9, 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 things that pertain to God and His majesty and His sanctifying work, spiritual things, the only way we can understand spiritual things is according to the

Spirit of God that is within us, as it says in 1 Corinthians 2, we looked at that earlier in the week. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord, we are only able to please God if we have the Spirit living within us. The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God and capable of pleasing

God. We read in Romans chapter 8, we must be bearing fruit in every good work and increasing the knowledge of God.

We've read that in John chapter 15. We read that in the parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13, which we studied a few weeks back, talking about bearing fruit in every good work.

This is Paul drawing the parable of the sower into the lessons that he is teaching to the

Colossians, because if we are truly and firmly rooted in Christ Jesus, we're going to show evidence of that.

There is going to be fruit that will be produced. We will grow up and produce a harvest in addition to taking this message that has changed us, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and sharing it with the world.

That is also one of the fruits that we must be showing if we indeed are in Christ.

Increasing the knowledge of God is growing in sanctification. We have not come to the end of our knowledge of God.

There are more things we're going to be learning about God as we continue to grow and study.

So may we commit ourselves to those things, never believing or never thinking that we have come to the end of that growth.

We won't until we die and our lowly bodies are made to be like his glorious body.

Then we will see and know just as he knows each one of us, as it says in 1 Corinthians 13, 12.

May you be strengthened with all power, Paul prays for them according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy.

Ultimately, what Paul is praying for is something that is not selfish. It's not something that personally benefits them.

It's something that ultimately gives glory to God. Also, it benefits the entire body of Christ.

When we grow in our knowledge of God, we are also growing the body of Christ in that process.

The whole body of Christ benefits when we grow spiritually. Have you ever considered that before?

Your spiritual growth is not just for you. It is also for the benefit of the body of Christ.

Listen to these words in Ephesians chapter 4, beginning in verse 11. God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every shifting wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

So when we grow in knowledge and understanding of God, we are growing the entire body of Christ in the process.

And folks, when we fall into some kind of false teaching, if you fall from the sound words of Jesus Christ and you are led astray, you're tossed by every shifting wind of doctrine into some kind of false teaching, that affects the entire body.

This is why false teaching must be dealt with so strictly in the church.

In fact, Paul spoke to Titus in Titus chapter 1 and said, silence false teachers immediately, for they are upsetting entire households.

And when he's talking about that, he's saying the whole church. When one or two or three people in a church falls into a false teaching, it upsets the entire church.

And so it is necessary for a church to deal with a false teaching swiftly, to silence it, to not let it spread like gangrene.

That's the way that the apostle Paul put it to Timothy in 2nd Timothy chapter 1, spreading like gangrene.

It's like it rots a part of the body and that part of the body falls off. And then the body is never as good as it was before that infection of that false teaching had taken place.

And so we must be very wise against those kinds of teachings. We must be sound according to the scripture, knowing what the

Bible says that we can test everything in the world according to the soundness of the scriptures. The apostle

John said, 1st John 4, 1 test the spirits for not every spirit comes from God. There are many false prophets that have gone out into the world.

So not just for our benefit, but also for the benefit of the entire body of Christ. We must be careful to stay away from myths, irreverent, silly myths, the way that Paul put it to Timothy, because it affects the entire body.

So likewise, when we grow in the soundness of scriptures, in the knowledge of God, according to spiritual wisdom and understanding, we benefit the entire body of Christ.

So Paul is not just praying for the individuals in Colossae. He is praying that the whole church may be strengthened with all power according to God's glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.

As we grow in the knowledge of these things, it also helps us to endure. It also grows us in patience.

We're patient with one another, but we're also patiently waiting for the day. I think that's more the context, as Paul puts it, with the word endurance.

So we endure the trials and tribulations of this world, waiting with patience for the glorious appearing of our

God and savior with joy. Going back to Colossians chapter one, verses four and five, where Paul talks about the hope that is laid up for you in heaven.

So you exercise your faith in Christ and the love you have for all the saints because of the hope that is laid up for you in heaven.

And that is our joy, because we know that this is not the end.

And everything that we experience in this life is just temporary. We are looking for deliverance that will come by God.

And we are sure that he is going to deliver because he's promised that he would. And he is true to his promises, as we see evidence of from all throughout scriptures, the whole scriptures from Genesis through Jude, God has fulfilled his promises so we can know in Revelation he's going to do the same.

In fact, here's something to consider about Revelation. I don't know if you've ever considered it this way before, maybe because you've let eschatology get in the way.

What is eschatology? It's the study of end things. But maybe your perspective on premillennialism or amillennialism or postmillennialism has affected you from noticing something fundamental in the book of Revelation.

And that that fundamentalism, OK, I got to be careful when I use that, because that tends to be a word that people get scared of to fundamentalism.

Oh, my goodness. OK, the the idea that's going on there in Revelation in the first three chapters,

Jesus is addressing the churches through the Apostle John and telling them, here's what's about to happen.

Some of those churches, he is calling them to repent of sin and return to the way that they once walked, the first love that they once had.

Sometimes God is calling them out for sin and calling them to repentance or else their lampstand is going to be removed.

So as he's telling the church about these things, there is a trial that is coming. How is it that they are supposed to endure through this trial?

And so through the Apostle John, what Jesus shows those churches, there is a celebration going on in heaven right now because of what

God has accomplished. So there is rejoicing happening in heaven, even though the church on earth would still be undergoing trials and tribulations through which it is being called to endure with patience and joy so we can have joy in Christ, knowing that he has control over all things.

He has the final picture all played out. He lays it out for us in the book of Revelation. Here's what's going to happen in the end.

Guess what? There are saints in heaven now rejoicing because of what

Christ has done. So because there's a celebration in heaven going on right now, then we can endure the things that we go through with patience, with joy in this world, because we know that our great king has the victory.

He is victorious. He will be victorious. I think it was Matt Smethurst on Twitter I saw recently say this.

He said that the devil has been defeated. The devil is being defeated and the devil will be defeated.

We have all of this laid out for us in scripture, how the devil's been defeated, how he's being defeated right now and ultimately will be tossed into the lake of fire where he will perish for all time.

So we're looking forward to the deliverance that comes by God, our savior, with joy, giving thanks to the father who has qualified you.

I'm back in Colossians now. Colossians chapter one, verse 12. We give thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints of light.

So what makes us worthy to celebrate with the saints in heaven? What makes us worthy to celebrate with the saints now on earth, our fellow saints?

It is God who qualifies us to share in the inheritance of the saints of life, saints of light.

It is God who makes us worthy to worship him. You think back in Isaiah chapter six,

Isaiah looks up in heaven and he sees this vision of God in heaven. And it says that his robe fills the whole temple.

Basically, Isaiah is kind of out of his mind when he is seeing what he's observing in heaven. And it's the only way that he knows to describe what it is that he sees

God's glory is filling the whole place as though his robe would fill the entire temple. It's not like he's seeing a flowing robe.

It's just God's glory is looking like that to him. But he knows that when he sees this image that he is undone because he is a man of unclean lips.

Oh, I've seen God and all of his glory and I'm going to be destroyed. So what happens is an angel goes and grabs a coal from the altar and comes down and touches

Isaiah's mouth with it. And then Isaiah is made worthy to address

God, to hear his words and to speak to him. So it is God who makes us worthy to worship him.

The father has qualified us to share in the inheritance in the saints of light.

And here I love this verse in second Peter, chapter one, where he says something very similar. His divine power.

This is second Peter one, verse three. God's divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us.

God has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

For this very reason, Peter goes on, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue.

So again, it starts with faith. Without faith, we cannot please God. So it starts with faith.

Supplement your faith with virtue and virtue, with knowledge and knowledge, with self -control and self -control, with steadfastness and steadfastness, with godliness and godliness, with brotherly affection and brotherly affection, with love.

So it starts with faith and ultimately culminates with love, which we talked about earlier as being one of the essential

Christian virtues. We grow all the more in love. For if these qualities are yours,

Peter says, and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.

For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And I think some of the things that Peter has said here is even very similar to something that James says in James 1 .22.

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be a blessing in his doing.

So when we look into the scriptures and we see our sin, Paul says in Romans 7,

I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not told me, do not covet. So when we read the scriptures and we see the law, we realize how imperfect we are compared to God's perfect law.

We've broken it and violated it in about every way that we possibly can. So when we see the law and we realize

I'm guilty of that, I have broken that law, then we see ourselves, according to the law, as a man who looks at his face in a mirror.

Then when that man walks away from the mirror, if he forgets his reflection, which is absurd, right?

Who walks away from a mirror and forgets what he looks like? But as equally absurd it is for a person to see themselves according to the law, to see their sin and then walk away from it and not do what the

Bible tells us to do. That's also absurd because we've seen, according to the scriptures, that we are sinful compared to a holy

God and we need his righteousness and perfection in order to be worthy before God.

It is the righteousness that is imparted to us in Christ Jesus, as it says in Romans 3, 21 and 22.

It is by that righteousness we have been made acceptable in the eyes of a holy

God. And if we've walked away from the scriptures and forgotten that, then we're it's like we've we've looked at ourselves in a mirror and forgotten our own reflection.

It's absurd. So we must show the fruitfulness that is in our lives because we have been transformed in Christ.

It is God who saves us. It is God who keeps us saved with all endurance and patience, with joy. So let us give thanks to the father who is qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

It is God who 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.

And so let us show we have truly been transformed according to Christ by obeying his commands. Jesus said to his disciples, you'll show me that you love me when you obey my commandments.

And through the apostle John and first John, it says his commandments are not burdensome. It is a delight.

It is the law of liberty, as James just said. It is our freedom. So it is a delight to obey and honor

God, to share in his sufferings, because we know that in him we are set free and our deliverance, though it may not be in this life, will definitely be in the life to come.

This is only temporary. The life to come is eternal with our creator God, where there is no more pain, no more dying, no more tears, no more sin, no more suffering.

And we rejoice in knowing that all we endure here in this life is only temporary. We partake in the sufferings of Christ because he suffered.

And so we rejoice in that, knowing that he has taken away the sting of death, the wrath of God that we would have been under for our sin.

But Jesus took the wrath upon himself on the cross so that in Christ we are set free from that judgment and we will be free forever with our savior.

Amen. Let us rejoice in that and show the fruit of the righteousness that we have in Christ.

Jesus, our wonderful God, our gracious heavenly father who gives us everything that we need for life.

Thank you for providing your son, Jesus. And as we have talked about these things,

I hope that it is enlightened us to understand that Jesus is enough and is truly provided for our every need.

He gave us salvation. He holds us steadfast in salvation. He grows us in our salvation.

And we, though we are saved now, even in this life, we will be saved eternal when we pass into the next.

Lord, we are so grateful for the work of Christ. Help that enhance our worship as we come to an understanding of these things.

In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Proverbs 1 .7

says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Yet 1 John 4 says that God is love and perfect love casts out fear.

Huh. Isaiah 11 .2 says in the spirit of the Lord is the fear of God. Yet 2 Timothy 1 .7

says God gave us not a spirit of fear. All right. So maybe the fear of God thing is an Old Testament deal.

And no, because 1 Peter 2 .17 says fear God. And so does 2 Corinthians 5 .11. And Jesus says it in Luke 12 .5

right before he says fear not in verse 7. All right. So now that we're thoroughly confused, what on earth is the fear of God?

Is it just for unbelievers? After all, Hebrews 10 .31 says it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living

God. Yes, but Paul says to Christians in Philippians 2 .12, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, which is also

Psalm 2 .11. What does it mean to fear God? Well, first, this does not mean that we're supposed to be nervous

Christians filled with anxiety, always concerned that God is not pleased with us. If you are in Christ, God could not love you any more than he does now.

You can be confident in your salvation because of what Christ has done. However, we need to also have a healthy fear of God in awe of his majesty and holiness.

This keeps us obedient to his word, accountable to the body of Christ, his church, and away from the snare of sin.

God doesn't just judge unbelievers. He also judges believers, though his discipline is given in love. The fear of the

Lord is not being scared of God. It's worshiping God with reverence. And if we fear the Lord, there's absolutely nothing else to be afraid of when we understand the text.

Our question, or rather, it's more of a comment today. This comes from Beverly in Augusta, Georgia. She says, dear

Pastor Gabe, thank you so much for your ministry. When we understand the text, we are a homeschooling family that listens every morning from home, and we were looking for a half hour podcast that is just like yours.

I don't think you understand how difficult that was to find. Your teaching is concise and clear, and we are able to follow in our

Bibles, teaching us how to use our Bibles. Thank you for what you do, and please don't change anything about your program.

Well, Beverly, I thank you so much for your email. You know, I really wasn't setting out to do this program thinking that we were coming up with anything innovative at all.

I was myself, Corey Daniel, who's helped to manage the Facebook page.

And when we understand the text, Facebook, also a couple of my elders, Dave and Chris, and one of the guys that helped me start when we understand the text from the very beginning,

I was talking with them about what we could do as a podcast. And at first it was going to be the sort of a thing where you're just going to do it weekly and it was going to be one video, one of our what videos, and then we're going to spend the whole half hour talking about the topic that was discussed in that video.

So just basically expanding concepts that came from what videos. We tried that a couple of times for some reason it didn't work out.

I don't really know what the snafu was, but then when it came down to it, I was like, you know, I just want to teach from the Bible.

That's really what I want to do. Can we just go through an entire book at a time? And so it just became easier and enough easier for me to do that on my own, just from home with my little studio setup that I got here.

And so sitting down with the scriptures and going through these things and, and combing through passages and understanding everything in context.

And I was like, truly, I'm not the first person to do this. And I still don't think that I am. There are other programs out there.

You can find that are like that. For one, I'll tell you that John MacArthur's program grace to you does a very similar thing.

Now what you're hearing is John MacArthur sermons. They're taking a clip out of his sermons and then making a half hour program with that, but that's still another good program that you could listen to and get that same sort of, uh, of Bible teaching.

So again, I don't, I didn't think I was doing anything innovative. Uh, but, uh, I, when we understand the text, it's just been easy for people to find.

And I do appreciate the listeners that we have acquired. So thank you so much for your encouragement in doing this.

Uh, and a way that you can help us is very simply to just let somebody know about the program, post it on your

Facebook or your Twitter and let them know we do Bible study every weekday, uh,

Monday through Friday, right here on this program. Also playing a what video as we just did and taking a question from a listener.

So if you would like to ask a question, send it to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

Lord, we thank you for a medium to be able to do this very thing, reading through your word, coming to submission to the authority of God's word.

So continue to teach us these things as we go, taking the things that we've even learned today and, uh, and having them continue to educate us throughout our day.

And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to when we understand the text with pastor

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

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

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