Our Identity in Christ
Transcript
We're going to be walking verse by verse through this book of the Bible over the course of the summer. So we're spending the next 10-ish weeks in Colossians. And so I'm going to pray and we're going to hop in. We've got a good bit of stuff to do tonight to walk through and to kind of intro this series. And so I'll pray and we'll hop in. God, we thank you for the opportunity to gather as your people to study your word.
Pray that you would speak to us tonight, that you would move among your people, that you would draw us closer to yourself. And that we would see more about you and who you have designed us to be. Who you have made us through the gospel. And so God, we thank you and we praise you. And we just thank you for this opportunity to try to make much of your name and to learn what it looks like for us to follow you. We ask your Holy Spirit to be present, to be moving among us, leading and changing and pointing to yourself.
And so we love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So we will be in Colossians chapter 1, verse 1, where we'll be starting tonight. We're going to do three-ish things tonight. First, we're going to talk a little bit about why the book of Colossians, about just kind of intro the book of Colossians and why we would study it verse by verse, walk through it.
Then we'll talk about some major themes that we'll see in the book of Colossians as we walk through it over the next 10 weeks. As we spend the summer hanging out in the book of Colossians, we're going to talk a little bit about what we'll see, what we hope to learn, what we hope to understand from it. And then we'll actually unpack the first eight verses and kind of see how Paul starts this letter off to the Colossian church and how he lays out kind of their identity and how we see that in his beginning of this letter. So as we saw in the video, Paul's in jail. He writes this letter to the Colossian church.
He writes a letter to the Ephesian church, which is very similar to the letter he writes to the Colossian church. It's longer, kind of unpacks some scenarios a little more clearly, whereas Colossians is pretty dense. And so we'll have to take it chunk by chunk as we walk through it because of how dense he makes it. One of the cool things about the book of Colossians, one of the reasons we're excited to look at it, is he's writing to a church that was fairly young and fairly healthy. From what we can tell, the Colossian church was doing OK. And the reason I say that is because when Paul is writing to a church that is not doing super well or that it's off in certain areas, he doesn't mince words and he's pretty clear about what he's talking about.
So book of Galatians, Paul starts off like this. Hey, I'm Paul. What the heck is wrong with y'all? And so he kind of jumps right in. In Corinthians, he's dealing with specific issues that they're dealing with and he addresses them very clearly. He says, you've got an individual who's doing this.
That's not OK. I always laugh when I see that a church is like Corinth Baptist Church because I'm always like, have y'all read the letter to the Corinthians? Because they were pretty messed up. I don't know if you necessarily want to line up with them. But in Colossians, he doesn't really do that.
When you read commentaries on Colossians, they're all over the place as to why people feel like he wrote the letter. And so you'll have people say that it was false teaching outside of the church that he was addressing. It was false teaching inside of the church because Paul does in this letter use some words that he doesn't use other places. And so it seems like he's addressing something. One, I've heard some say it's Gnosticism. Some say it's Judaism.
There was one commentary that said Paul's addressing Judaistic Gnosticism and Gnostic Judaism. What the heck does that mean? It's like the guy didn't want to make a decision. So he's like, well, kind of a little bit of both also and as well, too. And so when we look at it, though, because he doesn't come out swinging against anything specific, what we feel like he's addressing a relatively healthy church that was relatively young. So it's a fairly young church plant and they're doing pretty well.
And so I'm actually really excited that we'll get to spend some time here because in some ways, as Paul writes to this church, it is it's addressed to us in some ways because we are a young church plant just trying to figure out what it looks like to follow Jesus and to be church family. We don't have any major issues. We don't have a building that's about to get repoed because we don't have a building. See how that works? We we don't have major issues with dissension or people causing problems or huge sin areas that we've got to deal with. Like we're we're doing OK.
We're learning what it looks like for us to be church family, for us to grow together, for us to follow Jesus well in the city. And so in some ways, I'm excited because I feel like Colossians is a little bit addressed to us. And Paul's just going to because he doesn't have things he's got to address. He's got a pretty clean slate to say, hey, here's what it looks like to follow Jesus. Here's what it looks like to be church family. And he's going to address some areas where they kind of maybe have gotten off.
But for the most part, it's a pretty clean slate. I honestly think he's writing to the Colossian church because he wanted to write to Philemon about Onesimus. And he was like, well, it would be awkward just to send that guy a letter. So I'll also send one to the church and we'll address some things they need to work on. But that's what we're looking at.
So we see Paul's in jail. He's writing this with Timothy. He's writing to the Colossian church. One of the things we hope to see. So there's a little bit of like, why would you go through a book of the Bible verse by verse?
That may be a question in some of your brains. It may be a, why haven't we done this sooner in some of your brains? And that's fine. Some people will argue that the way to get together and teach the Bible as good Christian people is through the Bible verse by verse. I would argue that that is a good way to teach the Bible. And we'll talk about why in a second.
I don't think it's the way. If I did, first of all, that's what we would have been doing all along. Second of all, the problem with that, the problem with people that come out and say this is the only way to teach the Bible is that when the people in the Bible teach the Bible, they don't do that. So when you read the sermons in the Bible, they're all over the place. Jesus will be like, I did this. And he just quotes two sections of Isaiah and just skips all the stuff in the middle.
Peter and his sermon in Acts 2, he's all over the place. He's like this, and we know this is true, and this from this passage, and this. Y'all want to meet Jesus? And people were like, yes. So it's hard to make an argument in my brain that you have to work through the Bible that way because the Bible doesn't work through the Bible that way.
The people in the Bible don't. But here are a few reasons why we do think it's good and healthy and helpful. One is for context. We often study the Bible, and we'll look at something in one. We'll look at something in Luke. And then the next week we'll gather together, and we'll discuss something in Corinthians.
And the next week we'll gather together and discuss something in Zechariah. And after a while, you just don't have a whole lot of context for where we are in the biblical narrative. And so it's helpful to stop and to just go verse by verse through a book of the Bible so that we have context. Because context is important. If I told you that I stood up and at the top of my lungs yelled, you slant-faced moron! Well, you might want to know what the context was.
Like, was I talking to a slant-faced moron? Was I at a football game? Was I at a candlelit dinner holding my wife's hand? Like, context makes a difference. It changes what we're looking at. And so as we read through Scripture, it's very helpful to know what came before it, what we're looking at here, and what's coming after it.
I'll give you an example. Philippians 4.13 says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I love that verse. Paul says it, though, right after he talks about being poor and wealthy, hungry, naked, well-clothed, well-fed. And he says, I've learned to, in all circumstances, be content. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
It had very little to do with his benchmarks or ability to win football games. It's a good verse. I like it. But what he meant was I've learned how to, in Christ, be content no matter where I am in life. And so it's helpful for us as we study Scripture to know what we're studying, where it lies, and what comes before and what comes after it. And so that's one of the reasons.
Another reason we want to do this is we want to grow as Bible people, as Bible readers. And so we're very excited for our church family to just be able to walk through a book of the Bible together over the course of the summer. I think it will be good for us. I've heard of a professor who would start off his class. He was an atheist professor. He would start off his class in college by saying, who here believes that the Bible is the Word of God?
People raise their hand. And he'd go, okay, who among you has read the entire thing? And then he'd go, I don't think you believe it's the Word of God. I think he's got a point. For people who say, I believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and then we don't spend a lot of time studying it, reading it, learning it, growing in it together. It's a little bit like, ah, something's missing there.
And so I think it's helpful for us as a church to just say, hey, we're going to just unpack this book of the Bible together. We're just going to walk through it together. Another reason we do this is Paul later, when writing to Timothy, when they're not in jail together, maybe they slipped each other notes while they were in jail together, but he definitely wrote him letters when he wasn't. So we have 1 and 2 Timothy later, when they're not in jail. Paul tells Timothy, who is a young pastor, I don't know if you all know this, relatively young as far as pastors go. Paul tells Timothy, who's a young pastor, he says, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture.
And to devote yourself to these things so that everybody can see your progress. And so it's actually really healthy and good for us as a church who have young pastors to just say, we're just going to walk through a book of the Bible. We're not going to jump around. We're not going to try to come up with topics to discuss. We're just going to walk through a book of the Bible. And guess what?
One of my goals, and our goals as we lead as pastors, is for you to see progress. Not that we'd be great at stuff now, but that you'd see progress. That we'd move from like a D minus to like a D, and we could just be really excited that we have a D. So that's the goal. We're going to move that way. And so one of the reasons we think is that it's helpful for us to do that.
So before we hop in, I want to unpack three major themes that we'll see in the book of Colossians as we spend 10 weeks here. So three major themes that as we walk through Colossians, we're going to unpack and spend time talking about. And then we'll actually get into one of those, really kind of two of those tonight as we enter into the beginning of this. So the first major theme we'll see is that it's all about Jesus. It's all about Jesus. Everything.
Colossians is going to have some of the highest Christology in the Bible. And Christology is just how we understand Jesus. It's the study and theology of Jesus, and it's going to have some of the highest Christology where Paul just goes off on how amazing and massive and great Jesus is. How terrifyingly huge Jesus is. And then he's going to, as he unpacks Colossians, he's going to say, we do this and we're these kind of people because of Jesus. And we walk through life like this because of Jesus.
And so as we unpack the book of Colossians, we're going to see that it's all about Jesus. That he's the head of the body of the church and that we take our cues from him. We talk often about Jesus as a Galilean peasant. We think of him as a poor, homeless man who lived 2,000 years ago. And he was. So Jesus pre-exists in eternity past.
He comes to earth for like 33 years. That's what we just spent time talking about. That Jesus was a man who was a God who became man, who died in our place for our sins, and who rose again. He did that in about 33 years span. And then he exists. He rose, ascended into heaven in bodily form, and exists in eternity, future, forever.
He was a Galilean peasant who suffered for about this much of time. Creator. King. Everything exists in him, through him, and for him. And he made all things. And he will rule all things.
And so we often think of Jesus as a Galilean peasant. And he was. And he humbled himself for our sake. And we need to love that. And we need to grow to understand that. But we also need to realize he's high and exalted, massive and scary and good.
And so we get to talk about that. We'll get to see that it's all about Jesus. We'll get to see that we have a communal identity as we unpack the book of Colossians. We have a communal identity, which means that we exist in relationship with each other. One thing about a lot of the books in the Bible, and especially Colossians, every time you see the word you in Colossians, Paul is actually using the word y'all. The Greek word y'all.
So for us, we can use you as a singular you or you as a plural you. But most of us in the South would use y'all as a plural form of you. And so when you see the word you, he's referring to them as a people. One of the things that annoys the snot out of me is when I watch movies and they have someone pretending to be a Southerner and they just can't get it right. I was watching one where a guy was supposed to be from North Carolina and he called chicken barbecue. And I was like, nope.
Now, North Carolina does make vinegar-based barbecue. So they hadn't quite got it right. But they at least know it's pulled pork. But there would be movies where somebody would look at somebody and call him y'all, and it's an individual. And it's like, unless you're talking about him and his family that you know about, you wouldn't call him y'all. You'd call him you.
And if you were talking to a whole group of people, you'd call him y'all. And every time Paul uses the word you in Colossians, he's saying y'all. And so as we read through it, we'll say y'all some just to help us frame up our minds around that. Now, here's the other thing. When we hear y'all, we think of, yes, a collective group of us made up of rugged individuals. There's a bunch of us individually.
That's how we think about it. That is not how they would have thought about it. They would have understood themselves in community, as a team, as a people. That's how they thought about it. When we try to, the term for self-sufficiency in the U.S., there are certain cultures, when we try to translate that, we can't. They don't have a word for it.
The closest word in certain cultures is a form of a mental disorder where someone believes they exist outside of community. So they were trying to translate self-sufficiency, and they were like, I don't think you want to use this word because it's a mental disorder. We don't exist outside of community. And that's much closer to how they would have understood themselves. They lived and exist in relationship to other people. And when they became believers, they had a new family.
A lot of them would have been disowned by their family, but they would have had a new family. They would have been y'all. They would have understood themselves communally. The best thing we have to this would be maybe the military. So if Patton stood in front of his troops and said, we must take this land, and I need you to do it.
There wouldn't have been a guy in the middle who was like, I don't think I can do that by myself. Well, come on, Carl. That's why you're part of a platoon, which is a part of a company, which is a part of a battalion. When he said you, he meant the team, and they would have understood that. Just as if a coach stood in front of us and we were on a team, we understand ourselves in context of the team. And so when he says y'all, understand yourself not as a rugged individual who's a part of, but as a y'all, a team, a collective, a family, interconnected forever.
So we have a communal identity. The next thing we'll talk about, and I'm really excited about because we're awful at this, is we need a discernment radar. Discernment is basically the ability to tell if something is true or not true, good or not good. And so as Paul writes to the Colossians, it seems as if they have all of these outside influences, and he's helping them figure out how do we decide, how do we filter what we bring in. For the most part, you will see one of two operating systems for that among American Christians. There is no filter whatsoever.
Or if someone says it, and they were on TV, they got their own show, so they're probably pretty smart. The guy was holding a book. His name says doctor. Like, there's no filter whatsoever. It's just this person said it, and he had cool hair, and his wife looked like she lost a paintball match, but she's sitting on a throne. So I'm pretty sure we need to believe it.
No filter whatsoever. Or we only believe these 12 people who say things, and we're going to start our own little compound and our own little commune, and we're not going to trust the internets. Like, there's that. So our goal would be to be somewhere in the middle, to have a discernment radar, to actually filter what comes in, but to filter it well. And so we are bombarded by all kinds of other influences. We see thousands of advertisements, each of them preaching a false gospel to us, which says that you need this to be happy.
Your life is not complete without this. We have television shows that would say they promote no religion whatsoever, but they're promoting a worldview. Every movie you see promotes a worldview. We are bombarded with ways to think about life, ways to think about romance, ways to think about God, ways to think about our relationship with each other, ways to think about politics. We are bombarded, and we have to have a discernment radar. So we'll get to spend more time on that later.
We're not very good at it as a whole, but we'll get to spend some more time on it later. We won't spend much on it today. We're going to spend a couple weeks on it, and I'm really excited about getting into more of that, just mostly because we suck at it. All right. So tonight we're going to be looking at the intro of Colossians, and basically we're going to see how Paul frames up for them.
What we're going to do, so we're going to read through the first eight verses, and then we're going to read through the first eight verses, and we're going to read through the first eight verses, and we're going to read through the first eight verses. several times and unpack how Paul addresses this group of people. So we'll talk a little bit about what he says, but we'll also talk about how he understands them to exist because it's foundational for us as we grow as a church and as we move through the summer. All right, I'm going to pray again. We're going to hop in and talk through this stuff.
God, we thank you for the opportunity to gather, to study your word. I pray that you would speak to us, that you would lead us as we walk through Colossians, as we kick off this series where we try to study and learn more about you. We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, Colossians 1.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Timothy our brother. So Paul, apostle means sent one. He's specifically talking about those who had seen Jesus after death. So he says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus 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. When Paul starts writing this letter, he writes to them and the first thing we're going to see is that they have a gospel identity.
That they have a gospel identity. How he understands them to exist. So he's writing to the church and they have a gospel identity. He says, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. Saints is the Greek word that means holy ones. So in the Bible, God is called holy.
So in the Old Testament, they say God high and lifted up and there's these angels next to him and they're singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And when Paul writes to the Colossian Christians, he says holy ones. And when he says saints, he doesn't mean like St. Patrick. He means all believers have an identity of holiness in Christ. That we are holy.
We're made right before God because of Jesus. So he writes to them first in their gospel identity. So he says, 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 of 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 word of truth, the gospel which has come to you.
As indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing. As it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. Just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf. And he has made known to us your love in the spirit. All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to quickly walk through and see how Paul addresses them in their gospel identity, their communal identity, and their missional identity.
So his gospel identity. We'll just walk back through and I'm going to point out the areas where he's talking to them as a gospel people. To the saints and faithful brothers, that's verse 2. So he calls them saints, he calls them holy ones. In Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father. So he says our relationship now is that God, the creator of the universe, is 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. So they have faith in Christ Jesus and of 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 word of truth, the gospel. So what Paul says to him is he says you're holy because you have hope laid up in the gospel. That your hope is laid up in heaven because of the faith that you have in Christ. So we praise God who is our Father because of who you are, who he's made you into.
And so through the gospel, Jesus died on our behalf. He took our sins. He rose again and he gives us his righteousness. So Paul understands them to have a gospel identity. He also talks to them out of their communal identity, that they exist in relationship with one another. So he starts off and he says to the saints and faithful brothers.
So that's the Greek word for brothers and sisters. What he's saying is siblings, those who've been made into a family. So that they have a communal identity. To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace and peace to you 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 of the love that you have for all the saints. They go hand in hand.
Faith in Christ and love for all the saints. He says we're praising God for this. We thank God that you have faith in Jesus, that he's allowed you to have faith in Jesus, and that you have love for all the saints. And that's how that works. I've met people before that say, man, I love Jesus. I just don't have much time for the church.
I just don't care about it. And it's like, that's not how that works. They're one and the same. Like, when we have faith in Christ, we have love for all the saints, all the other Christians, all the other believers. I was talking to a guy at work one time at Sears, and he said, yeah. He said, he found out I was a Christian.
He said, yeah, if I was a Christian, if I was religious like that, if I was a Christian, he said, I'd just keep it to myself. He said, I wouldn't feel like I need to go be a part of a church or go to church or whatever, hang out with other people. I'd just read, do my own thing, study or whatever, and then I wouldn't have to be around people. I said, that's cool. You wouldn't be a Christian. He was like, what are you talking about?
I said, well, that's not how Christianity works. I was like, you get reconciled to God because he pays for our sin. He fixes the relationship we have with him. But he also, because he takes care of sin, he reconciles us to each other. So I said, every relationship you've ever had broke down because of sin.
They sinned against you, you wouldn't forgive, or they wouldn't apologize. You sinned against them, you wouldn't apologize, or they wouldn't forgive. You slowly drifted apart because you're sinful. You hurt each other and wouldn't fix it. I said, but the gospel gives us the way to fix that. That God reconciles us to himself and to each other.
I said, so you get relationships, you get family, and you would get to walk through life being able to have the ability to reconcile and to forgive and have relationships with one another. He looked at me, and he was the quietest he'd ever been. He never shut his mouth. But he looked at me, and he said, I've never heard of it like that before. I said, yeah, this is how it works. I said, so you could have your own little private faith and not be a part of the church, but I'm not sure you'd be a Christian.
Because Christianity involves us and gives us church family. So, yeah, we grow in our love for Jesus, but automatically his spirit comes in and makes us begin to love one another and to grow in our love for each other. So, he talks to them out of their communal identity. He says that you have faith in Christ Jesus and love for all the saints. Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of this you have heard before in the word of truth the gospel, which has come to you. As indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing, as it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.
Just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf. So, we have, he talks to them out of their missional identity. That they are, the gospel bears fruit and grows. Just what it does. He says the gospel bears fruit and grows just as it has among you since the day you heard it.
Like the gospel just moves. It grows. It bears fruit. And it changes people. And so he says just as you learned it from Epaphras, just as this guy came in and began to proclaim to you the gospel. That in Jesus you can have forgiveness.
You can have life. You get family. He says it bears fruit and grows. And so we have an identity that moves forward. That we can be met by Jesus. Our sin can be covered.
And we can have life in him. And the gospel bears fruit. It grows. It expands and it moves. And so more and more people get to be a part of it. And so when he talks to them, he talks to them out of gospel identity.
He refers to them as saints. He calls them brothers. He talks to them out of their communal identity. How they exist in relationship with one another. And then he says the gospel keeps moving. It keeps bearing fruit.
It keeps growing. And people keep learning the truth. The grace of God in truth. That we're sinful. That we're broken. And that we need Jesus.
And that we're met with overwhelming grace. That we don't have to earn it. And we don't have to be good enough. And we don't have to be smart enough. And we don't have to be moral enough. We don't have to keep it together.
But we're met with grace through truth. So, if you're a Christian in the room, you have a gospel identity. You have it. You're not seeking to earn it. You're not working for it. You have it.
You are a saint. You are holy. You are holy. You are holy. You are holy. You are holy.
You are blameless. You are holy. You are holy. You are holy. You are holy. Now, I don't know about y'all.
But I know humans. And I know y'all in this room. Holy isn't a super good descriptor for us. It just isn't. But it's not based off of us.
I remember when I was growing up, my older brother Logan. He used to lie. Oh. He'd lie. He's like four or five. He'd look at grown people in their face and just lie.
He was good at it, too. But you could tell he's lying. He's like four. His stories didn't make sense. But he would just lie.
I ain't never heard of that before. I ain't never seen that. I don't know that kid. Like, just, I mean, just lie. And my dad used to tell him, he'd say, Logan, there's going to come a day when you're going to need me to believe you. There's going to come a day when you're going to need people to believe you.
And if you keep lying, that's going to be a problem. If you lie all the time, swear and lie through your teeth at people, it's going to be a problem because you're going to need people to believe you. So we were hanging out with my extended family. And Logan basically, like, led a rebellion. Logan, he got all of our cousins, like 14 or 15 of them, and just led them in the most, like, heinous of crimes he could possibly think of as a four- or five-year-old. And so my aunts were livid.
I mean, they were ready to string him up. And so they had all gathered. And it was really funny the amount of anger they had towards, like, a five-year-old. And so they had all gathered, and they were standing there, and they were like, he did it. I know he did it. He got all them involved in it.
And, I mean, they had lost it. And so my dad's sitting there, and Logan's sitting there. And my dad looked at him and said, Logan, did you do that? He had. Everybody knew he had. And Logan went, mm-mm.
I didn't have anything to do with that. And my dad looked at him, and he looked at my aunts, and he said, Logan doesn't lie. And if he said he didn't do it, he didn't do it. My aunts almost lost it. And he stood in between them, and he said, he doesn't lie. That boy doesn't lie.
He wouldn't tell a lie. And if he said he didn't do it, he didn't do it. And Logan went and looked at my dad like, now, you and I both know that's not true. I mean, couldn't believe that that's what my dad did, that my dad stood in the gap and took the blame and was willing to lie and take sin and on my dad's integrity get him off. And there are times when Jesus looks and he says that we're holy and blameless and above reproach. And I look and I go, you and I both know that's not true.
That's not a good descriptor for me. That's not how that lines up. But we have a gospel identity. We have been made holy and blameless and above reproach because Jesus took our sin onto himself and he was crushed for it and he gave us his righteousness so that we stand before God as Christians who have placed our faith in Jesus holy, blameless, and above reproach as if we had never sinned and always done what we were supposed to. That there is no reproach, no complaint, no sin that can be levied against us, no condemnation, nothing. We're holy and blameless and above reproach.
And if you're a Christian in here, you have a gospel identity. You do stand before God holy. If you're a Christian in here, you have a communal identity. You've been invited into a family. It says that to the saints and faithful brothers, he says to the faith you have in Christ and the love you have for all the saints. So we have a communal identity.
We've been invited into a family. Later in Colossians, he's going to say that Jesus is the head of the body, his church. So he's the head, we're the body. We are interconnected and designed to exist in relationships with one another. We have been made into family together. You're in it.
If you're a Christian, you're in family. Just the way regular family works. You didn't get to pick them. You're in it. Jesus rescues and he makes us into family. And it is a beautiful, hot mess.
It is. Every holy person in this room is a part of your family. And we're holy because we have a gospel identity. We ain't keeping it together too good. We get to walk through life together, repenting and forgiving and getting on each other's nerves and celebrating together and growing together because we've been made into family. It's who we are.
In Christ, we are brothers and sisters. The Bible says that Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers. And Paul here says that God, our father, who's the God and Savior, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So he calls him our father and then he immediately calls him Jesus' father. And later he's going to say Jesus is the firstborn among many brothers. That we are family.
An eternal family. That will last forever. And that's our identity. That's who we are. And then if you're in here and you're a believer, you have a missional identity. You are sent on a mission with Jesus.
That Jesus in eternity past, when we sinned, when we rebelled against him, that they chose that Jesus would come, that he would be perfect on our behalf, that he would die for our sins and that he would rise again so that we might have life and hope and faith in him. And then he invites his church into that mission to share that, to spread that, to move that along. And we can't help but share it. I remember when I first found out that the gospel was actually good news. Like I always thought that the gospel was this. I thought it was that Jesus could save me from my sins.
I deserved wrath and punishment, but Jesus died so that I could not be punished, not go to hell, and that he saved me from my sins. And then I was supposed to learn how from the Bible to be a good moral person. To behave well. That's not really good news. It's like when your dad's like, I got good news. We're cleaning the garage today.
I don't see how that... I don't think you know what good news is. And so when I've got good news, Jesus saves you from your sins, and now you get to be a really good person and try really hard and be moral and keep it together. Ugh. When I realize that the gospel applies to everything, that I'm already holy, already blameless, I just get to follow Jesus? That the gospel applies to how I treat my wife and how I see my money and how I walk through life and that I've been given a family to walk through life together?
That actually became good news. And I love sharing good news. My wife and I, we run a pretty tight budget, but any kind of excess money we have pretty much goes to food. We thoroughly enjoy eating out. And when I find a good restaurant, I'm going to tell you about it. I actually base directions off of restaurants.
So people will be like, you know where Thomas Road is? And I'll be like, do restaurants. They'll be like, you know where Taco Bell is? Yes, I know where Taco Bell is. All right, well, you're going to go over there, you're going to take a left of Krispy Kreme.
All right, I got it, I'll be there. Like, that's how, if they say a restaurant I've never heard of, I'll be like, I haven't heard of that, is it any good? Like, we quit talking about directions. I need to know about this restaurant you know about that I don't know about. So I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to help you all out right now.
I'm going to share some good news with you all. If you've never eaten at J Gumbos, it's in downtown. It's open only in the middle of the day. So if you want J Gumbos at suppertime, you were wrong. You won't have it. But you can have it at lunch, and it is delicious.
My personal recommendation would be Jean Lafitte, or Jean Lafitte. If you call it Jean Lafitte, just to mess with them, they don't appreciate that. Although that is how it would be pronounced if you're, I don't know, not Cajun. But anyway, and then the other one is Egg Roll Station. Right down the road, super, super good Chinese food. Super, super sketchy.
So if you have a problem with that, do takeout. It's still delicious, and their egg rolls are great. So, but when I find out about good news, I can't help but share it. Like, when I find out about good restaurants, I can't help but tell people about it. You don't have to talk to me long for me to start sharing things that I enjoy and appreciate. And it's the same way with us, and when we begin to realize the goodness that is in the gospel for us, we can't help but share it.
We can't help but say, hey, look, I know you think that you're supposed to work this out on your own, and that you're supposed to be a rugged individual who gets everything done, and is super good, and super holy, and that earns your right. You're not going to. But you don't have to. You get to have faith in Jesus that he already accomplished that on your behalf, and you get to walk through life with a new family and a new identity. And we can't help but share it. And the gospel, it's just what it does.
It bears fruit and grows. So, this is us. This is who we are. Paul's writing to a church plant. He's explaining to them as he goes through the book of Colossians what it looks like for them to follow Jesus. But he starts off, and he kind of just lays out.
We see how he approaches them, how he speaks to them as to who he thinks they are. So, he talks to them about how the mission, how the gospel's moved forward among them. He talks to them about who they are in Christ and who they are in relationship to one another. And that's us. When we talk about being a gospel-centered community on mission, when we say that's what we want to do, we want to be a gospel-centered community on mission, we didn't make that up. We made it the way we word it.
But we see it here. We see it as how the Bible lays it out. So, it's just what we do. It's what Jesus does. It says here, I want to read verse 5. We started as a church plant in March of last year.
We just started meeting in my home. Just a handful of us. And then we actually got to watch the gospel bear fruit and grow. We got to watch it bear fruit and grow among us, personally, individually. And we got to watch it bear fruit and grow among a people. So, when Paul is writing this, he's saying, We also thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for y'all.
Since we have heard of y'all's faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that y'all have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for y'all in heaven, of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel which has come to y'all, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing, as it also does among y'all since the day you heard and understood the grace of God and truth. And that's what we've gotten to see. We've gotten to see the gospel move and grow among a people. And it's been beautiful. And that's who we are. That's who we get to be.
And so we began to multiply more community groups because we just want to live in relationship with one another, centered underneath the gospel, around the gospel. Jesus is the head. We're the body. We just follow him. And so we look to Jesus to see what it looks like for us to walk through life. And we live on mission, which just means that we get to invite people into the gospel and into family.
That's us. That's what we've gotten to do. And it's been exciting and it's been great. Sometimes I look at my community group and we're all over the place. Age-wise, thought process-wise, there are some conversations in my community group that just get downright painful. Because people are trying to talk to each other and they just don't connect.
It's like they have nothing in common whatsoever. We had a conversation about heavy metal music the other day. And that was just hilarious. Because a couple of the guys knew what it was. One guy didn't. And I stood there making jokes just to be annoying.
But I was really confusing people. And so that was a lot of fun. And after a while, our group just was like, well, do you like food? Yes. Do you like Jesus? Yes.
All right, cool. We can be friends. Like that's just how it works. That's how our community group connects. We are just a bunch of people brought together by the gospel. And we get to walk through life together.
In a minute, they're going to release some children from back there in Kid City where we try to put the gospel on their level. And they're just going to be like running laps around here. I'm pretty sure they teach them the gospel and then just inject sugar into their faces. Like I don't even know really what happens back there. But it's going to be a mess and it's going to be beautiful.
That's who we get to be. When my family gathers together at Christmas, there's a whole bunch of us. People knocking stuff over, but we're family. People getting on each other's nerves, but we're family. And that's what we get in the church. That's who we get to be.
If there's one thing we know from every Christmas movie we've ever seen is that life's better with family. That's all we know. You can have anything else you want, but family makes life better. And so the truth is for us as a church, we get a gospel identity and we get a new family. We get people to walk through life together with, through good times, through bad times, to celebrate, to enjoy life together. We get brothers and sisters in an eternal family that will last forever.
So we set aside time for it. We carve out time in our busy schedules. And it's going to be hard for us as Westerners, but we carve out time to be family. To hang out with each other, to share meals together, to laugh and do fun things together, to throw parties together. Because we care about it, because it's who we are. It's our identity.
So when we talk about being gospel-centered communities on mission, all we're saying is we're just going to be who we are. So that's how we operate. That's what we do as a church. So we gather together on Sundays as groups to talk about Jesus, to open the Bible and see what it says. The rest of the time, we're just community groups for people being church family throughout the week. And that's how we function.
I talk to people periodically because we're a church plant. And they'll be like, so what are you all going to do when you grow? So more of what we're doing, I guess. Like we're going to have more groups. We've got five community groups right now. We started as one last year.
We're praying that we would have ten towards the end of the year. That more and more people would hop into what we have in the gospel. That more and more people would be freed up by the fact that they don't have to be good enough. Jesus was good enough on their behalf. And that we get a family. We're not alone.
We don't have to do this alone. As we read scripture, sometimes I feel like that private that raised his hand to Patton and said, I can't do that by myself. We read scripture and we're like, man, that sounds really hard. Right. But it's not designed for us to do it by ourselves.
It's for us to walk together in relationship with one another. To have life together. To be in community. To be family. To be family. To be the body that God's made us into.
And so. If you're here. And you're not a Christian. Here's what I would say to you. Hop into a community group. Be a part of us as we walk through life together in relationships.
We'll get together and we'll talk about Jesus. And this is a great place for you to hang out and hear things about Jesus. But we'd much rather you got to see what it looks like among a bunch of people. We'd much rather you got to see what it looks like when somebody can't pay a bill. Somebody's got a flat tire. When somebody gets really annoyed with someone else.
We'd love for you to see what it looks like for us to be family. To tangibly walk out the aspects of the gospel. When we connect with one another. Love one another. Relate to one another. And have nothing in common other than we eat food and love Jesus.
So if you're hanging out and you're not a Christian. We would invite you into a community group. To come be a part of what it looks like as we're a gospel people. If you say, no thanks. I don't know Jesus and that makes me uncomfortable. And I don't want to go hang out at your house.
I would say, I understand that. And would welcome you to keep hanging out with us on Sundays. We'll play can jam. We'll go eat meals afterwards. Not at people's houses necessarily. We'll study and talk about Jesus.
And this is a really safe place for you to do that. Because we're not here because we're good and moral and awesome. We're here because we know we aren't. And Jesus is awesome. We don't use a lot of big words. Because we don't know a lot.
And the big ones we do use are Bible words. And we'll try to explain them. So we think it's a really safe place if you're not a Christian to hang out. A really good group of people to be around. Actually, when I moved, I felt like I was moving to plant a church. That God had called us to plant a church.
And after a while, I realized that Jesus was just saying, Ah, you can come be a part of what I'm doing. You can come be a part of the family I'm starting. You can come be a part of the people that you'll get to know and love and walk through life together. You can come be a part of that. And I don't know about the plant a church thing, but you can come hang out with my church. Be a part of my people.
And I was like, all right, Jesus, that sounds good. And I've actually gotten to see the gospel bear fruit and grow, and it's been wonderful. If you're hanging out and you are a Christian, we would say hop into a community group. Walk in family with us. Be who you're designed to be. So we have a gospel identity.
We have a communal identity. We have a missional identity. Hop in. Walk through life. Carve out time in your schedule to be in relationships with others. And that's difficult, and sometimes we have seasons of life where our schedules don't line up and work around it.
But figure it out. It's good for us. It's healthy. If someone's a Christian and they say, I want to hang out, but I don't really – I just want to do the Sunday thing. But with as much love as I can say, I don't think that's good for us.
I don't think that's – I think you're missing out. And I think it – we're not designed as a church to operate that way. So the way that we use our spiritual gifts, the way that we walk through life, the way that we serve and pastor and love and shepherd one another is only in our community groups. That's how we are. And so there are a lot of churches where service opportunities and being able to use your gifts take place other places, and you have that opportunity. But for us, we feel called to be this, to be in community throughout the week, loving and serving and inviting people into what we have.
And if you're a Christian in here and you're a part of a community group, hop in more. Pour into what it looks like to be in life with each other, to walk through life together and to live out the identity we have where we get to bear fruit and grow together as the family that Jesus has made us into. Paul says he's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. That we get to, as Jesus changes our hearts, grow in love for one another and grow as we walk together on mission. And so some of the things that we're praying through is we'll walk through Colossians, but we're praying that we would grow in what it looks like to be community.
That we would grow in the depth of understanding of what it is for us to be gospel people. And that we would continue to invite more and more people into normal, everyday life of us following Jesus. Messing up, repenting, growing, getting to see what that looks like as they walk with us as we pursue Jesus in obedience to him. And so that's our hope. That's our prayer. And we pray that we'll continue to multiply more and more groups of people who love Jesus, walk with Jesus, and follow Jesus in normal, everyday life.
And we pray, and we're going to sing and celebrate the fact that we've been made into Christ's family. God, I thank you that my identity is not based off of who I am, what I do, what I accomplish, how smart I am, how hard I work. I thank you that you have made us holy. That we are saints. And God, I thank you for as difficult as it is that we get to be a part of family. That we get to walk through life with a team.
That we don't have to be alone, but that we get to have successes and failures together. As the people that you've made us into. God, I pray that you would help us to grow in our understanding of what that looks like. To grow in what it looks like to invite more people into that. To open our homes and open our hearts and to grow in our understanding of who you've made us. So that we might move forward in what it looks like to invite more people into that.
God, we pray that you would bear fruit and grow among us. So the gospel, through your truth and your grace, would bear fruit and grow. More and more people would hop in and we'd have more and more growth and maturity. And repentance and love. God, we need your presence. May you help us to grow in our love in the spirit.
May we make much of your name. Help us to be your people. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. You've got to stand and sing with me.