Sermon: Following Paul into Ministry

If you don't know me, my name is Dave Hinkley. I'm a ruling elder here at University Reformed Church. I'm also on staff as the children and youth ministry director. Um, you can turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians one and we will be reading verses one through 14. You're turning there in the pew Bibles. You can find it on page 9 8 3. Before we read it, uh, let's ask the Lord's blessing upon the reading and preaching of his word this morning.

Oh Lord, as we come to this text this morning, we come humbly knowing that you awesome and holy creator of all things have graciously spoken through your prophets and apostles. You have shown us a great mercy by ordaining a word in which we can hear from you and know your purposes for us and for the world. So we ask Grant our hearts this morning, uh, that we might be attentive to your word. Speak to us today that we might grow in the love

of our savior and grow in us. Resolve to live our lives in love of you and love of our neighbor. It's only in the name of Jesus Christ that we may ask and it is in his powerful name that we are certain that you hear and answer. Amen. Colossians one, starting in verse one. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae grace to you and peace from God our Father,

we always thank God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven of this you have heard before in the world, in the word of truth, the gospel which has come to you as indeed in the whole world. It is bearing fruit and increasing as it does among you since the day you heard it

and understood the grace of God in truth just as you learned it from a path us, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and is made known to us your love in the spirit. 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, being 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 has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Amen. I have two preliminary thoughts before we dig into this text. The first is that each of us in some way is called to be a minister of the gospel. Now we are all different parts of the body and all called to serve in different ways. Most of us will not be pastors, elders, missionaries, counselors, et cetera. And it isn't wrong for us to delineate some ministers as vocational or ordained in a particular and special way,

but it is wrong unbiblical even to think that gospel ministry is the work of merely the few. First Peter two tells us that Christians are a royal priesthood. We are ministers emissaries of a divine king with a divine message. We learn in Ephesians four that the work of ordained folk, the shepherds and the teachers is actually to equip the saints for their work of ministry. This calling is true for young and old, for everyone who trusts in Christ.

Let me give to you a simple definition of Christian ministry. Christian ministry in its most basic form is the work of bringing the hope of the gospel to bear in the life of another person. Brothers and sisters. The living water is meant for you and for your healing and it is meant for you to share that others may be healed. The love of God to us naturally overflows to love of others from us. We are saved by divine grace in order to be used

as an instrument of that same grace. The second preliminary thought is that prayer reveals priority. You've probably heard it said that you can tell a lot about a person's values and priorities by looking at their bank statements. The things that they spend their money on will reveal a lot about what they value and where they're headed in life. What's even more telling, even more revealing of a Christian's values and hopes is listening to what they pray for.

We can too easily skip over Paul's prayers to get onto his meaty doctrine. Chapter one of our text goes on to some of the most beautiful and important verses explaining who Christ is. And so as you read this chapter, you might be e eager to sort of get on with it, uh, to the soaring Christology of verses 15 to 23. But we can learn a lot about what Paul thinks, what he hopes, in what ways he's eager for the Christians at Colossae

to grow into maturity in Christ by looking at the things for which Paul gives thanks. Prayer reveals priority in our passage this morning. Paul reveals to us his character, his hopes, his desires for those he ministers to in his prayers of thanksgiving. And this is Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles, the man who wrote most of our New Testament, the man who said, follow me as I follow Christ. We would do well as a royal priesthood

to examine his prayer of thanksgiving, to consider his priorities and to follow after him as we seek to do ministry to others. This applies to your friendships, this applies to, uh, those you know and love in your church. This applies to you and your children. Thus with those two thoughts as a groundwork, I wanna draw three simple observations about what drives Paul's words and challenge us to follow him in these directions

as we seek to bring the hope of Christ to bear in our relationships. Three ways that we should follow Paul as he followed Christ. First observation, Paul loves this church with a mature and faith borne affection. We see in verse seven that the church in Colossae learned the gospel from e Apris. Scholars aren't certain if Paul actually ever visited Colossae himself. One supposition is that when Paul ministered in Ephesus,

e Apris was there about a hundred miles from his home in Colossi, Epaphras heard the gospel and then went back up the mountains to tell his own people about Christ. And in the five or 10 years since Paul was in Ephesus, a church has been established in Colossae and also spread to nearby od Desia and to opolis. Paul is writing from prison and Rome and a paths himself has traveled all the way from a colos To roam to care for Paul's needs.

So Paul doesn't necessarily know the Colossians personally, but his affection for them could not be greater. Notice what Paul specifically is thankful for in verse four, to things that he sees in them that brings him joy. He's thankful for their faith and he's thankful for their love of the saints. Now those two things are joined inextricably. When you trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, you recognize your affinity with those who are lost in sin,

but even more with joy with those who have been spared alongside you by grace. True trust in Christ must produce humility that by the spirit brings about a deep and abiding love for God's people. When I first started to engage with the gospel, I wasn't raised a Christian. Even after I had recognized my own sin before God, I was sure that most Christians were hypocritical and untrustworthy. The culture catechize you just as well as

or better, uh, then most churches and you tend not to question what you've been taught until you have actual experience. Uh, and when I, but I had missed the salient point, you don't get this groom without the bride. In fact, getting the groom necessitates becoming a part of the bride. It's not a negotiable. Love for Christ expresses itself in love for the saints. As Paul sees the Colossians faith and celebrates their love, he's doing exactly

what he is commending. This kind of love we are talking about is not merely an emotion. It is a cultivated affection. It is an act of the will that is later followed by most likely hopefully emotion. It's not a love motivated by the warm feelings that we get in response, uh, or motivated by natural and innate affection. You have to pursue it and fight for it. Not everyone in the church is easy to love. For whatever reason, perhaps you have been sinned against

perhaps you secretly harbor jealousy. Perhaps you feel so strongly about tertiary matters that in this primary calling to cultivate love for God's people, uh, your your heart is overshadowed, but the Christian has no excuse here if you claim to love this groom, but do not love this bride. You don't do not in truth. Love this groom. You and I, brothers and sisters are related by blood, not by the blood that is inherited from a parent

but the blood shed of the savior himself. We have blood relatives, but we also have blood bought relatives. Affection toward brothers and sisters in Christ is a fruit of the gospel. At work in our hearts, it is cultivated by us and given growth by the power of the spirit, it overflows from the faith that we have in Christ. We have to fight for it, we have to pray for it and we are called to pursue it for the rest of our lives.

The second thing to observe from this passage, Paul has total confidence in the power of the gospel to do its work. In verses three and four, we see that Paul is thankful for the faith that overflowed into love. In verse five, he reminds them of the hope of eternal life. Here we have Paul's familiar triad, faith, hope and love. You might say that faith, hope, and love are the lens through which Paul saw the gospel at work

among God's people. Paul had total confidence that something glorious had happened. Faith, something glorious was happening, love and something glorious would happen. Hope. When we use the word hope, we most often do not use it in the way that Paul uses it. Here. Hope to us often means uncertainty, but not to Paul. The word hope in Paul is a certainty about what is to come. Paul had poured himself out for his work so much so

that he was writing this exhortation to the church from a prison cell. We see from verse seven that Paul could not have thought more highly of RIS and the work that he had done and Paul thought that the Colossians response to the gospel was praiseworthy and he commended them for it. But what is the agent of the fruit that has and growth that has occurred? The Colossians haven't been transformed into a living and faithful and loving community

because RIS is such a good communicator or because Paul did such a good job of training him. Undoubtedly those things were true. Paul's confidence that growth had happened was happening and would continue to happen is what he describes in verse five. His confidence is in the word of truth. The gospel. Notice how the things are phrased in verse six, which has come to you as indeed the whole world. It is bearing fruit and increasing as it does

among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God. In truth, the message of the kingdom, the gospel of Jesus Christ is bearing fruit not only among the Colossians but in the whole world. Listen to how Paul describes it from Romans chapter one verse 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation. For everyone who believes first to the Jew and then to the Greek, like leave in a lump of dough

or a mustard seed growing to the largest plant in the garden, the gospel increases. It is working by its own power or more precisely it is working by the power of the sovereign Holy Spirit. The word of truth is specifically how God has ordained the growth of the kingdom in this world. Paul knows that the transformative power of the gospel is at work in the whole world and is increasing. He sees it in Colossae because he's been watching it happen

throughout his whole ministry. So fellow ministers, let's ask this. What strategy shall we devise in order to bring about great change in those that we love or in our church or in our community? Shall we commission a study about the most effective ways to get people through the doors and stick around? What are the recipes for healing a broken soul to whom we might seek to give counsel? How do we bring up kids that know

that they're loved and love others? Well, brothers and sisters, we do not have the power to change the heart. What we do have is the power to speak the word of truth to a heart. We following Paul, have every reason to place all of our hope in the word of God to work in hearts. Paul knows that when the gospel goes out, power goes out. You do not need to be a perfect evangelist or a perfect disciple maker. You do not need to be a perfect parent or a perfect friend.

Now don't get me wrong, always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within you. Think about this. Prepare for this. Try and do this well, I mean I, I wrote a sermon. We want to take this task seriously. We're not just winging it. Work for excellence for the Lord that we are serving is excellent. A plan is a good thing, but there's no transformative power in a plan. The world around us is has a crisis of meaning.

These young people today are grasping at false gospels like drowning, people grabbing at the oars of a passing lifeboat. It slips through their fingers and they're lost. The people in our culture are not happy and the idols that they are inventing for themselves to try and make themselves happy are making it worse. The centerpiece of our love for our neighbor of our outreach, the real help that we can give, the real love that we can show is to demonstrate for them

with our words and with our lives how the gospel of Jesus Christ is the real and true hope believer. If you are here or listening today, your sense of brokenness and alienation, whatever the proximate cause is ultimately a result of humanity's broken relationship with an alienation from its creator. Your sense of being unloved or unlovely can only find perfect healing in understanding that that very creator sent his son to die

on your behalf out of pure, unconditional, and unbreakable love. Your healing starts with living in the shadow of the life of the hope that is to come. What you want, what your soul needs is rest in Christ, peace with the Father and the sustaining grace of the Holy Spirit. You are c we do not need to be the most well put together church. We do not need the perfect pastor or a or perfect programs. We need the word of truth to be faithfully proclaimed

among us from this pulpit, uh, in our small groups in Sunday school classes in dig in SCF and international fellowship in men's and women's ministry. And we need to have expectant faith that that word proclaimed will accomplish the work that is set before it. This is what Paul did and then he watched the power go forward and bear fruit and increase as you are bold to speak the words of life. This gospel of justification by grace alone

through faith alone, the forgiveness of our sins in Christ. As you are bold to speak these words, what do you expect to happen? You have every reason to expect what Paul saw, that the power would go forward to the darkest, to places and to the hardest of hearts. You have every reason to expect that as you proclaim these words to the hardest of hearts, the the heart that in your mind could be compared to a pile of kindling soaked three times with water

until the trench around it was filled up with water. Pray, speak the word of truth and expect the Lord to respond in fire.

This leads to our final observation. Paul prays for bold things and he prays specifically for the things that will actually bring growth. Paul's prayer here in verse nine through 14 is a glorious guide to us. Pray this for yourselves and for those to whom you minister. There are a lot of requests, but the root of all of the requests is that they might know, really know, truly know who Christ is and what he has done for them.

The other things he asks for in this prayer are the fruit, but knowledge is the root. Verse nine, he prays that they would be filled with the un knowledge of God's will. In all spiritual wisdom and understanding that's the root. The fruit is that they would walk in a manner worthy of the God that they would live lives fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, being strengthened with all power and endurance and patience with joy.

So how do I actually do good, good works? How do I fight this abiding sin that seems like it will never let go? How do I stand firm in the midst of suffering? How can I be strengthened with all power, all endurance and patience with joy? We know brothers and sisters that hardships and even persecutions are not detours from the Christian life. They are the road on which the Christian life travels. You cannot bear fruit in every good work.

You cannot be strengthened with all power. You cannot walk in a manner worthy of the Lord without a deep, rich and growing knowledge of Christ who he is, what he has done. Your strength, your life's fruit flow from increasing your knowledge and love of Christ. I think that when we, that often, too often when we pray for ourselves and for those in whom we want to see faith grow, we pray for fruit. It's not that those things are wrong to pray for,

obviously Paul's doing that here. But what Paul knew and I think that we can overlook is that the larger Christ looms in a mind and a heart, the more naturally these fruits will flow out from a person's life. Think about the martyrs. Think about Steven. Do you think that Steven was a superman? That he could stand up and say the truth in the face of rejection because of his own fearlessness? In the faithful moment he was granted

to see the face of Christ. To know Christ most deeply and surely isn't that it isn't that that knowledge grants fearlessness. What it grants is right fear. What it does is orient your fears rightly in the full knowledge of the glory of Christ. The fear of men with rocks became less than nothing. Why would greater knowledge of Christ lead to good fruit, to perseverance and to joy? Take some time this afternoon, uh, to read the rest

of chapter one and then you tell me why the deeper that you understand the person of Christ, the second person of the trinity, the one through whom everything was made that has been made, the one into whose kingdom we have been graciously transferred. Verse 13, the one in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. Verse 14, comprehending the intersection of the terrible holiness of God and the unfathomable mercy

of God in Christ transforms you. The gulf between what you truly deserve and the grace that you have been irrevocably granted. The love that you have been shown by an unchanging and sovereign God, the justice that has been satisfied on your behalf. This one for whom and through whom were all things made. This one who will judge the world in righteousness and bring a terrible wrath upon the wicked who will throw the devil himself into the lake of fire

who has defeated death. This one became incarnate as a man and the winds and waves obeyed him. And when he walked on earth, the stones wanted to cry out. This one, this glorious, magnificent one is the one that loves you with an eternal and unshakeable love. This is the one that has accomplished reconciliation with the Father on your behalf. This is the one through whom you can cry. Abba Father believer, this is the one

who is for you like no one else is or can be for you. The larger he grows in your understanding, in your heart, in your day-to-day life in your thoughts moment by moment, the more will be your joy, your peace, your endurance, your strength. It can't not be so what are you praying? What are you praying for those that you love or for yourself? Are you praying that the fruit would increase? Or are you praying that the knowledge of Christ

and the affection for Christ would grow so big that all endurance all fruit in the inner being would be produced by necessity? May it be so for each one of us in increasing measure. Let's close in prayer.

Father, this is our prayer that we might know you, that our knowledge of you might grow, that we might be filled with the knowledge of your will so that we might walk in a manner worthy of you, fully pleasing to you, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in our knowledge, being strengthened with all power, that according to your glorious might, we might possess all endurance, all patience and complete joy. And Lord, we give thanks to you for the word of truth

and power that we have received for those who have faithfully shared that word with us. And for the Savior whose blood by whose blood we have been qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints of light. Hallelujah. Your people rejoice and praise you, Lord, that you have delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of Christ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. And all God's people said, amen.