|giv| Week 3
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
I am one of the pastors here. We are going to be in the book of Ecclesiastes today, specifically Ecclesiastes 5, as we are closing out week three of our Give Series. We pause every year for our Give Series because this is a season in America that gets quite overwhelming with materialism and consumerism. And we want to pause every year and be reminded of what biblical generosity looks like, what a biblical approach to money looks like with the backdrop of a culture and a time that is very much the opposite. So we're in week three of this.
We'll be in the book of Ecclesiastes, which is a book that speaks about the vanity of life. So vanity meaning vain, which is empty, conceited, worthless, pointless. It is a book that talks about how vain putting hope in this life is, and specifically Ecclesiastes 5 is the vanity of riches. How vain it is to put a hope and to get your life towards wealth and riches. And as I was preparing for this, there's a vivid picture from a novel that I read years ago that I just wanted to read that paints a very vivid picture of what it looks like to live your life for the sake of riches. It comes from The Testament by John Grisham in the very kind of opening scene of that book.
And it's a man who is very wealthy, has lots of money, and is on his deathbed. He is narrating what a life spent pursuing riches looks like. So I just want to read from this. So he says, on his deathbed, I'm an old man, lonely and unloved, sick and hurting and tired of living. I'm ready for the hereafter. It has to be better than this.
I own the tall glass building in which I sit, and 97% of the company housed in it, below me and land around half a mile in three directions, and 2,000 people who work here, and the 20,000 who do not. I own the pipeline under the land that brings gas to my building from my fields in Texas. And I own the utility lines that deliver electricity. And I lease the satellite unseen miles above my head from which I once barked my commands to my empire flung around the world. My assets exceed $11 billion. I own silver in Nevada and copper in Montana, coffee in Kenya, coal in Angola, rubber in Malaysia, natural gas in Texas, crude oil in Indonesia, and steel in China.
My company owns companies that produce electricity and make computers and build dams and print paperbacks and broadcast signals to my satellite. I have subsidiaries with divisions in more countries than anyone can find. I once owned all the appropriate toys, the yachts and jets and blondes, homes in Europe, farms in Argentina, an island in the Pacific, thoroughbreds, even a hockey team. But I've grown too old for toys. The money is the root of my misery. I had three families, three ex-wives who bore seven children, six of whom are still alive, doing all they can to torment me.
To my knowledge, I fathered all seven and buried one. I should say his mother buried him. I was out of the country. I'm estranged from all the wives and all the children. They're gathering here today because I'm dying and it's time to divide the money. And you hear that and you see a man that had everything that you could want in this life.
He had all. He had the hockey team. He had the thoroughbreds. He had the farm in Argentina. It's worth $11 billion. And at the end of his life, he's looking at everything that he's worked for in this life.
And he's showing how vain it is, how meaningless it is. Now, most of us are not going to own farms in Argentina. We ain't rolling like that. We're not going to own stuff like that. But I would argue that many of us have some financial goals, right?
Those financial goals involve building an amount of wealth so that one day you can have the security and the comfort, maybe the adoration that comes with that. There are reasons why we're building this wealth for our lives. And I want us to reckon with a picture like this this morning of someone who put all their hope in the riches of this life and realized it wasn't worth it. That we're in danger of falling into the same type of regret at the end of our lives if we spend it pursuing riches for riches' sake. So, we're going to look at Ecclesiastes and really sit in that picture of what it looks like to pursue riches and how vain that picture is.
And then I want to look at a better picture for us that paints a better life that does not worship the things of this world. So, let me pray for us and then we'll walk through this together. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would help us buy into the biblical vision, the biblical approach to money, that we might see you as better for our sake. I pray you'd help us as we're in the midst of listening to this and thinking through our budgets and all the things we're doing in this Give Project, that we would listen and receive the word and respond how you would desire. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Alright, so, we're going to look at two experts today. Two expert opinions. The first is Solomon's. So, Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. And Solomon, in this section, is talking about the vanity of riches. And if anyone, if there's any expert on riches to listen to, it is Solomon.
Solomon was one of the richest men, one of the richest people that ever lived. They have done some calculations up from looking at the scriptures and seeing what his net worth would be in today's dollars. And it's anywhere from one to two trillion dollars. Trillion. One to two, that's, the state GDP in South Carolina is around 230 billion dollars. Okay, so Solomon was worth upwards of ten times the state GDP.
That's bonkers. That's a lot of money. And he had about anything you could possibly want in this life. So, we should heed the wisdom of his expert opinion. Because he had all the riches. And he's going to explain to us why it is so empty and worthless to bank your life on this.
He's going to give two overarching reasons for this. And the first is that wealth never satisfies. Wealth never satisfies. We're going to pick it up in verse 10. He says, He who loves money will not be satisfied with money. Nor he who loves wealth with his income.
This also is vanity. He comes out and says, Wealth is never going to satisfy. It's never going to satisfy. You'll come back to it over and over again. And it's never going to quench your thirst. It's like being on the open ocean.
Thirsting. And believing that the ocean water is below you. If you just drink of it, it will satisfy you. And it never will. It will leave you longing. And coming back for more and more as it dries you out.
Wealth never satisfies. But we believe that a little more might. If I just had a little bit more. I feel this, y'all. When my wife and I, we first got married. We moved to Louisville, Kentucky so I could start seminary.
And I think our first year's tax return was like $20,000. That's not a joke. It was like $20,000. I remember in that period thinking, man, if we could just, if we just made like $23,000. If we just brought in like $23,000 or $24,000, something like that. I just, you know, we're paying our way through seminary.
We might be able to do this. If we just made a little bit more, we'd be okay. And then the next year, we did make more. And the next year, we did make more. And the next year, we did make more. And what happens is every year you make more, you think, if I just had a little bit more.
Just, not a lot, but just a little bit more, I'd be okay. And that's never how it works. Because wealth never satisfies. You can want more and more and more. It's a bottomless pit. You will never get enough of it.
Some of the most miserable people that you'll ever meet are people that have lots of money. They've got it all. Everything that you think you could possibly want in this life, they've got it. And they are not happy. Wealth never satisfies. And he goes on further and unpack how it doesn't satisfy.
In verse 11, he says, When goods increase, they increase who eat them. And what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes? He says, you know how unsatisfying it is? The NLT says, the paraphrase says, the more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. There's one commentator that says that wealth attracts human leeches. Which I really appreciate the bluntness of that commentary.
And that's true. If you read biographies or watch biopics or documentaries of athletes or musicians who make it big, their stories are all the same. As soon as I got money, the people came out the woodworks. And they came to take because they had the object that everyone wants in this life. And they're coming for it. That's why in the NFL when they train rookies, they put rookies through these classes now.
Some of the classes they put NFL rookies through is you're going to have uncles and cousins and friends and that guy from high school that come out that want to start a business, that want to start a restaurant, that want to start a record label. You need to understand they're coming for what you've got. And we might think, well, I don't think I'm ever going to be on that level. That anyone's going to want what I have. But the principle still applies, right?
Because what happens is, is even the middle class life, is that you level up. You level up to a bigger house. And what happens when you level up to a bigger house? Things come in to leech the raise that you got to buy that house, right? You got a bigger power bill. You got to fill that house with more things.
You're now in a neighborhood where your neighbor is really, really particular about his yard. And your yard looks like a scrub, so you got to put money in that yard so you can compete with the neighbors. Like, that's life. You buy the car, and then you got to buy the things that come with it. The more expensive tires that come with that truck. They're things that continue to siphon off little by little to where you're finally saying again, oh, if I just had more, I'd be satisfied.
At the end of that verse, he just says, what's the advantage of when you finally get those things? You'll just look at them. Think about all the things that you accumulate every time that you so loved on Amazon, which is why you hit buy an hour. You're so saved up for it again. You end up just looking at it as it wastes space in your home. It doesn't satisfy.
He goes on to say in verse 12, sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. That's a poetic way of saying that you can go to bed with a full stomach, with a comfortable life, and still be wanting sleep that you cannot get. It doesn't bring the peace and the rest that you so desire. And some of us who are having trouble, you know, making sure that we're trying to pay our bills and save up for the things that we want to, we're like, we're losing sleep over what? Over money, over paying bills, over this, over that. And I think if I just had, if I just had a little more, I would not be so worried at night.
I'd just be able to go to sleep. It's all I'm going to sing. Wrong. No. I was once at a lunch with two businessmen who were worth eight figures plus. So these guys had ten plus million dollars.
And I listened to them both for about five minutes talk about losing sleep. I mean, they were like, yeah, I know, I've tried this, and I've tried this product, and I've done this, and the other one's like, yeah, no, I think I've tried that too. I want to try. They went back and forth for five minutes talking about how they're losing sleep. Why? Because the more you have, the more you have to worry about.
The more that you're going to lose sleep over. It does not satisfy. It does not bring the rest and the peace that you so desire. And Solomon continues to share the vanity of it. He says, verse 13, there is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. Riches were kept by their owner to his hurt.
Or as the paraphrase in the NLT says, hoarding riches harms the saver. But there's this, what happens in life is there are objects and there are things that we so want. The things that we say, what are the things you've been saving up for? The things you've been wanting. It's the first couple things that come to mind. And once you get them, you grab hold of them.
Those become the most glorious objects in your life. The most beautiful, wonderful things that you've desired. You lay hold to them with a death grip. Not releasing your hands before the Lord saying, do what you want with it. But you just so badly want those things.
And it's to our own demise. There are people that catch monkeys for a living, which has a job. And one of the ways they catch monkeys is they find tree holes and they put shiny objects in those tree holes because monkeys love shiny objects. They put a little apparatus outside the hole. So when the monkey sticks his hand into the tree and grabs the shiny object, tries to pull it out and it can't because his hand and the object are too big.
But monkeys won't let the shiny object go. They won't release it. They'll let their hand out. The same works on children. They see them drop a toy behind the couch. They sit there for like a minute.
Just like, I can't get it out. And it's like, well, you've got to let it go. But that's us. Like to our own demise. We'll grab hold and lay hold to the object. Because we work so hard for this.
Do you know how hard I work? How many hours I put in? How much I sacrifice to finally get this life? And we cling to it thinking that's what's going to satisfy. But it's actually to our own demise.
Wealth never satisfies. Solomon drills that home. It never satisfies. And then he shifts into another major reason that we should not put our hope in riches. Why it is so vain. And the second reason is you're going to lose it all anyways.
Not only does it not satisfy. You're going to lose it all. In verse 14 he gives the first way. And those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is the father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. A lot of people make money and then they lose it.
That's life. It happens over and over and over again. There are a lot of young men across the world who this year has been a very bad year. Because they lost everything in the crypto markets. I mean they went hard. They put all their savings, their story after story.
And those markets crashed and crumbled. And they lost everything. That's life. Real estate. Businesses. Bad investments.
It's fleeting. You're going to lose it. And if you don't lose it in a bad business deal, you're going to lose it when you die. And that's the second point on that. It says in verse 15, As he came from his mother's womb, he shall go again naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand. So if you don't lose it in bad business deals, you will lose it when you die.
Naked you came into this world with nothing. And naked you will leave this world with nothing. The old adage about a U-Haul. You don't see a U-Haul behind a hearse. Right? It's played out.
You hear it a lot. But it's true. We live our lives like that's not true. We live our lives for the things that we can accumulate on this earth. You cannot take it with you. And we're in danger of being just like that man in John Grisham's The Testament.
Working so hard for everything in this life and realizing what was it for. It's vanity. And Solomon closes out the section. And this, also verse 16, is a grievous evil. Just as he came, so shall he go. And what gain is there to him who toils for the wind?
Like a person outside is just trying to grasp the wind. And it's like, what are you doing? It's like, I'm trying to, I'm toiling for the wind. I'm going to harness it. And I get it. And it's like, you look like a fool.
Trying to grasp what will never actually satisfy him. And what you cannot take with you. That's Solomon, our first expert, giving us advice. And we need to heed his advice, y'all. We need to heed his wisdom. I mean, listen.
We will find expert opinions everywhere else, right? You will find mom blogs and Instagram pages, things. Where people, like my wife's Instagram, she's just going through it sometimes. It's just like the next one. Here's the next way to change your life and do this. And here's the next thing.
You want to build this. Next thing you want to, it's just like, or bro podcast or bro YouTube pages. Or it's just, I mean, there's advice and advice and advice and expert opinions and expert opinions. And we'll go everywhere else to find expert opinions. But the scriptures, when Solomon, who lived the life of having everything, and it's telling us it's not worth it.
It's vanity. It is striving after the wind. And it will not ever satisfy. And you won't take it with you when you die. So, that's the first expert opinion. Then we get to the New Testament.
We get the second expert opinion for today. And it's Jesus. And he builds on that vanity argument to give us some really good news. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, verses 19 to 21, he says this. Jesus says, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. So, very reminiscent of Ecclesiastes.
Don't spend your life building treasures that will fade, that will rust, that can be stolen. But then he inserts the good news. But, verse 20, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. That we would be a people that don't work and strive to build wealth and treasures in this life. But we would look into the next life, into eternity.
And we'd send all of our treasures there. That all of our life is spent aimed towards eternity. Saying, that's what we're living for. I'm going to store up treasures and riches there. I'm sending it all forward. That's what Jesus is trying to paint for us.
Don't live looking down in this life. Look forward to the next and live your entire life in light of that. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. Those treasures do not fade. They do not rust. They are timeless.
They are kept for you, guarded. They will not be stolen. And then he ends with, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. That if your treasure is there. If your heart is, if your treasure is there, your heart will live in light of eternity. Because that's where your heart is.
It's not in the things of this world. It is with Christ in eternity. So the way that you live your life in light of that looks different. Noticeably different. There are two different lives. There is a life that thinks that the here and now and the material that we have in front of us is it.
So you buy an American dream. You get stacks and stacks. You build it up. You maximize to live your best life out of this. And then there's a different life that lives with the light of eternity. It looks radically different.
It seeks to grow in generosity and obedience to God and what he calls us to. Those are two different lives. Now, if you've been here a few years, that doesn't sound unfamiliar. We say some version of that every year at Give. Some of you have been here one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight years. Which means you've sat through one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different Give series.
Matthew 6 has shown up probably every other year. And some... None of this is new. We hear this over and over and over again. But there is a difference between hearing this and doing this.
James 1 will be hearers of the word, but doers of the word. And I feel this, y'all. I feel this as we prep every year to preach these sermons. That I just... I just... Okay, yep, we're doing Give.
Which means I've got to reorient my soul. Okay, I've got to look at my budget. Ugh. What can I do? Can I do just enough to get the Holy Spirit off my back? It's one of the things that Chet was hitting on last week.
Is that we... We hear this... But if it doesn't radically actually change our lives... If you've been through one, two, three, four, five, six different Give series. If you've heard sermon after sermon... That talks about the approach to money.
And your life has not grown in generosity. Your life has not changed. That's a problem. It's possible you're hearing this and you're not actually believing this. That it might live that out. But I feel this, y'all.
I feel this in the prep. Every year we do give... There's a part of me that's like, I don't want... I've got to do the tough soul work of looking in... And figuring out how I've got to repent. How I've got to grow in this.
And I also personally... I know the American church is known for talking a lot about money. So I don't want to fall. And it's like, no. Jesus cares immensely about this. It is so unbelievably important because our hearts are so tied to this.
And so captured by riches. That we need to actually release our hands before Him and say, what do you want to do with this? Because those are two different lives. Randy Alcorn in his book, The Treasure Principle, talks about how he visited two graves in Egypt. He went to King Tut's tomb. To that display.
And then pharaohs back then, they were buried with all of their riches. So they buried them underneath the ground and stored the riches with them. And there must be some part of Egyptian belief that you could take those with you into the afterlife. But King Tut's tomb has all his riches. And you can see the faded riches that over time that he had. But then he also visited a different grave.
He went to the grave of a man named William Borden. William Borden was the heir to a large family fortune and family business in the Midwest in the early 1900s. So he was set to be able to take over millions and millions of dollars. And he heard the gospel and he believed. And he said, no. Much to his family's dismay, he said, no.
I'm actually, I want to go on the mission field. Specifically, he wanted to go and reach Uyghur Muslims in China. Which if you've followed international news the last few years, you've heard a lot about the Uyghur Muslims because they're some of the most oppressed people in China at the moment. But 100 years ago, he said, I want to reach those people. I want to reach the Uyghur Muslims. And much to his family's dismay, he left that family fortune and business behind.
And he moved to Cairo, Egypt to learn Arabic so that he could take the gospel to China. And after a few months of learning Arabic, he contracted cerebral meningitis. And he died at the young age of 25. And he left. He didn't have his whole family's fortune, but he had $800,000, which is still a lot of money back then in today's dollars. And he left that all to Chinese missions.
And when you look at that life, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It doesn't make a lot of sense unless you know who he did it for. And that's why one of the things that's written on his tomb is this. Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation of such a life. What a powerful message to Mark your life. That apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for that type of life.
It doesn't make sense at all that you would leave the comforts of an American family fortune. All the comforts and things that went with that. To go to another country and die at 25. It doesn't make any sense. It's inexplicable. Unless you know who he did it for.
Unless you know his Savior. Unless you know Christ. Because with Christ, that absolutely makes sense. That's the most reasonable thing you could do. If you understand the gospel and what Jesus sets us apart for. And you understand this message that he teaches in Matthew 6.
And the message that Paul in Philippians 4 teaches. Paul in Philippians 4 is at the end of his letter in Philippians is raising support. He's raising support for the mission. And this is what he says in 417. He says, Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. Not that I seek the gift.
That's not the main point. I want to seek the fruit that is credited, as the NIV says, to your account. And when you put that up aside, Matthew 6. This idea of storing up treasures in heaven. And storing them to a future credit. When you understand those side by side.
It absolutely makes sense. With Christ, that's 100% understandable. We are called to live our lives with a future mindset. To believe that there are riches that we can store up for us in eternity. And I know when I say that, that some of us are like, oh man, I don't. Aren't we supposed to just want Christ?
Like, isn't it just enough that we want Christ in eternity? That we should live in light of that? And Jesus says no, actually. Which pushes back on something that for me is hard. No. There's a reason why he says, Store up for yourselves.
Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. There's a reason why Paul says, To store up these things to be credited to your account. There is this mysterious future reward. We don't really know what that is. We don't. We know what it's not.
That these extra riches in heaven, It's not the vain riches of this life. It's not gold. It's not jewels. It's not material things like that. The new heavens and the new earth, The picture that you get in the book of Revelation, The streets lined with gold. It's not that.
So I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's extra face time with Jesus or what. I don't know what that is. But that's held out in front of us. And it's certainly seen as unbelievably good. Jesus calls it treasure.
Whatever that is with Christ that we gain with Him, It is wonderful. And it comes to first believing the gospel through faith. Believing that Jesus died for our sins and our rebellion. And that He rose to new life. And gained us a new life in Him. And that it is every step of the way believing what Jesus says.
It is trusting Him at His word. When He says, Live your life in light of eternity. And store up riches there. It's believing that. And actually doing that. And it is the reason why, In this gift series, It's the reason why we're doing a gift project that we're doing.
It's the reason why we're getting behind Jamie Kerm. One of our church members who decided to leave the comforts of America. To go to Lebanon. A country that is falling apart right now. That has the highest inflation rate in the world. And is falling apart.
To go and take the gospel to the Kurdish people. To be a help. And to be a missionary. To learn the language. There's a, Y'all, She, One of the things, We talk about once a week. And it was just, About a month or so ago, She was talking about, How she, She left, When you're over there, You leave, Because you don't have long term permanent residency there.
So you gotta leave. She went to Cyprus, Which is an island nation right next to it. Went to Cyprus for a couple days. She'll have to do that in the future. To keep her visa renewed and what not. She went there.
And we talked about it. She's like, It just was wonderful. To go to Cyprus and to like, Take a hot shower. And to like, Have electricity that doesn't turn off in the middle of the night. And to not feel like I'm on edge all the time. Because Lebanon and Beirut right now, It's really intense.
And it's, It's not the safest. And, She was just good for a couple days, Just not experienced that. And she's saying, I want to go back to that. I want to be there. I want to help the church. I want to help make disciples.
I want to help disciple women. I want that. That's unexplainable without Christ. Now, She's believing in something that's more eternal, That's more valuable, That's more valuable than anything this world has to offer. And we're saying, Yes, Amen. And we're going to get behind that.
And as Chet opened up this morning, She got to raise about $2,500 a month to stay on the field. She's at $100 now. So we get to come behind that, And partner with her for something that is bigger than ourselves. Because this life, And the things in this life, And the things that you would give up in your budget, To get behind something like that, It's not worth it. It's two different pictures of what your deathbed could look like. You'd be on your deathbed, Thinking about all the things that you've worked so hard for.
The life that you put blood, sweat, and tears into, That you're getting ready to leave behind. Or, You could be on your deathbed, A few breaths away, Giddy, Excited. Because everything that you've worked for, Is just a few breaths away. Those are two different lives. And I so badly, As a Christian, I want to press into that second life. And I so badly for our church, Want us to press into that second life.
Because that life is truly better.
|giv| Week 2
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We're in the second week of our Give series. And every year around Christmas, we have, since we first planted this church in 2013, we have taken the time, 2012, taken the time to intentionally try to give some money away around Christmas to push back some on the, just kind of the cultural tone of consumerism that we're handed in life. And so we want to intentionally try to rally ourselves to be generous.
And last week, I got to say from the stage, one of the most exciting things that we can say as a church, which is a young lady from our church has committed her life to the call, at least committing for the next year. But she's devoting herself to mission work among an unreached people group in Lebanon amongst the Kurdish people. And so we are excited to get to support her in that and get to rally around her. Earlier this year, we showed you all this map. And we said that we live right now where there are more unreached peoples on the globe than ever before. At any time in history, there are more people who do not know Jesus than ever before.
And that the red is a bunch of unreached people groups. There has been no gospel penetration into their culture. And that's a problem. But that we're distinctly set up as a church to be able to participate in the work the Lord is doing. Because there are three, not one, but three mission organizations that actually are on the third floor of our education building over here. That are in the 1040 window and working among unreached people groups.
And this summer, Jamie Kern, who you all might know in life or you might recognize from this slide that you've been seeing, if you show up early enough to sit in here and see it. So all four of you know about that slide. And she did an internship between us and 1040 Hope. And she. Sorry. Do I have like a boom thing going on constantly?
Is it just getting on my nerves? Can you have your hand held? She. Oh, thank you. No, this is Spencer Carey. Thank you, Spencer.
Everybody give Spencer a hand. Is this better? All right. So I'm going to have to keep this on my ear because it's going to dangle and get on my nerves. So I'll just keep it on my ear.
And I'll have two mics. It's going to look awesome. All right. She. She did a joint internship between our church and 1040 Hope over the summer. And then she went to Lebanon for the past three months where she's been trying to learn the Kurdish language, where she's been working among the Kurdish people.
And she's been investigating the call to be a full time missionary. And she has committed to that. And so we get to support. And so what we said we're going to try to do is raise fifteen thousand dollars for a vehicle. There's a picture of her doing some work. Yeah.
Oh, there we go. For a vehicle. There we go. No, it's I don't know. Things are happening now. All right.
So we're going to fifteen thousand dollars for a vehicle for her to use for the next year while she's there and a year's worth of support. So we're wanting to raise fifteen thousand dollars now to buy a vehicle and we're wanting to pledge twenty nine thousand two hundred and twenty five dollars for a full year of support for her. And so we're going to get to talk more about exactly how to do that. But we're excited to get to do that, to get to participate in what the Lord is doing amongst the unreached people. And for her to be able to be over there and help get more missionaries over there. So it's an encouraging thing for us.
And so at in our gift series. We want to push back some by intentionally giving our money away. We want to push back some on what our culture tells us about how to think about money, because there's a couple of things that our culture gives us that it's just assumed. One of them is one of the ways to tell how well you're doing in life is how much stuff do you have? How nice is your stuff? So that when we picture ourselves in the future, a lot of times there's no like personal growth.
I just picture me, but richer. And that's like, yeah, look, I'm doing well. Like if you let me look ahead into the future, is my house bigger? I'm doing great. Like that's kind of how we've just been taught to think through life that we ought to have more money, more stuff, and that if we have more money and more stuff, then we'll be happier. This is like a cultural agreed upon reality.
The other one is that we are that what we consume defines who we are. So that this type of person wears this type of clothes. Real men drive this. Real men eat red meat. That there's some sort of like consumption turns us into things. Like real moms like you buy GIF or whatever.
Like we just have this. If you partake in our product, you make yourself into a certain type of person. As if somehow eating and wearing things turns us into a thing, develops our character. But we just have this as a cultural thing. And so what we do in our gift series is we say let's open our Bibles and let's see what the Lord has to say about how we handle our money. So grab your Bible and go to Luke chapter 3.
We're going to read a passage that I think you're probably familiar with. If you've read the Gospel of Luke, you certainly are. It's John the Baptist preaching. And I think in general we read this and we just keep on moving. It's like John the Baptist is the forerunner to Jesus. So run through what John the Baptist says and let's get to Jesus.
And I think there's potential for us to have read this, for you to have read this, for you to have heard this before, and for us to have missed one of the things that he says that I think is very important for us to see. So we're going to read through this. We're going to walk through it today. And we're going to stop in this section that I think maybe we've read before but haven't considered. And hopefully it's corrective and challenging and encouraging to us as we consider our finances and joining together to be a part of God's mission and giving some money away. So let's pray.
Father, we thank you for how good you are. Lord, we thank you for the love and the grace and the kindness that you've shown us. We thank you for your word. We thank you for Jamie Kern and the work of your spirit in her and all those like her who surrender to your call to go to hard places to deliver wonderful news. And so, Lord, we pray that you would bless her work, that you would bless our endeavor to raise support, and that you would call more people to go wherever you send them and surrender to you so that more people might proclaim the name of Jesus. And love you and be loved by you for eternity.
In Jesus' name, amen. We're in Luke chapter 3. We're going to go through the first 18 verses. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip, tetrarch of the region of Iteria and Trachonitis and Lysanias, tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas. Okay, all of that is just to time stamp exactly when this happens. It would be like if you were talking to a Carolina fan a couple weeks ago and you asked them, you weren't familiar with the Carolina-Clemson rivalry, and you asked them, is Carolina any good?
Like, do y'all usually win this? And they had to answer, the last time we won this game was at the beginning of the second Obama administration. Like, you just time stamp things. Like, I remember what gas was during the Reagan administration. It's that sort of thing. And so, I don't, but people do.
That sort of thing. And that's what he's doing. As he's saying, it was during the reign of all these people at this time. And then he gets to what he's wanting to say, which is, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. Meaning that John becomes a prophet. He begins to speak God's word.
He begins to proclaim this. And he does this in the wilderness. He doesn't do this in a well-populated area. He just starts proclaiming it in the wilderness, which I always wondered how that started. Like, he's in the wilderness. Was he just going for it and then someone heard it and was like, I'm going to go get more people?
Or did he just find the first person he saw and start proclaiming the word? I don't know. It doesn't tell us. But he's in the wilderness. He begins to proclaim the word. But then people start to come to him.
And it says this. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So they had baptism. They had the idea of baptism as like an initiation, right? The Pharisees would baptize people. You would actually baptize yourself.
So you would go in. You would wash yourself. It was a baptism where you basically washed yourself and you said, I'm committing to this. But he does a baptism where he's baptizing people. And it's a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And this is new.
And it's wonderful. Because the Pharisees, who were the primary religious teachers in this area, their message was, be good. And if you're good, here's how to be better. Here's how to be intentional with your being good. But if you've been bad.
If you've sinned. If you've run away from the Lord. Sorry. It's over with for you. There was no real. Here's how to come back.
Here's how to get out from being cursed. Here's how to repent. Here's how to turn from that. And so when John begins to proclaim, have you messed everything up? I've got good news for you. You can repent.
You can turn from that. And you can be forgiven. And this is good news. And this is new. Not new. The Old Testament had times like this.
But this is new for these people. For them to begin to understand that what God wants from them is that they can turn away from their sin. And they can turn to the Lord. And so he begins to proclaim this baptism of repentance. And repentance is saying, what I've been doing isn't working. What I've been doing is sinful.
And I need to be changed. I need the Lord to forgive me. I need to. Basically, what I have is a bunch of mess. And I need that taken away. And I'm going to turn from it and start doing what I'm supposed to.
But this is opportunity for forgiveness and repentance. And so people start coming to him. That they could be forgiven of sins. It says, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet. So this is the fulfillment of prophecy that John's doing.
It says, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. Every valley shall be filled. And every mountain and hill shall be made low. And the crooked shall become straight.
And the rough places shall become level ways. And all flesh shall see the salvation of God. So John is proclaiming a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins. And he is the forerunner to Christ. And when Christ comes, he's going to proclaim repentance. And he's going to call people to faith in himself.
That he is the Christ. He is the one to come. And he's going to call people to believe and have faith in himself. And then Jesus is going to die to seal our forgiveness. And he's going to rise. So that he secures for us what John proclaims.
Which is that you can be forgiven of your sins. Jesus accomplishes that in his death. In his burial. In his resurrection. So that when the message of repentance and forgiveness makes it to us.
It's confirmed. And sealed. And made possible by the work of Jesus. Jesus. So that today.
If you have not repented. And been forgiven. You can be. The message still applies to us. That you can say. I've made a mess of things.
I am a sinner and deserving of wrath. And justice. If God brought justice down on me. It would not be good. It would be harmful to me. In my sin.
And I need forgiveness. And it's offered to you. The message of John is offered to you. And accomplished through Christ. So that's what John's doing.
Verse 7. He said therefore. To the crowds that came out to be baptized by him. You brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Which is bold strategy when you're preaching.
Maybe we should start starting off. Instead of when we stand up and say. We're so glad you're here. We believe Jesus is better than everything else. We say. You snakes.
Why are you here? Who told you to come here? It's like. And I feel like if I was there. I almost wonder if someone was like. You did John.
You're the one telling us to flee from the wrath to come. Right? Like that's why we came to you. But it seems as if there are some people. Who are coming out to see the spectacle. That there are people who are just showing up.
To see what he's doing. We know from other gospels. That there are Pharisees showing up. Just to kind of question him. Like hey what are you up to? And they're not actually there.
To flee from the wrath to come. They're not actually there repentant. They're just there to see what's going on. And so it says. That he says this to the crowds that came. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
And then he's going to give them. Two commands. One reason. He says this. Verse 8. Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.
And do not begin to say to yourselves. We have Abraham as our father. For I tell you. God is able from these stones. To raise up children. For Abraham.
So his command is bear fruit in keeping with repentance. So bear fruit would be. Have. Have. This show up. In your life.
So if you said. I've been working really hard. At learning a new language. And it's just now starting to bear some fruit. Or we've been really trying to crack into this new market. And it's just now starting to bear some fruit.
Or I've been working out and exercising for a year. And it's just now starting to bear some fruit. What you mean is. It's just now starting to show up. You can tell. It's beginning just like if I planted a tree.
And it's just now starting to bear some fruit. It's now doing what I wanted my apple tree to do this whole time. And so what he says is not bear fruit period. He says bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Meaning that. They genuinely turned from their sin.
Asked for forgiveness. That comes first. And if that is real. Then all he says is. Look like it. Look like you've actually surrendered to the Lord.
Look like you've actually asked for him to work in your heart. Look like you've actually turned away from your wickedness to him. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And then he says. And do not say to yourself. We have Abraham as our father.
I tell you the truth. God is able to from these stones raise up children for Abraham. He says. No. You repent. You turn from your sin.
And then you grow in light of that. And don't try to recount your record. As to why you're okay. So if we're bearing fruit in keeping with repentance. What we're doing is we're looking to God. And we're saying.
Because of who he is. Because of the forgiveness. Because of the grace. Therefore I live this way. But. If they're looking and saying.
Well I'm a son of Abraham. So I'm fine. I'm already in. Then they're looking at somehow their track record. Their place in life. And they're saying.
This is what makes me okay. And he just says. No. So. I think one of the ways that this might translate. To southern culture.
Is. I'm a Christian. I grew up in the church. I'm a Christian. I was baptized when I was like 11. 10 or 11.
But there's no. Evidence of. The work of Christ in our heart. There's no fruit. In keeping with repentance. I've had people.
Say before. Oh yeah. I'm a Christian. My dad was a deacon. Okay. Show me that passage.
I was talking to a guy. I played football. I was in high school. I said. We were talking about something. I said.
Are you a Christian? He said. Yeah man. I'm black. It's like. I might be in trouble.
But are we basing it off of something other than. I've surrendered to the Lord. And then. Out of that. It shows up. That's what he's saying.
So don't bank off of something else. Don't lean into something else. Other than. Looking to the Lord. And his grace. And his forgiveness.
So he keeps going. He tells them why. Verse 9. Even now. The axe is laid. To the root.
Of the trees. Every tree. Therefore. That does not bear good fruit. Is cut down. And thrown.
Into the fire. All right. He says. You don't want to get this wrong. And here's what we need to understand. This morning.
As we consider this. We are saved. By grace. Through faith. Not our own works. So that no one may boast.
That's our memory verse. This. This month. As a church. We're saved by grace. Through faith.
It's not our own works. So that nobody would boast. So what we have to understand is. It's not bear fruit. So that you might be saved.
It's surrender. And then look like that's happened in your heart. And that matters. It matters that we don't get that out of order. But it does matter.
If you remember us walking through 1 John. It does matter that it shows up. It does matter that it's actually real. It's not just something we say happened. Because if it actually happened. It begins to show up in the way we live.
And so one of the ways that we can know. Whether or not we're really in the faith. We can't get in the faith by bearing fruit. But we can know whether or not we're in the faith. By seeing are we bearing fruit. Am I growing?
Is my love for the Lord growing? Is my love for other people growing? And that's what he's saying. Don't trick yourself. Don't say well I'm saved by grace. Therefore I can act however I want.
Do whatever I want. It never has to show up. He's saying that's not how this works. Alright. They ask what I think is a very reasonable question to ask. Verse 10.
The crowds asked him. What then shall we do? Fair question. He says bear fruit. And I'm telling you if you don't. It's going to go bad.
If this isn't showing up in your life. If you're not actually repentant. This is going to go bad. So they say well what do we do? And he answered them. This is verse 11.
Whoever has two tunics. Is to share with him who has none. And whoever has food is to do likewise. Tax collectors also came to be baptized. And said to him. Teacher.
What shall we do? Which by the way. Tax collectors coming. Gives you an indication of how wildly wonderful this news is. Tax collectors are hated. They've committed treason against the people of God.
And repentance is open to them. It doesn't just mean people didn't like to have to pay taxes. It's way worse than that. They were helping the Romans occupy the holy land. The promised land. They were enemies.
And they're coming and being able to be forgiven. So if you've told yourself I'm too far gone. That is incorrect. This is wonderfully good news. Tax collectors also came to be baptized. Said to him.
Teacher. What shall we do? And he said to them. Collect no more than you are authorized to do. Soldiers also asked him. And what shall we do?
These are Roman soldiers. Getting to partake in repenting. And he said to them. Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation. And be content with your wages. Now.
Did y'all catch that? They ask. What does repentance look like? And he says. Let's talk about your wallet.
And I know some of you are like. Just like a preacher. But see. John knows something. As he's empowered by the spirit. That Jesus is going to say later.
Jesus says this in the Sermon on the Mount. This is Matthew 6.21 and 6.24. For where your treasure is. There your heart will be also. And no one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one.
And love the other. Or he will be devoted to the one. And despise the other. You cannot serve God. God. And money.
So they asked John. What does repentance look like? And he knows this. If you've actually surrendered your heart to the Lord. If you've actually turned from your sin. If he's actually going to work on you.
It's going to show up. In the way you handle. Your money. And your stuff. Because your heart has changed. Your treasure has changed.
Your allegiance has changed. John says. Faith. Shows up in your finances. Belief. Is in the budget.
Repentance. Has receipts. I had fun writing this. Just trying to help you remember it. That's what John says. That it's going to show up.
In how you spend your money. And what you do with your stuff. So all of these marks of repentance that he gives. Are possession based. So let's walk back through them.
And let's consider. What John is telling us. Crowd said. What should we do? Verse 11. He answered them.
Whoever has two tunics. Is to share with him who has none. And whoever has food is to do. Likewise. John says. Genuine repentance.
Genuine faith. Shows up in you being open handed with your possessions. That you would not. Accumulate a bunch of stuff. And that you would actually be intentional. About finding ways.
To get rid. Of a lot of your stuff. That's repentance showing up. That that's true belief showing up. Whoever has two tunics. He doesn't say.
You're not allowed to own a tunic. He doesn't say. You're not allowed to eat. He says. If you have enough food. Good.
Eat. And be generous to those who don't have enough food. If you have enough clothes. Good. Be generous to those who don't. Have enough clothes.
That. In some ways. You need to understand. That. You might be blessed. Beyond your ability.
Beyond your need. And that isn't so that you might have. More that just sits around. That's so that you might deliver it. To those who need it. That you've been entrusted to something.
That actually isn't yours. It's not for you to keep. It's for you to deliver. The. The grub hub guy. Is not supposed to eat your sandwich.
On the way to your house. The. The pizza guy. Can't be like. Here's your pizza. And thanks for the breadsticks.
That's not how it works. You're supposed to care for it. And deliver it. And there are things that you own. Part of your paycheck. Things that are in our closets.
That aren't ours. Aren't meant to be. That's what John's saying. That. As we believe. We'd set aside portions of our budget.
To just walk out the door for others. I think Jesus is going to talk about. That as our treasure moves. That we would care about the kingdom. And we care about the kingdom first. So I think this is generosity of the poor.
I also think it's. Intentionality in kingdom things. That Christians would find ways. To support missionaries. Christians would be supporting. Their local church.
But also. Christians would be. Helping things like. Goodwill. And his house thrive. Goodwill helps people get jobs.
They help sell things. At a lower cost. Because all of the. Stuff they get is free. Same with his house. His house helps.
Men in our area. Get over alcoholism. And have a place to stay. And so that. These are the sort of things. That we would be intentional.
About. That's his response. To everybody. He says that. Then he.
Verse 12. Says tax collectors. Also came to be baptized. By him. And said teacher. What shall we do?
And I love that. Because it's genuine. It's a genuine repentance. And a genuine. What should this look like? What do we do?
Not a. What do I have to do? But what. What does it look like for me? Have y'all ever been in a situation. With a new believer.
And you're just talking to him. And they're like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
What next? What else are we supposed to do? Hey. I was hearing this thing. I read this thing about. I'm not supposed to do that.
Is that true? Yeah. Okay. Cool. I'll stop. It's wonderful.
And that's what these tax collectors are doing. Okay. What does this look like for us? If I actually get to be forgiven. That's wonderful news. And what does that look like?
How does that show up? He said to them. Collect no more than you are authorized to do. Soldiers also asked him. And what should we do? Or by false accusations.
So I want to hold those together. Because I think they're kind of similar. He says. One of the ways that repentance shows up. One of the ways that faith shows up. And how we handle our money.
Is that we aren't doing things that are wrong. To get it. We should not be gaining money by sinful means. We shouldn't be greedy. We shouldn't be lying. We shouldn't be cheating.
Don't extort people. And I think in general we're like. Right. Yeah. Okay. Makes sense.
But I think one of the ways that we need to consider this. Is what are the things. In your industry. That are common practice. Because I think tax collectors would be able to say. Well that's just how collecting taxes work.
I collect the taxes I'm supposed to. But I also collect my own revenue. And I think the soldiers might go. Yeah but that's just how all soldiers. Make sure they can pay their bills. It's just normal.
And I know that every Job I've had. There were things. That to me seemed iffy. And everybody said. Oh no. That's just how it's done.
And I think that you ought to consider. Prayerfully. What are those things. I used to work in sales. I don't know if y'all know this about sales people. They lie to you.
If you meet a salesman. Who knows every answer to every question you've asked. It's likely that they are a liar. But you sell more stuff if you do that. He used to work in sales. And people ask you questions that you do not know the answer to.
Because the people whose product you're selling don't tell you that. Where is this steel manufactured? What's the horsepower on this Kenmore dryer? Was this Kenmore dryer made in Pennsylvania? I don't know. I work part time here.
But if you just say yes. Do you have family in Pennsylvania? Yeah. Well it's probably made right near where they live. Boom. Sold.
How are they going to look it up? If you don't know how to look it up. And you work here. What are the things? Does it have to do with how people clock in and clock out? Does it have to do with some sort of honesty thing?
Some sort of integrity thing? Is there something that everybody goes. Well that's just how real estate works. Oh that's just. Everybody knows that's how retail works. That's all the waiters and waitresses do that.
Everybody in finance does this. Because I think all soldiers did that. And all tax collectors did that. And John says if you're repentant you don't do that. And I think it's worth considering. Because I think a lot of it has snuck up on us.
You were trained to do it by the people who taught you how to do what you're doing. And you actually have to consider what are the things that are common practice that are normal that I actually can't participate in. But he says this to the. He adds a thing when he's talking to the. Soldiers. Verse 14.
Soldiers also asked them what shall we do? And he said to them do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusations. And be content with your wages. How much money do you make? Good. Be happy with that.
Are we all ready to go home and do that? Just how much money do you make? That's a good amount of money to make. Live off of that. Be content with it. Be thankful to the Lord for providing that amount of money to you.
Find a way to be generous inside of it. But. I think. We are trained in and all accept some level of perennial discontentment. I need. I need a little more.
Honestly. Most of us. And this was going to work better when I wasn't holding a microphone. I have to do it like this. Most of us make this amount of money. And if we're doing what we're supposed to.
As we're taught by. Everybody around us. We spend this amount of money. If you are currently spending this amount of money. We have a financial team that we'd like to let you talk with. They will help you with that.
But most of us. Make this much. Spend this much. We figure it out. You live here. Sometimes it's tight.
Sometimes it's harder. Sometimes there are things you go without. But you. In general. We live. Every once in a while.
You're in a spot where you can't. And inflation has been hurting us. And if that's for you right now. We also have. People in our care system. That will help you walk through that.
And we can actually help provide. And we ought to. As a church. It's not a bad thing to come and say. Hey I need some help right now. But in general.
Under normal circumstances. This amount. This amount. And what usually happens is. Over time. We start making this amount.
So we start spending this amount. Then we start making this amount. So we start spending this amount. And that's normal. And we're like. That's good.
That's how you're supposed to do it. He says. Be content with what you make. Not to say. I don't think this means. Christians shouldn't take promotions.
Or Christians should never swap jobs. But if that's all you're ever wanting to do. And if you're only content with a new promotion. For three months. Or five months. And then you got to get to the next one.
You got to get to the next one. And there's this general idea. That I'm supposed to just keep going. He says. Be content with your wages. Live inside your means.
And be fine with it. Now. What if. Because we're Christians. And we were making this amount. And we were spending this amount.
And we were living. What if. When we started making this amount. We just stayed here. Maybe moved up. But let me say.
I think it's okay to buy stuff. The Bible says you can't. It's not like you can't enjoy things. But what if. There was this gap. Where we were just freed up to be generous.
I think one of the questions. For us as we look at this. Is does all my income. Terminate on me. Does it all just come back here. Or did I set an amount of generosity.
A while back. And I just like. This is how much I'm going to give away. And that's just kept going. But my income has gone.
Way up. And my generosity level. Just kind of stayed the same. I hadn't. Taken advantage of the Lord. Giving me more.
So that I can give away more. It's just kind of. Been set. Does most everything just come back to me. Is it mostly just lifestyle upgrades. Every time the Lord blesses.
So I think we look at this. And we say. Okay. If my repentance is supposed to have receipts. If it. If belief is supposed to show up in my budget.
Then I think as Christians. We should sit down. And there's a couple of things. That should come out of this. I think we should review our budgets. I don't know when the last time you did that was.
I think you should look down. And try to actually figure out. How much money do I spend? What does that mean I really value? What does that mean I really love? I think we ought to.
Excitedly start making some decisions. And going. You know. Instead of getting in a $600 car payment. I'm going to get in a $300 car payment. Instead of getting in a $300 car payment.
I'm going to get in a. $200 car payment. Or I'm just going to keep the car I got. I'm going to pay to fix it. And then I'm going to use that gap. And I'm going to be a part of. Reaching people on the other side of the globe.
I'm going to get in. I'm going to take advantage of that gap. That I've created intentionally. And I'm going to help people sleep. Inside in downtown Columbia. Who this winter wouldn't have been able to.
I think we need to review our budgets. I think we need to revisit our closets. I think we need to just go in there and say. How many tunics. Is a reasonable amount of tunics. For me to own.
How much stuff should I really have in here. And resist the American urge. To when we've cleaned it out. Go. Ooh. Now I can put some more stuff in here.
But intentionally try to think through. What. What can I get rid of? What can I live on? How can I simplify some things? I think we need to consider.
How much money do I spend on entertainment? How much money do I spend. On extra things that I don't need. How much money was given away this past year. Versus how much money. Was just.
For me. To enjoy. So I think we should review our budgets. I think we should revisit our closets. I think you should ask. What are the common practices in my industry.
That I'm not allowed to participate in. That I ought not to. And I think we all need to check our contentment level. I think we need to take seriously. To be content with your wages. Take our heart before the Lord.
And go Lord. I make enough money to survive. Help me. With the fact that I don't feel like that's enough. Help me with the fact that I. I actually.
Inside of this should survive. And should give some things away. But I'm. I'm frustrated. All right.
Verse 15. As the people were in expectation. And were all questioning in their hearts. Concerning John. Whether he might be. The Christ.
John answered them all. Saying. I baptize you with water. But he who is mightier than I. Is coming. The strap of whose sandals.
I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And fire. His winnowing fork. Is in his hand. To clear his threshing floor.
And to gather the wheat. Into his barn. But the chaff. He will burn. With unquenchable. Fire.
When he says. He'll baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And with fire. I think. As he describes that further. That he'll gather the wheat.
Into the barn. And he'll throw the chaff. Into unquenchable fire. I think we're meant to understand. That we will be baptized. Either with.
The Holy Spirit. Or. With fire. That the eternal reality. Is one of those. For everybody.
And so. For Christians. Who know Christ. Who have repented. Of our sins. Who have been forgiven.
And who are filled. With the Holy Spirit. How much more. Generous. Should we be. Than just the tax collector.
Who walked away that day. How much more generous. Do we get to be. Than just the soldier. How much more content. Do we get to be.
Than the person. Who at that moment. Did not yet have the spirit. Who was getting. Only the beginnings. Of this.
How much more. Do we get to say. Lord. Work in me. I think there's a danger. For us as a church.
Because we do this. Every year. For us to start. Developing a pattern. Of paying the Holy Spirit. Hush money.
Around Christmas. Well. How much do I have to give. To get the conviction. Off my back. So that I can go.
Right back. To forgetting about this. And operating. Like all my neighbors. And the truth is. We're missing out.
On bearing fruit. That lasts. And enjoying. The gracious. Generosity. Of our God.
And getting to participate. In what he's like. As he gives to others. Through us. And how much joy. Do we miss out on.
And he says. His winnowing fork. Is in his hand. To clear his threshing floor. And to gather the wheat. Into his barn.
But the chaff. He will burn. With unclenchable fire. I think you need to hear this. If you believe. You are a Christian.
And that has not. Touched your wallet. You might not be a Christian. If you believe. You are a Christian. And that does not show up.
In how you handle. Your finances. You have to believe. That the Holy Spirit. Is at work in you. Because you're a Christian.
But he has no desire. To work in that part. Of your life. But I don't think. You can back that up. From the scriptures.
And if you have. 15 reasons. Right now. Why you don't have to give. To anybody. Well I give of my time.
I give of my energy. You know. I did this thing last year. Or I do this. Or things are tight right now. The reality is.
That if you talk to anybody. In America. Most everybody says. Things are tight. Because of how we do our budgets. We keep it tight.
And if we've gotten in the habit. Of just figuring out. Right around now. How much do I have to give. So that I don't have to feel bad.
And so I can participate. In whatever the thing is. And it's cool. And I'm excited about it. But really.
I don't really. I wouldn't do this. If it weren't for this. And if we weren't really. And I think we need to consider. The work of the spirit.
In our lives. And consider whether or not. Our hearts have actually been. Surrendered to the Lord. Because I think that's what John's telling us. Verse 18.
I love this verse. Verse 18. Verse 18. So with many other exhortations. He preached the good news to the people. I love that.
Because as an American. I kind of am going. What was the good news? Because that all sounded really intense and rough. And then the Bible says. Isn't that good?
And it actually is. It's wonderful news. That there's a savior coming. Who forgives sinners. It's wonderful news. That there's a savior coming.
Who will bring justice on the wicked. And it's wonderful news. That rather than him. Just bringing justice on you. He offers you repentance. And forgiveness.
And it's wonderful news. That he is then willing to use us. To be his agents in the world. To see wonderful things. Continue to take place. That's good news.
That we have a savior. Who will redeem sinners. Rather than crush them. And we have a savior. Who will crush. Sinners.
So that ultimately. We either receive grace. Or we receive what we deserve. And that there's an offer. Of grace to us. And then we get to participate.
In something that is eternal. And glorious. And beautiful. And last. And we actually get to bear fruit. That lasts.
That's good news. Let's review our budgets. Let's revisit our closets. Let's consider the things. That take place in our industry. That we probably should not participate in.
And let's see if we can get our hearts. To rest in the Lord. So that we might be content. With what we have. And look like absolute freaks. In the United States.
To the glory of Christ. And his eternal kingdom. Let's pray. Lord. Lord. Lord.
We pray that your Holy Spirit. Would go to work in our hearts. That we would bear fruit. In keeping. With repentance. To the glory of your name.
And your son. May you be at work in us. In Jesus name. Amen. Band's going to come back up. And we're going to sing.
And by the band. I mean. Raz and Isaac. Thank you. I mean. карт x dev. Greaks, that's true.achi, of zach.
Hand neg, the church. And I love you. Before this, I love you. I love you. And I love you. Yes.
So I love you. I love you. Well, you've got to like, this is a little bit of an anchor. I love you. Great to share you. Real laughter What a new thing or up. generator.
I love you. Ruby. I love you. Good. It's a little bit of passion. It's a little bit of emotion.
It's a little bit. It's a little bit easier.
|giv| Week 1
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Excited to be here with y'all this morning. We are in the first week of our Give Series. And every year, right after Thanksgiving, we pause in whatever we're normally doing and we begin our Give Series.
And we live in a place that is overwhelmed by consumerism. It's just that it's the air we breathe. So that as Christians and American Christians, it's possible for us to push back on some of the tides of our culture that are coming at us and things that we look and we say, no, scripturally, this is wrong. We can't participate in that. We can't live like that. And for us to completely miss consumerism.
For us to just walk along perfectly normal. Everything's fine with consumerism, but push back in other areas. And so we want to intentionally take this time every year to just say, hey, let's remember that we're eternal people and that our hope is not here. That the the American concept of I'll be more happy if I have more stuff is incorrect. Correct. And so let's pause and intentionally seek to be generous at this time.
Last year in our Give Series, we were able to give away twenty five thousand dollars. Yeah. And able to give away some man hours and some work to try to help at Bethel Christian Camp as they renovate as we help renovate space for a new family to move in as the director over there. And I'm excited to get to announce what our gift project is this morning. Later, turn to Matthew chapter 13. We're going to be looking at a very short parable in Matthew chapter 13 this morning.
On Christmas morning at my house, we have our bedrooms are on one side of the house and there's a hallway that leads to the main part of our house. And I build a barricade in the hallway and tell my sons on threat of death and the cancellation of Christmas that they are not allowed down the hall past the barricade. And this is done because I think it makes good sense. And also because my wife and her older brother every Christmas got up at three a.m., went and looked at everything they were getting. And then on Christmas morning, we're tired and unenthused. There's actually home videos of their parents looking at each other like the kids got a bicycle and they're looking at each other like, I don't know, I guess they don't care.
And it's because they they did care at three a.m. when you weren't there. And so we set this up and what I'll do is I'll get on the other side of it and I can see them and I can see into our living room area and I can and I'll stand and I'll go. Oh, oh, oh, oh, there's some stuff out here. Oh, it's going to be pretty good. I think, oh, I think we're going to have a good morning. I just try to play it up a little bit and make them wait a little bit and get them a little amped up.
And the passage we're going to read this morning, in some ways, I feel like Jesus is doing that, that he's standing in a position where he can see something we can't see. And he's trying to help us understand if you could see if you're in my vantage point and you can see what I can see. This is how you would live. This is how you would behave. This is how you would feel. And so Jesus, because he can see what we can't see, is trying to help us wrap our heads around something this morning.
So we're going to read just a very short parable to one verse. Matthew chapter 13, verse 44. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Let's pray.
Lord, this parable is simple, but it's profound. And Lord, I ask that by the work of your spirit, you would help us to believe this this morning. That this would go beyond a truism that is in our mind, but it would become rock solid truth that is in our hearts and that guides the way we live. And work and labor and spend our time and our money. And we ask for your help and your grace in the name of Jesus this morning. Amen.
Let's read that again. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. All right. So the first thing I think we need to answer.
Is what is the kingdom of heaven? Because he says the kingdom of heaven is like and he's going to tell us some aspect of the kingdom of heaven, but it would help us to have some understanding of the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus in Matthew has been talking about the kingdom of heaven nonstop. So I'm going to give you a quick definition and then we'll expand on it briefly. The kingdom of heaven is the effective rule and reign of Jesus. Or the kingdom of heaven is the applied rule and reign of Jesus.
So if you just think about heaven and your kind of concept from that, and hopefully it's got some biblical groundings, but if you think about heaven that you've got a good start. There's no sin. There's no pain. There's no death. There's no sorrow. There's joy and delight.
Love, pleasure, forgiveness, hope, love, relationship, grace. That it's the application of the work of the cross. It's all the good things that Jesus came to purchase on our behalf. So that when Jesus, we celebrate Christmas and we set up nativities and we see mangers. There's this picture of Jesus coming. He's God in the flesh coming to rescue us.
And what he did was he came to bring the kingdom. The first thing he preaches is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That God's kingdom is in breaking on the world. And so the kingdom of heaven is certainly our eternity. But it is also breaking in on us now.
And so what Jesus is saying is if you understand the kingdom, what I've come to accomplish, what my rule and reign is like, this is how you'll behave. Okay. So that's the kingdom. He says the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. I love the word treasure. Because it just, do you want treasure?
Yes. Like it just encapsulates. Like one of your goals forever has been to find some buried treasure. Or a map to buried treasure. Like ever since you watched the Goonies, you were like, this would be great. I want in on this.
I want some buried treasure. And you may be, as a child, were convinced that it was more likely to happen and that treasure was more likely to be found. But this is a thing, this idea that we want treasure. And that's what he's tapping into. He goes, you want treasure, right? And the answer is, yes, I'd love some treasure.
That sounds great. He says, well, that's what the kingdom of heaven is like. It's a treasure. So here's what he says. It's like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and he buys that field.
So there's this picture of this man. He's traveling through a field. It's not his field, but they didn't have the same kind of like trespass laws. He's allowed to walk through the field. He just can't be tearing things up or stealing things. He's walking through the field.
Maybe he's got a staff and he's walking and it's like sand noise, gravel noise, sand noise. He says, dunk, dunk. And he thinks, maybe this is treasure because that's what you think, right? If you find something buried, there's this moment. I don't care if it's in your backyard or whatever. There's this moment where you're like, treasure.
That's what he does. His little heart flutters. He lays the stick down. He starts digging. Wood. Wood.
It's a good sign. You know what you hide in wood? Treasure. He starts working his way around. He finds the edge of like a chest. What kind of chest?
Probably a treasure chest. He works his way around. He keeps digging. Now, at some point, he was like early, he was a little bit like he's, you know, trying to act a little nonchalant about it. As soon as he starts getting to the corner and this, I mean, this man's, he looks like a cartoon dog. Like he's digging.
He gets this, he finds it. It's the top of this thing. And now he's going to try to get to open. And it is a chest. And you know, his heart is beating because this is either the beginning of the rest of his life where he finds treasure or it's the beginning of law and order special victims unit. There's something, something's happening though.
You don't bury a box for no reason. Y'all, he opens it up. It's treasure. Gold. Gems. A lamp.
He rubs it. Nothing. Still expensive though. Treasure. And it apparently can kind of tell like this is some old treasure. They don't probably know this is here.
So what's he do? He stares at it. Is captivated by it. And then he slams it down, closes it up and buries it again. And like tries to Mark where it was, but also tries to, you know, he's like sprinkling like leaves and stuff on it or little bits of grass. Like nobody's been here.
Nobody dug. He goes over here and like scuffs up the ground. So it looks like this is just a thing people do around here. There's just spots like this, but he marks his spot and he hides it again. He leaves and we don't know. I don't know if he walked out and saw a for sale sign in front of it and was like, or if he just was like, I'm going to find out who owns it and I'm going to put an offer on this.
Just going to see if they'll take it. He has to try to maybe play it cool. Hey, I saw your trashy garbage field you had over there. And I'm assuming you're not doing anything with it or any crops over there. It doesn't seem like anything could grow. And I was thinking maybe I'd buy it from you to be nice to you.
And the person's like, I'll sell it. He sells all that he has. And how does he sell all that he has? In his joy. Now, if you knew him, he starts looking kind of crazy. He sells his house.
He sells everything in his house. He sells his little piece of property. He sells his new donkey he just got. He sells everything. Everything. Everything.
Like I almost picture this man barefoot walking over there with the stuff that he's going to buy this with. He sells everything. And if you knew him, you'd be going, what are you doing? He's like, I'm buying that field. That field? In this market?
You know why that's been sitting there, right? That field? But he knows something that they don't know. He knows that that field is worth everything. Because there's something there that they don't know about. And so in his joy, whistling, skipping, he goes down and he buys that field.
And Jesus says, if you knew what the kingdom was like, that's what you look like. If you could imagine what the kingdom is like, well, that's what you'd look like. Because the kingdom is worth everything. certainly this is salvation. Certainly it means that anything that would stand in the way of you surrendering your life to Jesus, get rid of it. This is not a call to earn your salvation. It's not at all.
And we understand that because Jesus came to earn our salvation through his death. But it is a call to value what Jesus has accomplished as the ultimate treasure. and to live our lives in such a way that the kingdom is advanced. That more people come to know Jesus. From the moment that man dug that treasure up and buried that treasure again, do you know what he thought about? That treasure. That was it.
He didn't go to work. He did not show back up and do his normal duties. Why would he? He has a treasure. What he did was he leveraged everything he possibly had towards that end goal. It captured his heart.
It captured his imagination. And the truth is everybody in this room has something that's captured captured our imagination. It's captured our heart. You have something this year that you daydreamed about that you look forward to. You have something that drove you forward to work, to labor. I don't know what it was.
I don't know if you dreamed about romance this year and you just kept thinking if I could just get this to work out, if I could just get in this type of relationship, if I could just have this happen for me, then I'd be okay. I'd feel good. I don't know what you treasured this year. I don't know if it was a promotion or just the idea of progressing in life. Just so y'all know, that's something that America has sold us and we have bought it wholesale. If you've ever said the phrase, I should be farther along by now and you are not talking about following Jesus, that's something America has sold you on.
I should have a little bit more money. I've been in this house for a while. I'd probably be in a bigger house by now. I've had this car for a while. I should probably have a new car by now. I should probably have learned how to make my clothes match by now.
Like, I should have just done some things by now. Should have just moved forward a little bit in life. I don't know. I don't know what you dreamed about, what you longed for. Some of you work really, really hard, but it's just because you love resting. I'm going to work so hard, I'll never have to work again.
I'm going to take so many naps. I don't know. But what Jesus says is, as he stands with a vantage point we don't have, he says, oh, if you knew what the kingdom was like, it'd be hard to think about anything else. If you knew what the kingdom was like, you'd give everything for it. And it's such a simple picture. If you thought, what would I do this week if I found out there was treasure buried in my backyard, but it was 20 feet deep?
Tell you, I'd figure out how to dig a 20-foot hole. Coming to work? I'm at work. There's treasure here. And no, not the job you're talking about. Like, that's how we would be.
Like, that's the concept he's getting after and he's saying, no, no, no. And I know I'm not supposed to say that because I'm a preacher and I'm supposed to treasure this more, but I'm just telling you, like, that's how it works with our hearts that we would want to find that. And that's what he's saying. That if you really knew what this was, you would give everything for it. You ever seen the show Storage Wars? Yeah, no battle in it whatsoever, just for the record.
It's people who bid on storage units, which is, again, a nice little American hallmark of consumerism. We don't have enough room in our homes to hold all our stuff. So we buy, we rent closets from people so that we can put our stuff in there and visit it from time to time. And it's a good industry. It's booming. But people periodically don't go back for whatever reason to get their stuff.
And after a while, they haven't paid for their units. It's forfeited over to the storage unit people and they have a TV show where they auction off storage units. Now, in the show, you're not allowed to walk into the storage unit. They just roll it up. It's an invisible barrier that you're not allowed to pass, but you can peek in there. And they can try to guess what's in there.
Is that the kind of stuff I'd like to sell? Is there going to be any? And these people are modern day little treasure hunters hoping that there's something in that box that's worth something. And the reason the show is fun is because we like treasure hunting and we're hoping that they bought either something amazing or nothing at all. That's the point of the show. I want you to open a box full of shredded paper or a Fabergé egg.
That's why I'm watching. But they're peeking in and they're trying to decide is this worth buying? And they put a valuation in their head and then they put where I'm willing to bid and then they auction it off. Now, the show would be ruined if they all got to show up with appraisers, walk into the storage unit and appraise everything. I think the whole process would be ruined, not just the TV show. This wouldn't work anymore.
But let's say you and I go on the show and we decide to cheat because we're like that. And we smuggle an appraiser in the night before, you know, like Ocean's 11 style, but it's like Ocean's 3 because we didn't have that many people. And we sneak them in, our appraiser appraises it and then hides in their forest and then we just peek in and they're just going to give us a little signal to let us know how much to bid. And let's say, no matter what the auctioneer's doing, our appraiser just keeps going. It's worth it. Can I get 200?
Yep. That's why you got to make noises. You can't just, you got to say, oh yeah, like that. I'll do that part because it's the funnest part. But they keep doing it and every time we look, he's saying up.
And y'all, that's what Jesus does with the kingdom. If you looked at him and said, is it worth this? He goes, more than that. If you looked at him and said, let me ask you a question, Lord. Is the kingdom worth instead of me treating my home like a retreat from the world, figuring out how to get to know my neighbors, even though I hate that? More than that.
Absolutely. Is the kingdom worth me showing up to work earlier or staying later so that I can get to know my coworkers? Is it worth me actually eating lunch in the break room instead of in my car listening to true crime broadcast? More than that. Is it worth me setting aside money every month and trying to work to increase that every year so that more and more of my money goes away to bless the poor and to work towards kingdom causes and to support missionaries and churches and wherever I see you at work? Is it worth that?
Yeah. More than that. Lord, if you call me to serve you and I've got to go overseas and I might not ever be able to get married, I might not ever get to live out what I thought my life was going to be, is it actually worth that? More than that. Lord, what if I have to give up on my career? What if I end up not really looking like a success?
What if I give away so much money or so much of my time that we live in a smaller house in a smaller place if I don't get to keep up with my peers? Is it worth that? More than that. Jesus is saying if you could see the kingdom it's worth everything and you'd give up everything for it. And so the two questions that I think are helpful for us to consider after we've thought through what has captured my imagination? What's captured my heart?
What am I actually pursuing? The two questions I think we need to ask is what stands in the way of me pursuing the kingdom? What stands in the way? I've had people before tell me I'll follow Jesus but I'm not going to give blank up and they'll pick a sin. I'm not going to give that up. I've just said well you're not going to follow Jesus.
This is not how it works. He's the king. You are not. The kingdom is his kingdom. You don't walk in and dictate the rules. What stands in your way?
Because if there's something that stands in the way of you following Jesus it's not worth it. Second question is what do I have that I can leverage for the kingdom? Because maybe you have relationships. Maybe you have some social capital. Maybe you live in a neighborhood and nobody knows Jesus. Instead of moving out of that neighborhood you just need to use your home as a beacon for the gospel.
There are some people who are medical doctors that need to not make a bunch of money in the U.S. and go overseas to be missionaries as Jesus commands. And there are some people who are medical doctors who need to be godly, Christian, humble, generous medical doctors here. Who love and serve and know their coworkers. Who share the gospel with them. Who share the gospel with those who are hurting and dying here. And who give away their money generously for the sake of the other people who need to go.
So what's in the way and what do I have that I can leverage for the sake of the kingdom? And y'all there's no blanket answer to that. That's submitted to Jesus. But you go to him and you say I value you above everything else. I value the kingdom above everything else. What do you want?
I had a pastor one time said that it's like you took a piece of paper that was a contract and you signed your name at the bottom of a blank sheet of paper and you slide it across the table. To Jesus and you say fill in the terms. My name's on it. I trust you. Fill in the terms. I want to read a quote.
It's one of my favorite quotes. If you've been around a while you've probably heard me read this before. If you stay around for the next five years you'll hear it again. This is a there was a missionary named John G. Patton who accepted the call to do mission work in the New Hebrides Islands. This was right around 1900s right before and there were some missionaries that had been sent to the New Hebrides that had gotten out of the boat were immediately murdered and eaten by cannibals within minutes of showing up.
And this was well known that the first missionary expedition to this set of islands had gone very poorly. There were some other islands around where things had been working and John G. Patton felt called and said I'm going to this island. And when he was talking it through some of the leadership in his church there was a man named Mr. Dixon who was an older gentleman in the church and one of the leaders in the church and he just at some point as they were talking it through he got overwhelmed and he just said the cannibals you're going to be eaten by cannibals. It was like he couldn't get through to John G.
Patton like this is what's going to happen to you. You're going to be eaten by cannibals. Like this is not safe. You cannot devote your life to this. This will just go poorly. You are going to be eaten by cannibals.
And we have John's response in a letter that he eventually wrote to Mr. Dixon. And I'll read this quote from his letter. He said Mr. Dixon you are advanced in years now and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus it will make no difference to me whether I'm eaten by cannibals or by worms.
And in the great day my resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer. I love that because I think John Patton understood what Jesus was saying in Matthew chapter 13 verse 44. it's worth everything. There's the kingdom is a treasure to be valued above everything and if I can but live and die honoring and serving Jesus what else is there? If you don't know Jesus then whatever stands in the way of that you need to get rid of it because his kingdom is wonderful and glorious and his forgiveness and salvation are graciously freely offered to you and if you know Jesus you will spend eternity loved welcomed cared for in a place where there is no sin and there is no pain and there is no discomfort and there is no relational strife we have a treasure and it's the kingdom and we're to live now leveraging everything for it earlier this year we stood up and we said that we thought we had rightly as a church we had rightly identified and understood the idea that we're missionaries wherever we are that if the Lord has placed you somewhere he's placed you there with intent and that you should not think that missionaries are only people who go overseas but they're there that you are to be a missionary in your neighborhood in your job and we're we're fine with that we believe that's true and we've said that over and over and over and over again but what we said earlier this year was that we had not done a good enough Job of helping our church understand that some of us are meant to be missionaries somewhere else that some of us are meant to surrender as John G.
And over and over again but what we said earlier this year was that we had not done a good enough Job of helping our church understand that some of us are meant to be missionaries somewhere else that some of us are meant to surrender as John G. Patton surrendered and go and that right now we live in a world where there are more unreached people groups more lost people than ever before and we showed you this map and we said that that red
Is bad that the green areas are reached areas the yellow areas are kind of in the middle and that the red is unreached areas and the reason the red is red is because it's hard to get there it's hostile to the gospel but that we're supposed to go because we have an eternal treasure that cannot be taken from us there was a young lady in our church Jamie Kern who began doing an internship with us this summer trying to discern
The call to mission work what we had said was that we were uniquely positioned as a church to try to get to that red area to that 1040 window to that section of the world that is hard to get to because there are three mission organizations that office in our building and so we said God by his grace has given us an on ramp to that area and that we need to take it
And there was a young lady who did a joint internship with our church in 1040 Hope during the summer and then she left and went to Lebanon for three months to prayerfully discern the call to missions she's been in Lebanon for three months and Lebanon is a more advanced country over there but is in turmoil right now their financial system has fallen apart American money
US dollars still do okay over there but everything else is millions of dollars to buy bread like it's there's rolling blackouts it's in a very bad state she went and spent three months there crimes on the rise it's a difficult place to be right now she went and spent three months over there prayerfully discerning am I supposed to be here learning Kurdish because she's been serving with a Kurdish church Kurdish speaking church in Lebanon
And the Kurdish people are an unreached people group that means there's almost none no no gospel witness among those people at all and so she's trying to learn Kurdish so that she can help this church that's trying to plant among the Kurdish people that church is a few years old it has like 150 people 100 of them have been baptized in the Kurdish that are Kurdish
People's placing faith in Jesus and Jamie Kern has committed felt called by the Lord and committed to stay in Lebanon at least for a year holding open handed to the Lord as what he has next and she's sorted through some of this we've had conversations through some
Of this I think I'm having to give this up I think I'm having to give this up and she keeps circling back around to I think it's worth it and so what she'll be doing for the next year in Lebanon is she'll be working with and for 1040 Hope continuing to learn Kurdish which by the
Way her Kurdish teacher is a Muslim and she's been able to build a great relationship with this lady and her family and be praying for that that she would have an opportunity as she learns Kurdish to share the gospel with this lady but she's going to continue to serve this Kurdish
Church and she's going to be a liaison for 1040 Hope to do in the field coordinator for internships and for missions teams so that when internships go and missions go and
Mission teams go that she's going to help them get on the ground figure out where they are get to the right place and
Help them overseas so she's going to serve the Kurdish church while she's there and internships because she said that she was praying through Lord what do
You want she just got stuck on the passage where it says the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few she said okay
Lord if I can be here and help get more laborers here that's what I want to do so our gift project this year
Is two fold the first thing we want to do is raise $15,000 right now for a vehicle we've been renting vehicles for her right
Now while she's been there originally we weren't but the state of Lebanon has gotten worse and worse and there have been more abductions
For people who are using Ubers and ride shares there have been more crime and stuff for people who are walking on the street
There's been some hairy situations when she's on the street for 1040 hope that she will be able to drive and that car will
Look something like this that's a car for sale in Lebanon right now I've been told to not guarantee you that we will buy
That car because we gotta get the money first and get it to Lebanon and buy a car and that might not still be
In that parking lot ready to sell but if you google it is about $15,000 to buy a vehicle in American dollars and so
We are trying to raise that amount of money to buy that car right now and this is for a couple of purposes it's
One so that she has safe transportation all the time it's also so that when interns go and missions teams go they have automatic
Transportation that's why we're buying something bigger than what she needs so that she can help get people around and use her car for
Some ministry while she's there and then it also helps the 1040 hope team because if after a year the Lord leads for her
To come back or to go somewhere else they still have a vehicle there that they can continue to use for the same purpose
And so that's our first thing that we want to do missionary in the Kurdish church and so among this unreached people group there's
A southern baptist pastor with them and she's able to serve them as well through 1040 hope so we're excited to be able to help
Her do this the second thing we want to do is fund her mission work for a year which is $29,225 that is for housing
All the necessities that she will need that's her salary she will have some basically like get out of the country money that's sitting there ready for
Her to go if she needs to be able to leave quickly so that's already built into how they fund and that's her insurance
That will be given in pledges so that we will commit to build it into your budget to raise support for one year for
Her to do the work that she's going to be doing that's our hope is that we will give $15,000 right now and $29,000
For one year of missionary support and that's a lot but we're trying as we follow Jesus to submit our lives to him whatever he
Asks and we're trying to intentionally in this moment take our wallets press on our heart a little bit and remind ourselves that our
Treasure is not here but that we have an eternal hope and an eternal home and it's worth everything and we're just trying to
Collectively as a church say we believe you we believe Jesus when he says that so let's follow him and we're excited to get the
Opportunity to do it and we'll celebrate however the Lord leads for us to be generous in this season let's pray Lord thank you
Thank you for the hope of salvation that we have we thank you Lord that your kingdom is truly valuable and that you came
To rescue and to redeem and to purchase us out of our sin and Lord we ask that we would live with eternity set
In our hearts so that our normal life would look crazy to the people who don't know the treasure but that it would make
Perfect sense to everybody who knows what your kingdom is like may we be a church that values you above everything else and in
Our joy gives up everything we can for your kingdom in Jesus name amen band is going to come back up we're going to
Sing and in a moment Spencer will give a few more specific instructions on how we get to participate in our gift project this year
But I'm excited for us to get to step out in faith in this way
The Best Use of the Time
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here, excited to be here with y'all this morning. I recently read an article on the Gospel Coalition written by a man named Joe Carter, and he was just reviewing some research that had been done by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, and that's where George Barna works. He's over top of that research center. And they recently did a study, and basically one of the major findings was that of self-reporting Christians, and we're going to get to that in a second, but people who would, if you gave them a little fill-in-the-blank or checkbox and they had to put whether they were Christian or Muslim or nothing, they would check Christian.
Again, 60% of them don't believe that the Holy Spirit is a real being. So the Holy Spirit is not a real person, does not have personhood, is more of a force or some kind of an idea. So that's startling. The Holy Spirit is a real being, but that means 60% of the people who would say they're Christians aren't Trinitarian, so they don't believe some basic doctrine. But the beginning of this article, it kind of goes into understanding what it means to be kind of a self-reporting Christian.
I want to read some of this. It says, determining how many Christians are in America depends on how we limit the term. For example, the vast majority of Americans, right at 70%, still self-identify as Christians. So if you just ask somebody in the U.S., are you a Christian? 70% of them will say yes. And at first, that sounds great.
Sweet. Sweet. 70% of Americans are Christians. But then, if you break this down further, it says, if we consider only those who consider themselves to be born-again Christians, the number drops to about 35%. So being born again means I wasn't a Christian when I was born.
I didn't just get born into this and grow up Christian. I actually had to, at some point, repent of sin, place faith in Jesus. I had to have him change me. That's what a born-again Christian is, that I was at one point dead in my sin, and now I've placed my faith in Jesus. Just so you all know, that's what we believe. That's what we are, is that we've had to be redeemed by Christ, and we had to place our faith in him.
So it's not just, I celebrated Christmas growing up. My favorite movie is Christmas Vacation, so I'm a Christian. That's not what this is. It's, I actually have placed my faith in Jesus. Well, that drops the number to 35%. It keeps going.
It says, it breaks it down further, and they have a category called Integrated Disciples. They hold beliefs like the Bible is accurate and the reliable word of God. They believe that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and just, meaning he's a good creator of the universe, and that he still rules the universe today, and that our choices are moral choices that honor or dishonor God. So, the percentage of Americans that believe the Bible is God's word, that God is good, and he rules over the world, and that our choices are moral choices, is 6% of the population in the United States. That's also what we are.
We believe that the Bible is true. That's why we spend all this time every Sunday opening it. That's why we study it together. That's why we do the things in it that we don't want to do. Y'all know that? That's obedience.
We read parts of the Bible where we go, I wish that wasn't a rule, but okay. I trust that you're good, and you're all-knowing, and you're powerful, and you rule over the universe. That's 6% of the population. The reason I share that is that we're in the third week of our series where we're saying, I am a missionary, and I don't want us to miss the fact that if you are a Christian who believes the Bible and actually seeks to apply it to your life, you are the vast minority in the country that you live in, and that you already live on a mission field. The idea that we're Americans, so we should send missionaries abroad because that's where the pagans are, is incorrect.
That you are surrounded by people who do not know Jesus. Many of whom do not want to know Jesus, or in some ways, worse, already think they're Christians when they aren't. Some of the work we have to do in the South is deconvert people from fake Christianity so that we can convert them to real Christianity. It's 6%. Let's say it's better in the South.
Let's say it's 25%. Let's say it's 30%. That means that on the road you live on, probably 7 out of the 10 houses are filled with people who don't know Jesus. That the job you work, probably 7 out of 10 people who don't know Christ. Of the friends you have, 2 out of the 3. That's just a joke about how well you can make friends.
But there's this reality to, we're surrounded by people. When you're stuck in traffic, 8 out of 10, 7 out of the 10 of the people in traffic with you, when you're in line at the grocery store, we're surrounded by people who don't know Jesus and it matters that they don't know Jesus. We want them to know Christ. And so it matters that we take seriously the call to be missionaries. That's what we've been studying. We're in Colossians chapter 4.
If you want to grab a Bible, go to Colossians chapter 4. We will have this on the screen as well. But we are Christians and we want people to know Christ. And in Colossians 4, Paul's writing. He's in prison. He's writing to them.
The past two weeks we looked at verses 2 through 4. We're going to look at 5 and 6 today, but we're going to pick up in 2 just to kind of walk through and remind us what we've been looking at. He says this, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us. And this is what we looked at the first week was that for us to be effective missionaries, we need the effective work of God. And therefore, we ought to be praying, being watchful in it and steadfast in it.
Spencer pointed out that without prayer, it ain't got no gas in it. That prayer is the fuel for mission. And therefore, if we're not praying, we're not going to see the effective work of God. And so we have to be, if we're going to be a missionary people, we have to be a praying people. Then he says this, he says, at the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
So second week, we looked at the fact that Paul's in prison and he's not praying that he'd get out. He's not praying that he'd get favor with them, that he'd be released, that they'd know that he was innocent. He's not praying any of that. He's praying, hey, while I'm in prison, pray that the Lord will open some doors for me to share the gospel. And he says, it's a word that I have to declare and pray that I'll make it clear. And so we looked at the fact that as we are people praying for opportunities, that we have to be ready to articulate the gospel.
We have to be ready to tell people the good news about Christ. And then here's what we're going to look at. Paul turns in five and six and begins to give them instruction. He says, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. That's what we're going to study kind of bit by bit as we go through today.
So let's pray and let's study that together. God, we ask for your grace. We ask for your help. We ask for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to understand this, to apply this, and to be effective missionaries to the people around us who don't know you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
So let's read that again. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. The first thing I want us to look at is that term outsider. There's one word here that he uses to describe those who don't know Jesus. He says outsiders.
Now we probably don't use that language a lot. Maybe you thought it was a pretty good book that you read in middle school. But Paul says that we ought to understand that those who are inside and those who are outside. This idea that there are those who are in Christ. That's who he wrote this book to. He says to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.
This idea of being an outsider is a negative term. But Paul's not against outsiders. Christians aren't against outsiders. We actually don't believe that we are better than outsiders. Do you know that about Christians? That we don't believe we're better.
We just believe we're better off. That if I'm in Christ it's not from something I've done. It's from something Christ has done. And therefore I'm better off to have Christ than to not have Christ. That there are those who are in Christ and those who are outside of Christ. And to be outside of Christ is to be outside of the love of God.
To be outside of the grace of Christ that redeems. To be outside of the family of Christ that he's made. And this is extremely helpful that Paul uses this word. Because what he does is he says hey there's two types of people in the world. Those who belong to Jesus and those who don't. And that is the primary way that we ought to as Christians look at the world.
Now. My prayer is that there are some people in this room this morning. Who would be considered outsiders. Who have not yet placed their faith in Jesus. Let me tell you something. You're welcome here.
And we want you to know Jesus. Because we believe he's good. That he saves sinners. We have that little blue screen thing that says we believe that Jesus is better than everything else. We actually believe that. I recently learned how to deep fry Oreos.
Yeah. It's actually a lot easier than you think. I don't mind sharing it with you at some point. If you'd like to gain some weight. I went on vacation with my family. And one of the things I did was I deep fried Oreos for them.
Because deep fried Oreos are delicious. And I love my family. And I want to share good things with them. And the truth is that's how we feel about Christ. But so infinitely more.
That he's good. That he's wonderful. That he redeems. And so we want to share Christ with other people. Not because we think we're better. But because we think he's better.
And that we're better because of him. We're better off because of him. And so this idea that we would look at the world and we would see it as there are those who are outside of Christ. And there are those who are in Christ. And we want everybody to be in Christ. Because he's good.
But this is helpful for us. Because it's quite possible that you use a different gauge. And you probably don't use the language of inside, outside. But you probably have a different gauge of who you think is your club. Maybe it's Americans. Maybe it depends on what the competition is.
But we're for America. Maybe it's who you vote for. So you're an elephant or a donkey. Some of you are like, I'm Green Party. Well, good for you, man. Like, maybe that's your club.
And if people believe these things, then that's who's inside. Maybe it's people who like a certain thing. Ride motorcycles or play board games or whatever. This soccer team, that soccer team. We pick random things to say that this is the main thing that I'm about. This is who I know.
These people are my people. And the reality is, Paul says, no. You have people who are in Christ. And then you have everybody else. And we ought to be mindful of when we're walking in life with people who don't know Christ. That's how we ought to think about the world.
That there are people on the other side of the globe who belong to Christ. And therefore, they belong to you. In a much more real way than people who live across the street. That vote like you. Drive the same kind of vehicle as you. Enjoy the same type of fried chicken as you.
But don't know Christ. And that you ought to consider. When you're interacting with people, whether or not they belong to Jesus. For their good. Not in some sort of elitist way. And we're going to get there.
Not in some sort of, I'm better than you. That's not the reality. That's not what we believe. We believe that we're better off because of Jesus. But that we want everybody to know Jesus.
And so he says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders. That you ought to think, am I going to be interacting with people who don't know Jesus? And you ought to think about how you ought to interact with them. So that's the next thing he says. He says, making the best use of the time. So let's talk about time for a second.
Let's talk about this idea of making the best use of the time. But we're going to talk about time before we talk about using it well. Everybody has a limited amount of time. That's why we talk about spending time or wasting time. It's running out. We don't know how much time we have.
But we know that we're, in any given week, we're all given the same amount of time. But we don't know in our lives how long that's going to be. And one of the things about time is that it speeds up the older you get. It runs by faster. This is why, parents with small children, you can win anything with your children. Because you've got all the time in the world.
Just so you know, when you're facing off with a toddler, if they're sitting in a high chair, 30 minutes in a high chair is like a week to them. 30 minutes is nothing to you. You can win a battle of wills with any toddler you'd like. Because time is slow. At the beginning of my son, it was his second day of kindergarten. We're in the line to go drop him off for his second day of kindergarten.
And he's in the back and he goes, Daddy, I can't wait until I'm six and all of this is over. I thought, ooh, buddy. It's going to take a little longer than that. But guess what? The first day of kindergarten was apparently a really long day. And the second day was daunting.
But if you think about it, elementary school is a really long time because it's twice the length of your life. You enter when you're five. You exit when you're ten. It's half your life was spent in elementary school. It took forever. Middle school was a little faster.
Some people stayed in a little longer than others, but it was a little faster. High school was a little faster than when you went and got your first Job or you went to college. That zipped by pretty quickly. Suddenly you turn around. You've lived in a neighborhood for five, ten years. You've been married for 20 years.
You've got 30-year-old children. You look and you realize you've been in a job for 35 years, 40 years. You start clipping off decades. It feels like 1980 was 10 years ago. And it was 40 years ago. There's a reality to this.
Here's the other thing we believe about time. I didn't invent this illustration, but I think it's helpful. Let's say this is a timeline. This yellow part of the string is your life. You're born here. During your life, you work some jobs, have some friends, have some hobbies.
Maybe you get married. Maybe you have some children. Maybe you work different jobs. Maybe you work one Job for years and years and years. Pretty soon, 60, 70, 80, 90. But at some point, your life ends.
You say, well, that looks pretty short. There's a saying. Life is short. But we're Christians. And we believe there's an eternity. And that when you die, you step into eternity.
Whether you know Christ or don't. So here is your life, and you meet Jesus. Everybody meets Jesus at some point, face to face. For those who know Christ, that's what we've been waiting for. And for those who don't know Christ, that's terrifying. And then we go into eternity.
And pretty quickly, we've been in eternity three, four, five, ten, twenty times longer than we were ever on earth. We sing Amazing Grace, and it says, we've been there for 10,000 years. And we have all the time left. We haven't clipped off any amount of time because it's eternity. If you belong to Jesus, this is joyous. There's peace.
There's family. There's good food. There's delight. There's worship. You're finally at home. And it never ends.
And if you don't belong to Jesus, and you stood in your own righteousness, which the Bible would say is unrighteousness, and you said, I'll bear the penalty for my sin, rather than trusting Christ and His grace, that He would bear the penalty for your sin. And Jesus says, this is a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That is a place where the worm doesn't die and the fire isn't quenched, meaning internal and external torment. Now, if we're Christians, at some point, we've got to realize we believe this part is more important than this part. At some point, if we really believe what we say we believe, then we've got to acknowledge that this part ought to be lived in light of this part.
We understand this in small ways. You know when you take your kids to like a little fair, or if you go to a fair and you see little kids and they're all running around with like Elsa on their face, or like a tiger face or whatever? There's a reason why that washes off. There's no actual tattoo artists set up at the county fair. Because children shouldn't make decisions like that. Because when you're eight, looking like a tiger is amazing.
Not when you're 38. Makes it harder to get a job. And the reality is, some of us run around making decisions that only make sense here. And if we belong to Jesus and we believe in eternity, we ought to make decisions that make sense here. And we ought to care. We ought to care deeply about our co-workers and our neighbors.
And what this is going to look like for them. That's why Paul says, make the best use. Because you only got a little bit here. The rest of it's here. So he wants us to make the best use of the time.
That we would consider, as we interact with people, do they know Christ? And how do I use that time well? Some of you, you're in school right now. You're in high school. You're about to spend four years. Or you're about to be done spending four years with people.
Four years. That you've known them. That you've connected with them. That you've been their friend. Have you told them about Jesus? Have you prayed for them?
Some of you, you're finishing up your major. You've been in the same classes with the same people. You studied together. Laughed together. High-fived. Cried in the same math classroom together.
Have you prayed for them? Have you cared about their eternity? We'll turn around. And you'll realize, I've lived in the same neighborhood for ten years. Did you spend the time well? Did you pray for your neighbors?
Did you get to know them? Did you go out of your way to be a little weird here? Because you care about something that's way, way more important? Or we'll work a job for twenty years. Twenty years. You'll have had twenty years.
Did we care about our coworkers? Did we plead with God for the sake of their souls? That's what he means by make the best use of the time. Do we actually live as if we believe eternity is real? Brandon Clements, one of the pastors at Midtown in Lexington, is part of the Grassroots Network with us. He helped co-author a book called The Simplest Way to Change the World.
And in it, they're talking about how to use your home. How to use hospitality as a way to try to help share the gospel with people. And they list four things that they think are current in our culture that help fight against us. actually using our homes well. And I would say it's the same for using our time well. But the four they list are, first one is isolation.
That we just isolate ourselves? That it's easy to live by ourselves? That our culture allows us to be isolated from one another? Cambria, if you'll go to the isolation's level. That we would be, we can just work at home. We can work and go home.
We can pick up food. We can cook food for one. We don't live in a village. You don't have to. The truth is, a lot of us don't really like people. And I'm with you.
We're Christians. We believe people are the worst. It's just easier to be. We have this new thing that's consistently growing. But we have social anxiety where it's just hard to be around people.
You talk yourself out of it. It takes energy to do it. It's scary. And so there's this idea that most of my life, I just kind of want to be by myself. It's easier that way. The second one is relaxation.
That a primary goal in our lives as Americans is just to have downtime. That work hard just so that you can rest. That the purpose of your home is for you to get away from everything. The purpose of your home is to just be protected from the world. That it's your oasis. That we somehow deserve the idea that we would work, but then we would just go relax.
And that we just need all this extra relaxation time. And it keeps us from being good missionaries. And it wastes our time. Not to say relaxation is bad, but that we have overdone it. Third one is entertainment. Entertainment.
Once a week, my phone dings and tells me how much time I spent staring at it. Very rudely, I might add. But how much time we spend on social media, how much time we spend watching television, how much time we spend watching TV shows. If you could get a doctorate from watching The Office, I would be Dr. Phillips. We waste our time just being entertained.
Like that's the purpose of life. The fourth one is busyness. We just fill our schedules with things that don't really matter. But our schedules are full. Got too much going on. Got too much on my plate.
Can't participate in that. We live our lives as if this is all that really matters. And honestly, I think the four of those come together to just give us an overall apathetic numbness to the reality of the world. That there are those who are in Christ and those who are outside of Christ and that it matters eternally. I think we have to consider what really matters and are we living our lives as if we actually believe the gospel and are we living our lives in a way that makes the best use of the time. And the way that phrase works to make the best use of the time, it actually means redeeming the time.
Meaning buy it back. Buy up the time. So you're going to have to spend the time. Well, redeem it. Use it for something good. So that we would be wise in our walking with outsiders.
So that we would redeem the time. Now think about this. Some of you are in school. Well, redeem that time. Get to know your classmates. Pray for them.
Share the gospel with them. Go out of your way to be around them. You say, I don't really like being around people. Okay? Love people enough to put up with it. You don't have to be an extrovert to be a good missionary.
You can do this one-on-one. You can do this slowly, but we have to do this. And we have to do this intentionally. Some of you work 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week with the same people. Guess what? God in His grace has infiltrated your workplace with a Christian and held four or five other office mates hostage.
They can't go anywhere. They have to clock in. They have to stay there. Pray for them. Talk to them. Don't just stare at your phone on your lunch break.
Get to know people. I've had people say before, I just don't, it's so hard to work where I work because I'm the only Christian. Thank Jesus that He sent a Christian. Don't retreat from that. Charge into that. Thank God in His mercy.
It's so hard to be in my neighborhood. All my neighbors are pagans. They're up partying at night. Why don't you be up praying? Why don't you go to some of the parties? Why don't you interact with them?
Why don't you love them? Why don't we take seriously the idea that we were missionaries? The reality is that if you were like, okay, I'm going to move to this other country to be a missionary, you would consider how am I going to join and infiltrate the culture and how am I going to be able to get along with the norms of life with them and how am I going to use that for the gospel? And the reality is if you belong to Jesus, you have already done that part of it. You're already in the culture. You already have people around you.
Now begin to be a missionary. Use the time wisely. There are kind of rhythms of life that people go through and we get to join the normal rhythms of life with gospel intentionality. So if you work at a gym, start praying for the people at the gym. Have you ever been at a park? Have you been at the gym and some weirdo comes over and just starts talking to you?
I'm not talking about hitting on you. I'm just like some person who just wants to be your friend for some odd reason. You have this thought, at least I do, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I came to the park because I wanted to be away from humans and this one showed up and wants to be my friend. But what if I thought less about this and more about that and I said, thank you, Jesus.
This person wants to talk and now it's my chance to talk. This person wants a friend. They must be lonely or they have a bunch of friends and this is how they make them. But now they've run into a Christian and so I get to start redeeming this time. If you go to a gym, if you do recreation, if your children play little league sports or you go sign up for an adult kickball league. My children play, my son signed up for t-ball.
And I don't want y'all to feel sorry for me, but it did almost kill me. I don't know much about baseball, but I know about sports and watching them practice was torture. But I realized I'm going to be here, all these other parents are going to be here and I need to just start getting to know these people. So I just started being the person who just went around and started talking to other parents. And guess what? Just let me tell you some things.
They know they're going to have to stay part of the club and be there with their kids. They're not going to be rude to me. They're going to let me, they don't want me to talk to them, but they're going to let me come talk to them. And so I just started going and meeting all the dads and talking to them, trying to get to know them. Thankfully, COVID ended, t-ball, and I didn't have to keep going, but I was going to redeem the time. You eat 21 meals a week.
So do most of the people around you. Some of you are like, no, I do intermittent fasting. Okay. Well, good for you. You're already fasting. Start praying.
So the amount of time you would have been eating in the morning, pray. Pray. And then use your other 14 meals to try to build relationships with people. There's something about inviting people around the same table that signifies we belong to each other. Use your home to invite people to eat a meal. If that's too daunting, start by inviting them to a restaurant you like.
Start going to lunch with coworkers. But you're going to eat, start eating with people to build relationships with them. Start using the normal rhythms of life. There are neighborhoods where you can join Facebook groups, where you can have a bonfire, where you can have a cookout, where you and a group of people can watch the same TV shows. Some of you are moms with little children and you spend all your time at your house with little children. Guess what?
They need to know Jesus and you have hours upon hours to disciple them. Redeem that time. You're teaching them that school's important and that brushing their teeth is important. Have you taught them that Christ is important? It matters. Also, there are other moms potentially in your neighborhood that are also watching their children.
Redeem that time. Start inviting them to watch kids together. Start using your children as a mission opportunity. I use my children all the time as mission opportunities because it makes me less scary to have kids with me. I use them to go talk to other parents. I use them when I go knock on doors in my neighborhood to just tell them a thing or get to know them.
I have my kids with me because they just would assume I'm less likely to attack them. I'm not going to attack them anyway, but they at least get to see, okay, he's got a kid. He probably won't. But we want to redeem the time. We want to find things that our culture's normally doing. The trunk or treat that we're doing for Halloween.
Halloween is not a primary Christian holiday. It's not our favorite, you guys. But guess what? All your neighbors are going to come knock on your door or they're going to let you go knock on their door. Get to know your neighbors. Redeem the time.
They're going to knock on your door. You don't have to get super into Halloween, but to be thankful that all of your pagan neighbors are going to come hang out with you for a minute and you get to be kind and you get to be welcoming and you get to say, hey, we haven't met yet. Where do you live? It's nice to meet you. You get to talk to them. You get to know your neighbors one night of the year where they might all show up.
We're doing trunk or treat because the same thing, this neighborhood's going to show up. We get an opportunity to care about their souls for eternity. We get an opportunity. Christians should join PTA. Christians should join neighborhood watch associations. Christians should join every annoying little club that's offered just so you can redeem the time and be around some people who don't know Jesus.
Could you imagine? You go to meetings as a missionary. You help coach as a missionary. Let's not waste it. But let's buy it back.
So if we're in the right frame of mind, we're intentional, we're praying, and we're redeeming the time, this is what he says next. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. So he says, be intentional about being around non-believers. Then he says, here's how you interact with them. Here's how you talk. Here's how you talk.
Make it Clear
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I am one of the pastors here. So I don't know if you noticed last week and this week. Bulletins are back, you guys. Yeah, we stopped those before the pandemic.
They're back. So it's an encouragement. If you want to take sermon notes, there's a space in there. If you want prayer, we believe in prayer in our church. And if you want corporate prayer from the rest of your church family, you can reach out to our secretary for that. And it's also got some announcements in the back.
So there you go. They're back. All right. We are in a three-week series called I Am a Missionary. This is a three-week opportunity for us to refocus on what it means to be an everyday missionary here in our city. Last week, I started with what is one of the more important steps in mission and one that is often skipped, including by us, and that is prayer.
That if we aren't praying, if we're not getting on our face and pleading for God to save sinners, pleading for God to bring the revival that we want to see in our city, we are missing out on the power of God. We're missing it. So if you weren't here last week or you didn't listen to that online, I encourage you to go back and listen to that. If we are missing that aspect of mission, we have skipped a step. So we are in Colossians 4, verses 2 through 6.
We spent a lot of time last week in 2 and 3. This week will be more in verses 3 and 4. So you can follow along on the screen behind me. You can go to your Bibles on page 573 in your blue Bibles. But we are going to continue to look at what it looks like to grow as an everyday missionary.
In college, when I was first learning about this idea of being a sent missionary locally, being an everyday missionary, of learning about evangelism, the idea of sharing the gospel with those who may not believe, who do not believe, it was awkward at times. I was learning how to do it. And there were a lot of awkward interactions that I had in college and learning how to do this and sharing the gospel with others. And I remember one in particular. There was a freshman. I was a junior.
He was in my freshman orientation group. And he was in it. Spent some time with them. And as we're getting to know each other, getting to hear a story, it sounds like he doesn't really want anything to do with Jesus. And then we went to Sonic and we're talking. And I remember sharing the gospel with him.
And he was beet red in his face. Like you just tell with everything in him. He didn't want this message. He didn't want anything to do with Jesus. And I shared with him. And that was the last time we really ever talked in college.
Like for the rest of college, he just, every time he saw me, he just kind of looked away and just wouldn't talk to me. And I was like, oh, well, that's awkward. And that happened a little bit. There was moments of rejection where he shared the gospel. Maybe they didn't avoid me for the rest of the college, but they made it abundantly clear I don't want this for me. Quite a bit of that happened.
But I do remember one story in particular where there was a guy that I was getting to know. We were, you know, I go to his freshman hall and we play hacky sack together. You know, what college kids do. I guess they still front row. Do they still do that? No?
Okay. Back then, when hacky sack was a thing, all right, getting to know each other, getting to know his story a little bit, and then slowly started to bring in the gospel and share it with him. And he was resistant, but listening and continued to process. And then he went away for winter break. And when he came back spring semester, he said, I'm in. He said, I've placed my faith in him.
I'm a follower now. And he still is to this day. We keep in touch. He lives in Houston, Texas. He's married. He's part of a local church there.
Still following Jesus. And I love it. And the reality is I would have 30. I will have 100 of those awkward conversations if it means just one of those results and that kind of eternal life change. That's the hope. That's what we're going for.
As we are seeking to grow in being everyday missionaries, we would learn what it looks like to share Christ. And today we're going to get a little bit practical. As we walk through verses 3 and 4. As we seek to grow in being everyday missionaries. So let me pray and then we will jump in.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for your word and what it means to us. God, I pray that you'd help us listen and that we respond. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.
Verses 2 through 4. Mostly being verses 3 and 4. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. All right.
So if we want to grow in everyday missionaries, I want us to see three parts of this passage that I think are important. The first is that we would share the gospel no matter your circumstances. Share the gospel no matter your circumstances. He says, on account of which, I am in prison. Paul is writing this letter from prison. There are four, they're called prison epistles, four prison letters that while Paul was in prison for sharing the gospel, he wrote Colossians, he wrote Ephesians, he wrote Philemon, he wrote Philippians, these letters to these different churches and different people.
And he's writing this from prison. All right. So he's not in a good state. And even the years leading up to this, it hasn't gone well for him. All right.
So he, on one of his missionary journeys, he is praying and God says, I want you to go to Jerusalem and there you're going to be arrested. And he says, okay, he's obedient. And then he goes to Jerusalem. He gets arrested. The Jews there that hate Paul try to have him killed. And then he's transferred as a prisoner to Caesarea, which is near the coast.
Spent a few years there in prison. And then he appeals to Caesar. He wants to appeal his case to Caesar's and Caesar Roman citizens. So he gets on a ship. He's on his way to Rome. And it shipwrecks.
And after he shipwrecks, he ends up on an island. He gets bit by a snake. I mean, it's just not going well. He finally ends up in Rome. And now he's in Rome. And he, as he's writing this letter, is on house arrest.
He's on house arrest. There's one prison guard. He has some visitors who comes to see him. But he's mostly alone. It has been a rough three to five years for Paul leading up to writing this letter. Under the threat of death.
Under the threat of persecution. Imprisoned. And I would argue that probably none of us have had that last three to five years. I don't know all your stories. But I'd be willing to bet that most of you have not been in prison for your faith.
You haven't been shipwrecked. You haven't been under the threat of death from religious political forces. That's not something that we have faced. Right? Maybe you felt like the last couple months, maybe the last year has been really difficult. You know, at the beginning of the pandemic, it felt like we were on house arrest.
You know? Two weeks to slow the spread. And then it kept going. And some of you felt isolated. And you felt alone. And you were in your home trying to do your best.
And you were struggling. Maybe the last year has been hard. Maybe the last two years has been hard. Maybe the last ten years has been difficult. And we talk about being everyday missionaries. And you're like, I don't even know where to start.
My life is a complete mess right now. I don't even know where to begin. But Paul, enduring hardships that are much more than what we've had to face. Enduring those hardships. He's still sharing the gospel. I mean, he's still praying that he might share the gospel.
Possibly with his prison guard. Possibly with people that will come and visit. He still wants to declare the mystery of Christ. How does he do it? I mean, how does Paul do it? He gets stoned in a city.
Outside the city. Then limps back in and starts sharing the gospel. What's his secret? How does he keep going back again and again sharing the gospel? How does he continue to live on mission? I would argue that the difference between us and Paul.
Is that Paul had such an eternal mindset and perspective on his reality. Like he just, he understood. Everything he was facing in light of eternity. In 2 Corinthians 4 he says, For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. And it's like, really? When you hear that, if you're honest, you say light momentary affliction.
Have you, do you remember the last few years as you've been writing these letters? You've been getting stoned and beaten? Whipped? How do you consider this as light and momentary? I mean, I'm in the middle of a bathroom remodel that has just been difficult. And it does not feel light and momentary.
And I mean, I just, I mean, that's what we do. We think about what's right in front of us. What we're facing. What's difficult. And we don't look at it in light of eternity. But he did, what he understood so clearly is that the moments of suffering, really this life as a whole.
He understood it as we, as the Bible teaches it. That it, this life is like a vapor, the Bible says. It is like dew on the grass. It is here and then it is gone. That this life is like a drop of water. All the years of your life is like a drop of water.
And the rest of time, eternity, is all of the oceans and all the waters in them. And he had that perspective. That right now it's just light and momentary. Because what's coming in eternity are the eternal riches and glory. The way of glory that awaits him. He understood that right now, though suffering is hard.
It pales in comparison to what awaits us. And he understood all of it in light of that truth. So that in the midst of hardships, he's, oh, absolutely. I want more people to be a part of this. I want more people to taste and see this Jesus for eternity. I want them to experience the weight of glory that awaits us.
He, he got this. He so, he absolutely understood this. Now, that doesn't mean that our hardships right now don't matter. My hope is, is that you were with us the last month when we did Soul Care as a series. We care very deeply about hardships. We care very deeply about suffering and sin and brokenness.
It absolutely matters. You may be struggling financially. You may be struggling spiritually. Your health may be a mess and in decline. Your emotional stability is just all over the place. You may be enduring actually really tough times.
But, but if we can strive to view this like he did. To view everything that we face. All of the suffering and hardships. In light of eternity. We can absolutely, no matter what your circumstances are. We can actually share the gospel.
We absolutely can share. In spite of our circumstances. And the second thing I want us to see here. Is that we must share words. We must share actual words. He says, at the same time pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word.
To declare the mystery of Christ. On account of which I'm in prison. That I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. The gospel is a message. It is a message. You must share actual words.
We go after this from time to time. But there's that famous Francis of Assisi quote that says, Share the gospel. And if necessary use words. Which we've said before. It's not clear that he actually ever said that. Also, if he did.
It's dumb. That's not. No. No. No. The gospel is a message.
Yes. How you live your life matters. Absolutely. Absolutely. The New Testament is full of that. Like it.
How you live your life matters. First Peter talks about having good conduct towards outsiders. First Timothy 3 says that one of the requirements of being an elder. However. Is that you may be well thought of by outsiders. So yes.
The way you live your life absolutely matters. But it is still a message. It is not a lifestyle. The gospel is a message. Paul did not ask people to pray for him. So that God could open a door.
So that he could be kind. He did not pray for them. Pleading for them. To join him in prayer. That they'd open a door. So that he could be a good neighbor.
Though kindness. And being a good neighbor. Absolutely matter. I mean Jesus goes hard after that. The Bible goes hard after that. But our kindness isn't what saves people.
If you believe that you're good works. If you believe that you're. You're cleaned up personality. The way you display yourself. If you believe. That is what actually leads people to Jesus.
Then by default. You believe that your works. Is what saves people. That your works. Is what leads people to Christ. And that is not true.
The gospel is a message. And the reason that's really important. Is because for a while. Like the last few decades. There's been this whole idea. Of lifestyle evangelism.
It's like I'm just going to live my life. And win people of the kingdom. By my conduct. And it's like. There are aspects of that. I want a yes and an amen.
But at the end of the day. The gospel is still a message. And you still have to share words. And the problem is. That people. People get psyched out by that.
Because if you're not. If you believe that fully. You're not actually living out. The gospel like you should. You're like. Oh.
Then I can't. I have to. My witness has to be in such good shape. Or I can't share. The gospel. I'm going to mess it up.
And it's like. No. Yes. You snapped at your co-worker. Yes. You dropped an F-bomb in the work room.
Okay. But you know. You can still share the gospel. Through that. Right? The reality is.
Is that you can go to your co-worker. And say. Hey listen. I should not have snapped at you. My faith teaches me. That I should be slow to anger.
That I should be kind. And I was none of that with you. And I am sorry. Hope you can forgive me. There are ways. But absolutely.
In spite of our conduct. Where you can come in. And share the gospel. It is a message. It is not just a lifestyle. That we win people over with.
Maybe it's that. That you've fallen to. Maybe it's that you just don't care enough. To risk awkwardness. To risk rejection. Romans 10.
13. A passage. That if you grew up in the church at all. You are probably familiar with. It says. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.
Will be saved. We love that. That anyone. Who has encountered Christ. And their heart has been changed. They can call out to God.
And they're saved. That's absolutely true. But then. He goes on to make a little bit of a rhetorical argument. In the verses that follow. He says.
How then will they call on him. And whom. They have not believed. He's like. How are they going to call. On Christ.
If they haven't believed this message. In the first place. Then he goes. And how are they to believe in him. Of whom. They have never heard.
How are they going to believe in Jesus. If they have not. Heard. The message of the gospel. Then he says.
And how are they here. Without someone preaching. How are they going to hear. If someone doesn't share it with them. That's not just preaching. Like what I'm doing now.
That is proclaiming. That is sharing. How are they going to hear the gospel. If someone doesn't preach. And how are they to preach. Unless they are sent.
As it is written. How beautiful. Are the feet of those. Who preach the good news. He's like. How are they going to hear.
If you don't actually share it with them. We got to absorb that. Christians. Brothers and sisters. We got to absorb that. That you may be the only Christian.
In somebody's life. Who can share the gospel. With that person. You may be their best chance. At actually hearing. About how our God.
Is better than everything else. In this world. And if we can't. Let that reality. Impress upon us. We can't let that.
Sit on our hearts. In a way that brings about. Change. Then we need to get on our faces. And pray. And pray that God might.
Soften our hearts. He might break our hearts. He might help us see. Everything. In light of the eternal reality. That's all around us.
That we need to go back to step one. And pray. That God would absolutely. Break our hearts. And motivate us. To actually share words.
Share actual words. And then lastly says. Make it clear. That's the third thing. I want us to see today. Make it clear.
That's where we spend most of our time. He says. At the same time. Pray also for us. That God may open to us. The door for the word.
To declare the mischief of Christ. On account of which. I am in prison. That I may make it clear. Which is how I ought to speak. That putting effort into.
Making it clear. Matters. So. Many of you. May not know this. But I have a mild speech impediment.
I do. Just a mild one. So that when I actually preach on Sunday. I have to really think about how I speak in a way that is clear. But. For those of you that know me best.
If you've ever been in informal conversation with me. You know that every now and then you're going to go. Wait. What? I have an incredible ability to take 20 words and make it 10 syllables. And I don't even know I'm doing it sometimes.
And it's really frustrating for me. Because all of a sudden I'm like. Oh. I got to repeat what I'm going to say. Oh. I got to re-clarify.
Oh. Like there's this. I have to intentionally think about that type of clarity. Now that's not. That may be part of what Paul is saying. But the reality is.
Is that we should have that type of intentionality. In being clear. When it comes to the gospel. That we might think about how we present it. We might think about how we share. That that work matters.
It matters. That you are clear. So. I'm going to make two assumptions here. If you are. Going to take this on.
In trying to be clear. The first is. That you believe in Jesus. That you've been saved by him. That you've been set apart by him. That you have the Holy Spirit in you.
Assumption one. Assumption two. Is that you care enough to share. And that's the second part that we're going to have to work on. We're going to have to pray that God would help us see. The reality that's at hand.
But once you have those in place. Now it is time to work on making it clear. Now it is time for us to grow. In gospel clarity. The reality is. Is that sometimes is the reason.
Why you don't want to share the gospel. It's because you're like. I think I'm going to mess it up. I think I'm not going to be very clear. I don't. I don't want to botch this.
And what's encouraging about this passage. Is that on some level. Paul felt that too. Because he's asking for prayer here. He's asking them to pray. That God would open a door.
So that he can make it clear. So. That's good news. That Paul of all people. Pray for this type of clarity. Alright.
So we should absolutely. Seek to grow in. Gospel clarity. I have some. Practical ways that I want us to. Do this.
And how I want us to grow in this. And the first way we can grow. In making it clear. Is to read. And know. And grow.
Read. Know. And grow. We have to read. We have to grow. We have to learn.
About. Christ. And the scriptures. We've got to. Got to do it. I know some of you have not read a book.
You've not read. A book since the ninth grade. And that was to kill a mockingbird. Okay. And you're like. I don't like to read.
And it's like. Okay. But the Bible's a book. And guess what. We've talked about this over and over again. If you don't like.
Visually reading. Download the Bible app. And start listening. Listen to. The word. Yes.
Learning is difficult. It is. Take it from somebody. Who did the eighth grade twice. Okay. It.
Learning has never come easy for me. I'm. I'm rarely the smartest person. In the room. All right.
A lot of times. Because my wife is in the room with me. But. I'm rarely the smartest person. In the room. I usually am.
One of the most learned people. In the room. Because I. Work. Really hard. To learn.
I work really hard. To know things. And some of that stuff. Is useless knowledge. But sometimes.
It's the Bible. We should seek. To learn. And know. And grow. That's why we emphasize.
Scripture memory. That's why it shows up. And we have one every month. We have 36 verses. Over three years. Memorize one of those.
Every month. And do that again. For three years. And then three years again. And three years again. You're going to have 36 verses.
Locked in your memory bank. That matters. It matters. It matters. That you would know the word. So deeply.
Be so hidden. In your heart. That when it came time. To actually share good news. You could share the word of God. And the reason that matters.
Is because what Hebrews 4.12 teaches us. The word of God is living and active. It's living and active. It's sharper than any two-edged sword. It's piercing the division of soul and spirit. Of bone and marrow.
It discerns the thoughts. And intentions. Of the heart. That when you share God's word. God uses it like a sword. And it pierces the heart.
And it discerns what's going on underneath the surface. So that people might can realize. They deeply need Christ. It matters. That you know God's word. It absolutely matters.
That you might be able to share this. All it takes is a few words. And then God can go to work. So maybe you have a. Maybe you've been really intentional. About being a good co-worker.
You've been working hard. In the workplace. To show good work ethic. You've been. You've been caring about your conduct. Which you should.
You haven't been engaging in office gossip. All right. You're not complaining. You're working hard. And then. You're building a relationship with your co-workers.
You're getting to know them. You're going to some happy hours with them. Spend time with them. And then one day. At the office. Or at the work site.
One of your co-workers just says. They just. That you just see they're down. And they're sad. And you say. Hey.
What's. What's going on? Maybe she says. I just. I mean. I just went through a terrible breakup.
He broke up with me last night. And this is the. I thought he was the one. We were going to spend. Just for lives together. We've been dating for a year and a half.
This is the third terrible breakup I've had. And I just. I'm just having a. I'm sorry. Like I'm trying to work hard. And not be a distraction.
I just had a really difficult day. And in that moment. Armed and ready. You can look at her and say. I'm. I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. Can I share something that I think is helpful. That I've. That I've found to be helpful. Psalm 34 teaches that the Lord is near to the broken hearted. And he saves the crushed in spirit.
That in the midst of. Of hurt. Like God can be really near to us. And I. I don't know. I feel like I just want to share that with you.
That God can be near to you in the midst of this brokenness. So I'm just. I'm going to go back to my desk. I pray for you and the rest of our coworkers regularly. I want to take some time to just pray for you. I pray that you sense that.
That God is near the broken hearted. I pray that your boyfriend gets hit by a car. Like. I just. But you.
And then you do the actual Christian thing. Not the southern Christian thing. And you actually pray for them. That's all it takes. And then what can happen is. Is that the word is shared.
And all of a sudden it starts to. Work on them. And grate on them. And they start to. Question. And they come back and want to know more later.
That. It's that easy. And it's not that intimidating. We need to. Read. We need to know.
We need to grow. In knowing God and his word and prayer. Second. We need to grow in gospel fluency. We need to grow in gospel fluency. This is something we talk about.
Quite a bit in our church. It's the idea that. You be so fluent in the gospel. Just like you might be fluent in a language. You don't have to think about how you speak. That you be so fluent in the gospel.
That you be able to. Think in it. Process in it. And it would be part of your language. Part of your ethos. Part of who you are.
That when it comes time. You're easily. Sharing the gospel. Applying it to people's lives. Applying it to your own life. Applying it to the people in your group.
We're talking about growing in gospel fluency. That matters. Because if you're a co-worker. Who you just talked to. Says. Okay.
Wait a second. All right. So. That's Psalm 34. That's nice. Tell me.
Why God wants my life to be so miserable. Why is it. That I. Keep. Having these relationships that fall apart. Why is my.
Why am I so unhappy. You. If you think God is near the broken heart. And he's good. And he's loving. Why is my life so.
Bad. That. That if you are fluent in the gospel. You can begin to. In that moment. Apply the gospel.
One of the things we talk about. Is creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration. That understanding the gospel.
And the bible as a whole. Is creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration. That maybe in that moment.
You just. You come alongside her and say. Listen. Listen. The reason why we love relationships. Whether it's friendships.
Whether it's romantic relationships. Is because we're built for that. We're built for relationship. God created us. That when he created Adam in the garden. He said that.
It wasn't good. That he was alone. That we're made for relationship. But the reality is. That when. Sin came into the world.
It broke relationships. It. It. It. It made relationships and friendships. Difficult.
Even more so. What it did. Is that. Because of sin. We seek to find relationship. With everyone else.
As opposed to God. That God actually built us. Ultimately for relationship with him. But because of. Sin. We reject that.
We don't want him. But the good news of the gospel. Is that. God didn't leave us here. In our rejection of him. But that he sent Jesus.
To die for us. To live the life that we could not live. To die the death on the cross. And to conquer the death of the resurrection. So that we can have.
A relationship that is. Better than everything else. With him. And that this isn't the end of it. The pain of your relationship hurts now. But the reality is.
That one day. He's going to restore all things. In all relationships. There will be no more sin. There will be no more brokenness. There will be no more hurt.
That when you're fluent in the gospel like that. You're able to apply something like that. Creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration.
To somebody's life. In a way that helps them see. Their problem. Their struggle. In light of. Eternity.
We need to grow in gospel fluency. But there also may be times. Where they take it even. A little bit deeper. They're like. Okay.
So. But why would God allow for sin to happen in the first place? Right? Why is suffering even a reality? And they might ask some bigger questions. And the third thing.
In making it clear. That we need to grow in. Is that we need to dig deeper. We need to dig deeper. The reality is. Is that.
People have big questions. And we cannot resolve. Every. Mystery of Christ. God is mysterious. But for a lot of people.
God is a complete mystery to them. And it is our opportunity. To clarify. And to give a defense for. So we get the word apologetics.
Which literally just means a defense for. Our faith. That might compel them. To actually. Explore who God is. Hebrews.
Five. Teaches. Four. Though. By this time. You ought to be teachers.
You need someone to teach you again. The basic principles. Of the oracles of God. He says. You need milk. Not salad food.
The writer says. Listen. At this point. In following Jesus. You should be mature enough. That you can teach others.
That you can encourage others. That you can. Disciple others. But it's clear. Right now. He says.
Verse 13. He says. You need milk. Not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk. Is unskilled in the word of righteousness.
Since he is a child. But solid food. Is for the mature. For those who have their powers of discernment. Trained by constant practice. To distinguish good.
From evil. That. He says. You should be able to. To mature past. Just milk.
The elementary doctrines. Right. Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. Is so good.
And so true. But the depths of that actual statement. Going deeper. Into that. We. Some of us are still stuck on wanting milk.
We want it spoon fed. And he's like. At this point. You got to be eating some steak. You. Here. You.
This is California. You. euh. an abundance of resources that help us in this. You could read books like Reason for God by Tim Keller, Mirror Christianity by C.S. Lewis. There's your little starter pack right there.
Boom. Read those. Slowly take them in and start to digest it.
Prayer is the Fuel for Mission
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. Like I said, my name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in a series called I'm a Missionary for three weeks. We had planned to jump into 1 John, but we decided to push that off for three weeks. We'll get to that and start that at the end of the month.
So we have four elders. We get away every year for an elder retreat. And it's the four of us pastors. We go and we go to Lake Greenwood and we take some time to pray and process and think through where we need to grow as a church family. At the beginning of August, we went this year and we were praying and thinking through kind of where we are as a church family. Where do we need to grow?
And it did not take very long for us to come to the consensus that one of the areas we need to grow in is being everyday missionaries here. That we had lost a little bit of our missional hustle here. So for the next three weeks, we're going to refocus on what it looks like to be everyday missionaries here in the Columbia area. We want to see Casey in West Columbia, Lexington, Irmo, Chapin, Gaston, even Red Bank. We want to see disciples made all over this city because in the Columbia metro area, there are hundreds of thousands of people that are not part of a gospel-centered church, that do not have a relationship with Jesus, and we don't want to be okay with them.
So that's what we're going to be doing the next three weeks. One of Chet, who's one of the other pastors here, one of his favorite movies, I assume, is Sling Blade. I assume this because he loves to quote it with the voice. So if you want to get awkward for a minute, just get him excited about that movie and let him do some impersonations. But there's a scene in Sling Blade where Billy Bob Thornton, the main character, he's not overly bright.
He gets a job at a service station. And at the service station one day, this guy brings a lawnmower that won't start. And there's some guys outside looking at it, you know, standing around, theorizing about what's wrong with it, as guys do. You know, something wrong with the carburetor, maybe the spark plug, I don't know. Going back and forth, back and forth. And Billy Bob Thornton comes outside, sees them, walks over to the lawnmower, unscrews the gas cap, looks in it, screws it back.
Says, ain't got no gas in it. That'd be a good first place to start is to check if it's got gas in it. Like when I'm doing home projects, it's a good first start to check if there's gas, to check if the batteries are charged. As opposed to tinkering with everything else, theorizing what else could be the problem. And before we tackle mission, we've got to check to see if there's gas in the tank. Because we are so prone to checking everything else.
I mean, we will strategize. We will plan. We will brainstorm about mission. We'll brand. We'll do all sorts of things to kind of help us refocus on being everyday missionaries before we actually do check the gas to see, check the tank to see if there's gas in it. And the first step that we need to have in mission is prayer.
Is prayer. If we're not praying to see Jesus change the city, there ain't no gas in the tank. Prayer is the fuel for mission. And unless we understand that, we will not see the type of revival, the type of change we want to see in this city. So for the next three weeks, we're going to be in Colossians 4, verses 2-6.
Today, we're just going to be in 2-4. And I just want us to see this. I want us to see that prayer is the fuel for mission. And my hope is, is that we actually believe that. So let me pray, and then we'll jump into the text.
Father, we pray that you would soften our hearts to believe what is true. God, I pray that you would speak to us this morning and that we would actually respond. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so verses 2-4.
All right, so I'm going to give some context for this as we're going to be in this passage the next three weeks. I'm going to give some of the history that went into this command. Colossae is a small town. It's a small town in a province called Phrygia in the Roman Empire. It's in present-day Turkey. And Colossae is this town, the Colossians.
That's what the letter is named after. It's written to them. And Colossae, it's a small town. It's not like nearby Ephesus, which is a big city, or Thessalonica, which is a big city. If you look at the book of Acts, God is doing some amazing work in some of these big cities. It's not one of those cities.
It's a small town, rural, in the middle of nowhere. If Ephesus is Columbia, Colossae is Pillion, or North, or Palmyria. It's out in the middle of nowhere. So why is Paul writing a letter to a small town miles away from these big cities where God is saving by the thousands? Better question is how did the gospel actually get to Colossae? So I want to take a quick journey through the book of Acts to help us see how the gospel gets to this small town.
So when Jesus commissions the church and ascends to the right hand of God the Father, He says, wait, because this Holy Spirit is coming. And the early church doesn't wait by sitting on their hands. It says in Acts 1.14, they join together constantly in prayer. They are prayerfully, constantly, steadfastly in prayer, waiting for God to come. And then after that, the Holy Spirit descends upon the church. Pentecost Sunday happens.
Peter steps out, preaches the sermon where 3,000 plus people place their faith in Jesus. And then in one of the more pivotal passages in the entire New Testament for what the church should do, in Acts 2.42-47, at the very beginning of Acts 2.42, it says, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayer. They devoted themselves to prayer. And we're going to see this as a theme that runs throughout the book of Acts. Prayer is all over the book of Acts. Shows up all over the place.
In Acts 6, when the early church is covered up with need, and they're caring for orphans and widows who are in daily need of food, the apostles realized we actually don't have enough time for word and prayer. So they bring about what are the first deacons to be able to oversee the distribution of food so that they can be in a ministry of word and prayer. They valued word and prayer so much because they understood that prayer was essential to seeing the kingdom move forward. And you see it all over the book of Acts. It says that in multiple places they prayed as they commissioned people out for service and permission.
They prayed over people that they might be healed. It is in Acts 10 when Peter is praying. During prayer is when God gives the vision to Peter that extends the gospel past the Jews to include also the Gentiles. That's a pivotal moment. That's important because most of us here are Gentiles. And the gospel came to us through that prayer.
And then in Acts 13, which is one of the more pivotal moments in not just the early church, but in all of history, in the church of Antioch, as they're fasting, as they're praying, God says set apart Barnabas and Paul for mission work that is going to reach the Jews. They pray over them. They send them out. And the world is never the same. They flip Europe and Asia upside down with the gospel. Over and over again we see prayer throughout the book of Acts.
And eventually in their missionary journeys, Paul, they come to a church. They plant it in Ephesus. And then he leaves Priscilla and Aquila, two faithful leaders in the church. And they minister there for years. And that is where scholars think a man named Epaphras who shows up twice in Colossians. See, Ephesus is about the two-day walk from Colossae.
And scholars think that he, that being the closest big city, was there, heard the gospel, was discipled, and sent back to Colossae where he planted the church. We see in Colossians 1.7 that it says he's a fellow. He was the one that they learned the truth about the gospel from him. And then in 4.12 he is of the people of Colossae. So all that history brings Epaphras back to Colossians.
A church is planted. All of that fueled by the prayers of the people of God and the mission going forth. It brings the gospel to this small town, which is all the history that is packed into this passage. When he says, continue steadfastly in prayer, there's history there. There's background there. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on which account I am in prison. Praying that a door might be opened. That is a central idea in the book of Acts. They are praying that doors might be opened so that people would hear the gospel. I want to share a story of what happens when we pray for this type of door to be opened. In the Hebrides Islands in northern Scotland, back in 1949.
So just in context. 1949 is right after World War II. In Europe especially, there's a lot of depression, a lot of darkness, a lot of just apathy after seeing the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. And in this village, in the Hebrides Islands, in northern Scotland, there are these two older women who feel the lostness in their village. Feel it on their island. There's no young people in the churches.
There's this lingering haze from World War II. They feel it. And these two older women, one of them blind, one of them arthritic, not powerful people but believe in a powerful God, they begin to pray. They begin to pray for revival to happen on this island. And they pray. They prayed every Tuesday and Friday, fervently, that God might bring revival to the island, the Hebrides Island.
And then they said, all right, we're going to get our elders involved. So they go to their elders. They bring their elders in to pray with them. They go to a barn on Tuesdays and Fridays. They pray and pray and plead for God to bring revival to their island. And eventually, they decide to reach out.
They want an evangelist to come. So they reach out. They eventually land on a man named Duncan Campbell. They invite him to the island. And then he comes. Now, this is Duncan Campbell's retelling of this.
So he travels all day by rail. Then by ferry to get over to the island. Very tired. Shows up. And they say, we know you're tired. We know you're hungry.
We'll take care of that. We've got a place for you. We're going to feed you. But can you come to the church first? At 9 o'clock, 9 p.m. meeting. We just come.
And he says, I never got that meal. Shows up at 9 o'clock. And he said nothing was really remarkable about the service in and of itself. He said he preached and felt the spirit moving. But, you know, they prayed, sang Psalms together. And then as they're closing out their time, this man who had been praying in the barn with those older women just prayed and called out to God for revival.
Pleading for God to bring revival. And when they ended the service, they stepped out of the church. This is about midnight. They stepped out of the church. And there's 600 people outside the church. Now, 100 of them were young people that were at a dance hall not far away.
And they just all felt in a moment that they just needed to cut the music and to step outside. And when they stepped outside, they saw the lights of the church. And they started walking there. The other 500 of them were people that in the middle of the night just felt compelled to put on their clothes and start walking towards the church. So they invite them in until 4 o'clock.
The people of that town plead for the mercy of God. In repentance, he preaches. And they pray. And they sing Psalms in repentance and faith. And then at 4 o'clock in the morning, they finish. And they step outside.
And there's a man there. He said, you've got to come to the police station. There are 400 people that are around the police station. The police station which happens to be right next to where these women lived. So Don Campbell says he's walking there.
And there's people praying in the ditches. Pleading for the mercies of God. He gets there. He says, I don't even have to preach. Because the people are crying out to God in repentance. He said, there was one man that said, Oh God, hell is too good for me.
He just saw a sin. He's like, hell is too good for me. And this entire town gets swept up in a revival. That's the first night of a revival that lasted for three weeks there. It's incredible. It's one of the last known Western revivals that we know about.
And then Duncan Campbell, in recounting this, he says this, Then I would like to make it perfectly clear what I understand of revival. When I speak of revival, I'm not thinking of high pressure evangelism. I'm not thinking of crusades or of special efforts convened and organized by man. That is not in my mind at all. Revival is something altogether different from evangelism on its highest level. Revival is a moving of God and the community.
And suddenly the community becomes God conscious. Before a word is said by any man representing any special effort. That's what revival is. That kind of revival, that God conscious movement that happens in people, that happens to the power of prayer. When two women got on their knees and pleaded for God to bring revival. Revival.
Now that still happens. You want to know where the biggest revival is happening right now? I give you ten guesses. You probably wouldn't say it. Yes. The biggest right now is in Iran.
In Iran, guys. The church is exploding in Iran. Because people are getting on their faces and they're pleading for God to bring revival. And Duncan, he says, this isn't special efforts convened and organized by man. It is the power of God at work. It is the power of prayer.
I was a part of a church before I was a part of our church here. And I love the church I was a part of. Thankful for it in so many ways. God did some incredible things in that church. It was a huge growing church in the city where I used to live. And I thought about my experiences there.
I thought about the growth they had going from one congregation to four congregations all over the city of Louisville. And a lot of really cool things happened that I'm thankful for. But as I thought about it, we talked a lot about strategy. A lot about, I mean, they wrote books about mission strategy and all kinds of things. But one of the things that did not show up a lot at all was praying and pleading for God to save the lost.
It wasn't an aspect that I saw hardly at all. And as I reflect on my time there, the reality is that one of the reasons that church grew a ton was it was a cool church. It was a cool church that had cool music, had some really good teaching, some really good things going on in it. And it was a transient city. So when you moved to the city, whether it was for seminary like me or for jobs, a lot of people ended up at that church.
It was also near the fifth biggest church in the country, this huge mega church. People got tired of the six flags that were Jesus field there. And they just kind of said, all right, we're done with this. And they came. There's a lot of transfer growth that happened there. And I'm thankful for a lot of the things that I learned there.
But I realized is that one of the things that we hope to see there, it didn't happen on the scale that we wanted. And when I think about our church, I love our church. We planted years ago with the hope to reach outsiders. Being everyday missionaries, sharing the gospel on everyday mission with those who did not know Christ, who didn't want Him, that we might compel them to know who Christ is. I'm thankful for so many of the things that have happened in our church as we sought to be everyday missionaries. I'm thankful for the journey of the past couple of years.
I'm thankful for this incredible building that we have, this incredible church family that we have, the things that we have here. Y'all, the worship at our church, I mean, it's just great. And the teaching is great. Half the time. I'm thankful for a lot of things that are happening in our church. But the reality is, as I think about the last year, two years of our church, church, we're a little bit on a similar trajectory to the one I was a part of.
A lot of really good things going on. We've lost a little bit of our missional hustle. And I don't want us to lose that. I don't want us to lose the heart that says, I want to go to the highways and hedges. I want to find people who need Christ. And part of that is because we're not getting on our faces and pleading for God to open the door.
Verse 3 says, At the same time, Pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the Word. You know why Paul says that? You know why he's telling the Colossians to join him in prayer? They got my open a door? It's because he believes it. He believes it.
He believes the only way that God is going to work and bring the dead to life, the only way he's going to open and soften the hearts of those who don't believe, the only way he's going to unstop the ears that people might believe the gospel is that they get on their faces and they plead that he might save sinners. He says, Oh, Colossians, get on your faces. A door needs to be opened that people would hear the gospel and believe. He believes it. And do you know what our lack of prayer reveals about us, what my lack of, what my prayerlessness reveals? It believes that I don't.
It believes that we don't believe this, that we'd rather trust in our own strategies, our own efforts, to see about, to see change happen in this city. And I have all four strategies. We're going to be doing them, right? We're not going to stop plotting. I'm all for strategies. I'm all for the things that are good.
Absolutely. But not if that is all that it is. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Psalm 20, verse 7. It says, Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord. And as David sang as a king, some people trust in their own efforts, their own chariots, their own horses, but we trust in the power that is bound up in the name of the Lord. And I would rather myself trust in chariots of my own choosing than pleading in the name of the Lord where there is power to actually bring about the change that we desperately need for our dying city.
How faithless am I? That's what I've learned about myself over the last few months. How faithless am I? J.I. Packer, he says, When we are on our knees praying, when we're on our knees, we know that it's not we who control the world. It is the acknowledgement that we can't bring change.
You can't do it. You can't bring change in people's lives. He says, It is not in our power, therefore, to supply our needs by our own independent efforts. Every good thing that we desire for ourselves and for others must be sought from God and will come if it comes at all as a gift from His hands. It is the acknowledgement that we don't have the power in us to bring about change. It comes in pleading in the name of the one who actually can.
And if it's not faithlessness, if it's not a lack of faith in the power of God, it's a general apathy that we just don't care. The reality is that some of us would rather not discomfort ourselves with the reality, the eternal reality that surrounds us, that people that are without Christ are dying and going to an eternity in hell. We'd rather not think about that. We have this general cultural aversion to death. We don't like death. We put death in a corner.
We don't want to think about it. It's sad. It's not positive. And you... That sinks into the church, and it gets applied to hell. We don't want to think about it.
We get uneasy. I feel it. Uneasy. When anyone mentions it, talks about it. I heard a pastor once say that people in hell are no closer to the end of their misery and not one day brings them closer to that. We don't want to think about that.
We don't want to discomfort ourselves with that idea. There used to be a Puritan pastor who when he prepared sermons by candlelight, he would sometimes hover his hand over the flame just to help him understand the reality of what's at stake when he preached. We don't want to think about that. It makes us uncomfortable. We'd rather not discomfort ourselves for the sake of the discomfort of those for eternity. We'd rather not think about it.
We went through the gospel. Remember, we were in the gospel of Matthew for a year and a half. And over and over again, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches on hell over and over and over and over again. And the early church was very okay with talking about it. Are we? Are we okay with that reality?
Do we let that sink in for us? Brothers and sisters, if we want revival to happen in our city, we've got to have revival that happens in our own hearts. We have to understand what's at stake. And we have to get on our faces in desperation and pray. Pray that our friends, that our neighbors, that our coworkers, that people in our lives would be spared the horrors of hell and would taste and see that Christ is good. He says at the same time, pray also that God may open a door for us.
I just want to close with looking at three aspects of prayer. This prayer that he's pleading that might open a door for the word of God, three aspects that we see in verse 2. Steadfast prayer, watchful prayer, thankful prayer. Look at verse 2. Continuing steadfastly in prayer. He says, pray steadfastly.
The Greek word for steadfastly there has the idea of attaching oneself to this idea. Clinging to. Continual, steadfast prayer. That's where we get very similar to 1 Thessalonians 5, 17 when it says, pray unceasingly. Don't stop. We cling to this in prayer.
Pray steadfastly. We're steadfast in quite a few things. Some of those things are very good. You need to steadfastly drink water. Because if you don't, you'll die. You steadfastly will eat food three, sometimes four, maybe even five times a day.
You feel a physical urge in your body that says, eat. Food is a steadfast part of what we do every day. And we do other things steadfastly that we should not. Like me, getting on the internet looking at news ten times a day because I might miss a story. a steadfast routine that I cling to. Those of you that love social media, steadfastly going to the well of social media which makes everybody happy. Over and over again figuring out what's going on in people's lives so that you can post things about ourselves.
I love what John Piper said once. He said, one of the greatest uses of Twitter and Facebook is to reveal on the last day that prayerlessness was not for lack of time. We will be steadfast in so many things and God says, no, steadfastly pray. Pray steadfastly. Cling to this as we cling to food and water as our hope for physical sustaining. Cling to sustain in prayer as if your spiritual power depends upon it.
Years back, I became a Christian. When I became a Christian, my brother Sean, we went from getting high together to me saying, hey, I don't want to do this anymore but I do want to talk to you about Jesus. And we started talking. My brother's smart and he was a skeptic. And he just, I'd share something. He'd say, have you thought about this?
And I'd be like, nope. Run back and think about it and come back to him. I'd say, alright, have you thought about this? And I'd be like, nope. And did this whole thing for years? We'd go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, talking, trying to convince him, trying to compel him.
And in the midst of all of that, there's something I actually did steadfastly. And I would argue that some of us do this type of steadfast prayer. I prayed for him all the time. And we do that sometimes, right? We do that with family, your kids, people that are close to you. Some of us very much are steadfast in that type of prayer.
And we should be. And I prayed over and over and over again. that he might be saved. About three or four years ago, I decided to come one Sunday. He came because I was preaching. And he said, you know what? I want to check out one of these groups that y'all talk about.
I said, cool. Not mine. He said, you heard the gospel from me for years, a decade. I said, I want you to go check out Chet and Anna Phillips' group. So we did.
Started going there. And after about a year, Charlie did finally click. And he finally realized that Jesus is better than everything else. And he placed his faith in Jesus. And in 2019, in an inflatable bathtub, I got to step in the waters with him and baptize him. And it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
But that was a decade of praying. A decade of pleading for God to save my brother. And we do that with the people that are closest to us. And you should. But the reality is that you've got friends and you've got neighbors and you've got coworkers and you've got people in your life that desperately need Christ.
And we need to plead and pray steadfastly. Unceasingly. We need that type of prayer. We need steadfast prayer. We need watchful prayer. Let's continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
He says, be watchful. Watchful means be alert. Stay focused. Stay awake. It's what Jesus says in the garden with His disciples. His watch and pray.
Same word. Be watchful when you pray. There's this need for this strategic alertness in our prayer. That we be alert of the spiritual reality. The spiritual reality that we live in is that we're in a war with the enemy. And there are bullets flying and there's a lot at stake.
And we need to have this watchful alertness when we pray for the mission to go forward. So we've got to start praying intentionally, strategically, with alertness. Because the reality is that most of our prayer, if we're honest, much of our prayer, if we're praying, is a list of sick people and a list of needs. And listen, you should do that. Pray for daily bread. Pray for the sick.
Pray for those who are hurting. Pray for people in you. Absolutely, yes and amen. But in the continual steadfastness of prayer, we've got to add this mission element. We've got to plead for God to save people. And not just generally, right?
Not just say, God, I pray you bring revival. Save Columbia. No, we've got to get strategic. We've got to start naming names and naming streets and classes and people. Right? Like when you're, when we send people off to war, soldiers aren't carrying shotguns.
This is not an effective weapon. It's a shotgun spray. They're carrying rifles for a reason. It's a strategic shot. We've got to have that type of strategic, alert prayer. Start naming names.
Get on Google Maps and print your street that you live on. Or if you're artistic, draw your street. And start writing in names of people that you live by. And get to know your neighbors. Get to write down facts about their life. Pray for them.
Go on prayer walks down your street. And pray for your neighbors. When you go to your soccer game, pray for the names of the people on your soccer team. The guy would open up a door for you to declare the gospel to them. Pray for the people and your classes on your way to work. Pray for the people and your work.
We need to start naming names with a strategic alertness, being watchful, knowing what's at stake. We need to pray watchfully. And if it takes us imagining the horrors of hell that await our friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, do it. We need to understand what's at stake. I'm so tired. This happens to me every few years.
I'm so tired of for myself. When someone dies that I know that they were not a Christian. I go through this thing where I evaluate all the opportunities I had. I could have shared the gospel here. I could have pressed in here. I could have done this.
And I think about it. I'm like, I'm going to grow in this. I'm going to grow in being more strategic in my evangelism. I'm going to grow in not wasting opportunities with people. And then, a couple months go by and it fades. And I'm back into the normal rhythms of life.
And I think the reason why this happens to me is I'm not on my face continually praying. We can go through this series, I'm a missionary, three weeks. And like, for two or three months we'll be killing it. We'll be excited. And we should. But if we don't pray regularly, it'll fade.
It'll fade. It happens. We need to get on our faces. We need to get on our knees. We need to pray continually, watchfully, and thankfully. Thankful prayer.
It says, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. The reason it's thankful prayer is it's a miracle that God saves anyone. We are so prone to wander. We will worship anything else. We'll chase after anything else. All the idolatry we talked about in soul care, we'll go headlong after it.
Reject God. Part of the sovereignty and the beauty of the sovereignty of God is that He steps in the middle of all that says, no, I'm saving you. That I'm going to rescue you. We deserve hell, but God comes in and He rescues us. I'm so thankful that our God does this. I was sharing the gospel with a co-worker years ago when I worked at a coffee shop and then we got to the subject of hell and I was kind of expecting normal skepticism that he was going to say.
He said, oh no, people deserve hell. I was like, what? He's like, people are messed up. He didn't say messed up. He said, food absolutely deserves hell. And he caught on to something.
He said, no, we do, but God in His kindness, even though we reject Him, even though that we spit on His commands, even though we don't want any part of Him, He steps in and He saves us. Paul, who wrote this? Paul was a murderous, self-righteous, pharisaical, Pharisee, thug. He was on his way to imprison more Christians, possibly murder some more. And Jesus steps in the road of Damascus and says, no, you're mine. We should be thankful that God saves any of us.
It's the reason why when we have baptisms, we celebrate and cheer when people are baptized. It's the reason why in Luke 15 it says, angels rejoice when people repent. With thanksgiving we pray. Steadfast prayer, watchful prayer, thankful prayer. We need to pray like this. Pray like this that God would open doors because we are too busy trying to pry open doors ourselves.
Trying to pry it open with our own strategies, with our own efforts. We, Paul is just trying to help us see right here. He's like, yeah, you ain't got gas in the tank. You're trying and all these efforts are good but if you're not praying, you ain't got gas in the tank. There's a story of a professor who took some students to England and they were touring different sites in England and they, this is a Bible college and they took them to John Wesley's house. John Wesley, one of the most famous missionaries, pastors, started the Methodist movement, him and his brother Charles.
Go to John Wesley's house and they tour the house and they go up to his bedroom and in John Wesley's bedroom there are divots, holes, impressions where his knees were beside the bed where he was praying. That's how much John Wesley prayed. They see this and then they're done seeing this and they get back on the bus and they realize, they realize that one of the students is not on the bus. The professor gets, goes back in the house and goes upstairs and he finds this, he finds this student and the student says, he says to the student, hey, we got to go and the student's just there praying. He's like, Lord, do it again.
Do it again. Praying for revival. Do it again, Lord, praying that revival would come. He said, Billy, we got to go. And that student was Billy Graham. And Billy prayed that God would do it again and God did it again.
Like two women in a village in Northern Ireland pleading that God would bring revival like Billy Graham on his knees. We got to pray that God would do it again. My hope is that we believe in the power of prayer that we'd see God do it again so that we can be the gospel-centered community on mission that we say we are. Raz and Isaac are going to come up and I just, for a few minutes, I want, I want us to pray. I want us to take a few minutes and just pray. I want us Christians, I want us to pray that God would bring revival to this city.
I want to pray, I want you to think about the people in your life that don't know Christ. I want you to think about your neighbors, I want you to think about your co-workers, I want you to think about your classmates, I want you to think about family members, I want you to think about the people in your life that don't know Christ and I want you to understand what's at stake and I want you to pray. I want you to plead that God might save them. Maybe you're here and all of this is just a lot and you're like, I don't even know where to start, I don't even know if I believe this. I want you right now over the next few minutes, I want you to pray that God will reveal Himself.
I want you to know that God loves you so deeply that He sent Christ to have His blood shed for you, that He might cover your sins and your rebellion, and that is good news. But you've got to believe that your life has to be His. Let's take a few moments we have here and pray. And as we leave here, may we not just be a people that pray for a moment, but pray continuously, pleading to God, but open a door that we might see the gospel go forward and we might see our city be changed.
Missional Community
Colossians 4:1-18
Transcript
All right, well, again, I'm glad you guys are with us for tonight because we're actually coming to the close of our summer-long series, Colossians. It's all about Jesus. And it has just been so good for us to walk through this as a church family. And if you're adding up, we've covered Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3. And so tonight we're actually going to be looking at all of Chapter 4. So if you've got your Bibles, go ahead and grab them.
We've got much ground to cover tonight. If you don't have a Bible, if you just look kind of in between the seats, we've got some of our blue and white Bibles for you. If you don't have a Bible, we'd love for you to have that one. Take that one. That's our gift to you. And church family, if you know someone who doesn't have a Bible and you'd like to take one to them, please, that's what those are for as well.
Okay, so again, we've got much ground to cover tonight. But it has been so good, so good for us to walk through this letter as a church family over the summer. Wouldn't you guys agree? It's been good just for us to study this because Paul is writing this letter to a relatively young church and a relatively healthy church. And so it's been great to walk through because he's legitimately pointing them to the fact that it's all about Jesus and how that plays out in their personal faith and in their relationships. And so for us as a young, healthy church, we've been able to look at that and see how can we continue to grow and continue to move forward.
And we've gotten to grow in a couple of different ways. First of all, we've been able to grow in our understanding of the gospel. So if you think back over the last, over the first chapter and the second chapter, we see beautiful language where Paul basically makes us drink from a fire hydrant in terms of trying to understand about Jesus. He's going to use beautiful language like Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He's the creator of all things. He's the son of God.
He's going to talk about what Jesus does, that he reconciles all things to himself, making peace by the blood of his cross. And in light of that, the gospel being who Jesus is and what he's done, what does that mean for us? Paul's going to write and say that we were a people who were alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. We're incapable of fixing that relationship on our own. But based off of what Jesus has done on our behalf, it's going to use language like redeemed, transferred into the kingdom of his beloved son, qualified, forgiven.
And so we've been able to walk through that and grow in our understanding of the gospel. And over the last four weeks, what we've done is we've transitioned a little bit. And we've moved from this vertical idea of focusing on Jesus. And in light of that, in light of who we are, we've transitioned and started to look at, okay, in light of that, how am I supposed to live? So in light of who I am in Jesus, how am I supposed to live?
And basically we've seen the way that our faith impacts relationships. Paul's going to say things like seek things that are above, put to death sinful practices. He's going to talk about the things that we should put on, characteristics, marks of a Christian should be that we love one another, that we forgive one another, we bear with one another, patience with one another, that we should be open and honest with one another. We should encourage each other with the word of God. We should let the word of God dwell richly in us. And this past week, what we looked at is how the gospel impacts some of our most important relationships.
We talked about husbands and wives. We talked about parents and children. And we talked about masters and bond servants, whereas the way we looked at it, we looked at employers and employees. And so what we're going to see in chapter four is that Paul ends this letter with a resounding call. And what we're going to see is that churches that are focused on the gospel and are living that out in community, the natural outflow of that is going to be mission. And that's what we're going to be talking about tonight.
We're going to be talking about mission. And so I'm really excited about it. We've got a lot of ground to cover. And so before we jump into the scripture, I'd like to pray for us. You guys join me. Let's pray.
God, thank you for inviting us into what you're doing. Thank you for bringing us into a relationship with you, for bringing us into a church family, into a community of believers. God, my prayer is tonight that you would teach us what it looks like to be a part of your mission, to live on mission. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so if you've got your Bibles, we're going to be in Colossians chapter four, beginning in verse two. And if you've got the blue and white ones, it's actually going to be page 639.
Here we go, 4-2. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. And again, we're going to start with the first couple of verses, so read it with me again.
Verse two, verse two and three. Once again, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison. I love this. I really do. All throughout the letter that Paul is writing to the church at Colossae, he is talking about prayer.
From the very beginning to the very end, he's encouraging them in what it looks like to pray. And he's encouraging them to be steadfast in prayer, and he's saying, pray for us. Now remember, Paul's currently in prison, and his prayer is not, Lord, help me get out of jail. What is he praying? Look at it again. He says, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, to declare the gospel to those that are in.
I love that. Chapters one and two, we're going to use language where Paul says things like, I struggle and I labor in prayer. We're going to see that even later in this chapter. And every time I get there, it just strikes me. And I have to stop and think, man, when was the last time I struggled and labored for something in prayer? What about you?
And that just strikes me as odd, because I know that Paul and Epaphras and others that we're going to see later are in jail. And I'd be praying to get out of jail, but they're not. And the reason that they're not is they've realized that they get to still be part of the mission right where they are. They're not praying to get out of jail. They're praying that they would make the most of the opportunity that they have in jail to share the gospel. Because Paul, Epaphras, and some of these guys realize something that's hugely important for us as a church.
And I want us to grasp this. What we see in Matthew 16, Jesus says that he's going to build his church. And then he gives his mission to his church. And we're going to see that Jesus is going to send his Holy Spirit on the church to bring about repentance, to bring about change. And I'm going to use that word a lot tonight, so I want to make sure we unpack it. Repentance is realizing that we have sin.
It's confessing our sin, believing that Jesus can forgive it, and turning away from it. That is active repentance. So the Holy Spirit bringing about repentance. Paul realizes that he gets to be a part of the mission still. And he's asking for opportunities because he realizes that it's not about him. It's not his job to save people.
He just gets to be obedient. That's why he's praying for opportunities. And so Paul is pouring himself out for the gospel and for the mission. And since mission is what we're looking at tonight, I want us to have a good working definition of mission. I want us to really understand what it means. So think about it like this.
Paul is going to say in Colossians that it's all about Jesus. Everything. All of life is all about Jesus. It's all about the gospel. It's all about the Son of God who stepped out of heaven, who died on the cross for our sins, who was risen from the grave and gives his mission to his church. It's going to be all about the gospel.
And he gives the mission. Here's the mission. We see it in Matthew 28. He says, go and make disciples. So it's cool.
He looks at his disciples and he goes, go and make more. Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. So what we see is the mission is the people of God sharing the gospel in relationship with each other to make more disciples. It's relational. It's relational. It's disciples living in relationship with each other in community, going out and making more disciples.
So with that in mind, let's keep moving. Check out verse 4. And I'll tag it with a little bit of 3. That God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. Okay. So what we're talking about is making disciples.
We're talking about sharing our faith, sharing the gospel. And for some reason, when we start talking about this in church, all of us begin to get anxious. Our heart rate begins to raise. We just get nervous. I don't know about you guys. It's just one of those things.
When I start thinking about telling somebody about Jesus or sharing my faith, I just get nervous sometimes. Because it's hard. And our culture says be tolerant. And I want to share my faith. And what we see here is that Paul is saying that he wants to declare the mystery of Christ. And in verse 4, his prayer, he's asking them to pray that he would make it clear which is how he ought to speak.
And so for us as we're moving forward, as we're talking about how do we actually share the gospel with people, I want to give us just a few quick things. And if you're a note taker, you're going to want to jot these down. A few quick things that we can think about that will help encourage us in terms of sharing the gospel. The first thing is this. Paul asks for prayer that he would make it clear. So we get to do the same.
So when you're thinking about sharing the gospel, Paul asks that he would be able to make it clear, which is how he ought to speak. And he's talking about the mystery of Christ. And so what he's talking about there is the gospel. He's talking about the gospel of Christ that he would be able to make it clear. So part of our prayer as Christians is asking God, help me to grow in the gospel so that when I have opportunities to share it, that I will be able to make it clear.
This is why we talk about our community groups all the time. Because that's actually where we get to grow in how we share the gospel, how we speak the gospel to each other. Think about your community groups. When somebody has a prayer, we're going to encourage them with the gospel. When somebody's struggling with a sin issue, we're going to point them to what's true in the gospel. When people are making life decisions, we're not just going to give them wisdom or advice.
We're going to give them the gospel. So in our community groups, we get to grow in the first stage of sharing our faith, which is knowing, knowing the gospel, growing in it. So the second thing is this. We're going to mess this up. We're going to mess this up. There are going to be times when you're intentionally building a relationship with somebody, and you go to start telling them about Jesus, and you're going to get about two minutes in.
It's going to be great, and then a dog's going to start barking, and then your 12-year-old cousin with braces is going to walk over, and it's just going to, like, dissipate in front of you to the ground in a pile of ashes. And it's just going to be, oh, okay, well, that was good. Even in those circumstances, when it doesn't go the way you want it to go, you get to grow in your understanding of the gospel, that it's not about you. It's about the fact that Jesus does the work, and as you think about it, it's not over. You get to go back and have another conversation with that person. You get to try again.
The gospel is true for you. Third thing is the gospel is true for you. On all accounts, the gospel is true. It's Jesus that builds his church, and it's the Holy Spirit that brings about repentance. We're just, whoa, yes, resounding. We're just called to be obedient.
So realize that we get to grow in our understanding of the gospel. There's going to be times that we mess that up, but ultimately, we're just called to be obedient. And one of the most encouraging things for us is that as we begin to grow in our understanding of the gospel, the Holy Spirit will begin to use that and teach us what to say in conversations. Now, that's not always going to be this warm, hair-tingling experience where the Holy Spirit just takes over. It's not always going to be like that. Sometimes, yes.
Sometimes, no. Now, I'll give you a couple examples. I remember walking into work, and the first person I came in contact with, I just asked them how they were doing. And five minutes later, they have tears rolling down their face, and I just walked over, and I just shut the door. And we kept talking, and we talked for probably 30 minutes. And I got to, he talked about his family and about his job, and I just encouraged him.
I told him what was true for him in the gospel. I had been praying for this opportunity for months. I got to pray with him. It was unbelievable. And I walked out, and I can't tell you. I can't tell you what I said.
I cannot tell you parts of that whole conversation because the Holy Spirit just took over. It was amazing. On the other side, around that same time, I was having a conversation with a guy, and he was talking about his girlfriend and how, well, it wasn't his girlfriend. They were talking, as the kids say. They were talking, and she wasn't returning his phone calls, and he was texting her all the time. At the same time, he was getting passed over for promotions at work.
And the whole time he's talking, I'm sitting there praying, God, help me encourage him in the gospel. Give me the words to say. And we literally got to the end of the conversation, and he's looking at me, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, man, that stinks. That stinks. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I'll pray for you. That's all I had. That's all I had. I got to the end of that conversation, and that's all I had was I'll pray for you. And I did. And I got to come back and have more conversations.
But the pressure's off. The pressure's off for us as believers because we get to live our normal, everyday lives asking for opportunities and watching Jesus do work. What Paul teaches us here is as we ask for open doors that we can speak the gospel into, that we would speak it clearly, he's going to start doing work. We just get to be obedient. And he's going to turn a little bit. Look with me in verse 5.
So there's going to be a little bit of a change. He says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time. Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time. What is the best use of our time? What is it? One of the best ways we can think about this is what was the best use of Jesus' time?
Jesus spent time with people. All people. And Jesus didn't sit around waiting for people to come to him. He went out to them. He went to the lonely, to the rejected, to the hurting, to those that were sick. And at the same time, he went to those that were religious, those that were wealthy, those that were popular.
And Jesus, as he walked through normal everyday life, he took the opportunity to pour into others. Normal everyday life, he did the extraordinary. Walking. Fishing. Sharing meals. Having conversations.
And that's what he's calling us to do. That's what it looks like, church, for us to make disciples, is to use our normal, ordinary, everyday lives that he's given us with the gospel being of first importance. And letting that impact our conversations, our relationships, our activities. And I want us to catch the beauty of this. That's ordinary, but not insignificant. Ordinary, but not insignificant.
And as we begin to pray for open doors, asking for the Holy Spirit to work, no day will ever be small. Think about that. No conversation will ever be a waste of time. No family meal will ever be a drudgery. No day at work will ever be just a day at work. Everything has meaning.
Everything has purpose. And so this is actually a really good gauge for us as Christians to see how we're walking in wisdom towards outsiders is, how are you spending your time? I want you to think back on this last week. This is the easiest way to do it. Think back over your last week. I'm going to keep talking to this.
Start thinking back. In our day and age, we have more time than any generation on the face of the earth has ever had. With the advancement in technology, we've got microwaves and fast food restaurants and dishwashers. We've just got more time to do things, which means two things. One, we can waste more time. All right?
So we've got more time to waste. And the second thing is, with all these advancements in technology, we've got more to distract us. So a really good diagnostic for us as Christians is, how are we spending our time specifically towards outsiders, towards those who don't know Jesus? How are we doing there? Because what we start to think is, did I go out? Man, I didn't go walk.
Okay. No. Think normal, everyday life. Normal, everyday life. How are you walking in wisdom towards outsiders? How are you making the best use of your time?
Think about your family. This is kind of what we talked about last week. Husbands and wives, are you making the best use of your time? Are you spending time together? Are you pouring into each other? Are you encouraging each other in the gospel?
Parents and children, are you spending time together? Are you spending more time staring at the TV than you are staring at each other's faces? It's a good gauge. It's a good gauge for us, especially for those of you who have family members who don't know Jesus. How are you leveraging your time so that you can be around them in normal, everyday life? Loving them, serving them, helping them, encouraging them.
What about at work? This is a big one for us. Think about work. Think about this last week. You at work. How well did you work when your boss was around versus when your boss wasn't around?
How about this? When you finished your tasks at work, did you just do your own thing or did you look to go help somebody else? When you were on break at work, did you sit and look at Facebook for 30 minutes? Or did you have a conversation with people that were in the break room? Who's having a tough time at work that you know about and just needs some encouragement? Who's lonely, isolated, just needs somebody to love them?
That's what it means to make disciples. It's to live like the gospel is true in every relationship, in every conversation, in every action. No action, nothing that we ever do is without meaning. And it's everything. This is your waitress. This is the lady at the bank when you go to deposit your check.
It's everywhere. It's every circumstance. Let me let you guys in on me a little bit. I'm not standing up here saying I'm perfect at this. Not. It's hard.
And you guys know me. I think you know me well enough that I love people. I do. I love you guys. If you don't know it, I'll hug you afterwards. But I do.
I genuinely love people. But I'm slightly introverted. I know. You wouldn't know it. But being around people drains me big time.
It just sucks the life out of me. It just makes me really, really tired. And so there are days when I wake up and I'm excited about spending time with people. And every person I meet, every conversation, I just want to encourage them. I want to point them towards the gospel. And then there are days that I wake up and I just want it to be about me.
I don't want to answer my phone when people call. And so this is hard. This is something that we've got to learn and grow in and realize that we get to be a part of Jesus' mission of saving the world in our normal, everyday lives. Like I said, I'm not perfect at this, but let me give you a couple of good stories. Over the last two weeks, excuse me, not two weeks. Over the last two years, I've had the opportunity to work at Dick's Sporting Goods.
And it's been incredible. So much I have learned there. And I'll give you a couple of stories. I remember walking into the break room one night and there was a girl on the phone. She was talking to her grandma and she was visibly upset. They were arguing, you could tell.
She hung up the phone. And I just, I remember what I was having to eat that night. I was having spaghetti. That's important. I would remember that detail. And I asked her, I said, you okay?
Everything okay? She goes, well, my grandma and my whole family, everybody's putting all this pressure on me to get married because I'm the last of my sisters to get married. And I mean, I've got a boyfriend. I guess he's my boyfriend. He cheats on me all the time. And if he just wise up, he could be my, she just went off.
And she just went on. And I finally stopped. I said, hey, can I encourage you for a second? She's like, you know, she was just letting it go. I said, can I encourage you for a second? I said, your boyfriend sounds like a jerk.
I said, I'm really sorry. I said, I'm really sorry that your family's putting this weird pressure on you. But let me tell you what's true for you. You have a father in heaven who loves you very much. So much so that he sent his son, Jesus, to die on a cross to forgive you of your sin, to bring you into a relationship because he loves you and because he pursues you.
And your identity and your value don't have to be wrapped up in some guy. It can be in him. Tears just welled up in her eyes. Thank you. You're welcome. Hope you break up your boyfriend.
He's a jerk. That was great. It was just a really cool opportunity. Here's another one. When somebody new shows up at work, you have a full license to play the 20-question game daily for a month at least. So this guy named David Hoewaler shows up at Dick's Sporting Goods.
And he's a recent graduate from Clemson University. And so I knew he was great, obviously. And so I just took that chance to build a relationship. I started asking him questions. We figured out that we had a lot in common, that we had a lot of the same interests. We started hanging out outside of work.
I invited David and his wife to come hang out with the first community group of Mill City Church. When it came time to multiply, David and his wife came with our group and started meeting in our house. It came time to multiply that group again. And the guy who was going to be leading the group was in the military and was going to have to do some training. And he was going to have to go overseas. And so David stepped up.
David said, I'll lead. And so we trained him as an apprentice. David started leading a group. In the spring of this year, David did an internship with our church where he got to be a part of our teaching team. And he got to learn more and be over kind of what happens on Sunday in terms of sound and music and videos. We got to the end of that semester and he wanted to keep doing everything that he was doing.
David just took a job this week and we asked him, David, what do you need to pull back on? He said, nothing. He said, I'll keep working my job. I want to keep doing the things that I'm doing. That guy's a leader in our church. And it started with a conversation of, when did you graduate from Clinton?
Normal, ordinary life. And eternity's impacted by that. But it's not just work. Don't think work. Katie and I lived in an apartment when we first moved here. And the last weekend we were there, they threw a pool party.
So it's like, oh, great. Now that we're leaving, you're throwing a party. It's like, bye, guys. There, Katie struck up a conversation with a lady. And they were about our age. And so we invited them to come hang out with us.
They came and had a meal at our house. We invited them to start hanging out with our community group. And five months later, Daniel Gillen became a Christian and was baptized. The Gillens were so pumped up about what was going on, they invited their friends, the C's. The C's started coming. And two months later, DJ met Jesus.
And DJ's going to be baptized in the fall. Started with a conversation by a pool over a hot dog. Normal, everyday life. Ordinary, but not insignificant. We begin praying for open doors and we get to see what God does. We start looking at every conversation, every relationship as an opportunity to encourage people in the gospel.
And we get to watch the Holy Spirit begin to change people. When Jesus calls us to go and to make disciples, this is what he's talking about. Everyday mission. No second of any day is ever a waste of time when it's lived to the glory of Jesus to see his mission go forward. Verse 6. May your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
The speech of a Christian should be generous and gracious. Not complaining. Not whining. Not cutting. Not cursing. But the speech of a Christian should be gracious.
And it should be seasoned with salt. It should be seasoned with the richness of the gospel. That for us as Christians, the gospel should be our native tongue. The gospel should be the lens through which we start to look at the world. How we start to analyze everything. So that when somebody comes to me and asks me for marriage advice, I can't help but tell them about Jesus.
Because I'm called to love my wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. When somebody comes to me and wants to talk about finances and how I handle my money, I get to tell them that Jesus gave everything for me. And so nothing that I have belongs to me. I have everything that I need in Jesus. So I'm going to handle my money a little bit differently.
When somebody comes to me talking about trials and struggles, I get to point them to a Savior who suffered for them on their behalf. Seasoned with salt. Not open the salt shaker and dump it out. Okay, so you don't have to walk around with your Bible at work being like, Oh, you look down. Can I encourage you? And just seasoned.
Seasoned with salt. Asking for opportunities that you would make it clear. That's what it says. So that you may know how you want to answer each person. Seasoned with salt. The gospel impacts everything that we do.
And salt's cool. The fact that he uses this is interesting. Salt brings out flavor. It preserves. Salt can also irritate. So don't be that characteristic of salt.
But what's cool about salt is it doesn't necessarily have a flavor in and of itself. But if you take salt and you put it on five different types of food, it's going to bring out the flavor in different ways in all five of those different foods. It's going to bring out five different types of flavors. And so when he says be seasoned with salt, he's saying be you changed by the gospel. You. You in love with Jesus.
Your personality. So some of you in the room are introverts, even more introverted than me. And you're freaking out right now. You're like, oh, he's talking about people. And I just, I want to go sit in the corner and read a book. No, no, no.
Be, be you in love with Jesus. You have been uniquely and wonderfully designed by Jesus to make disciples just the way you are. So you get to pray and look for those opportunities as well, just like all of us. See, church, that's the mission. People that have been changed by the gospel, that are living that out in community, begin praying for opportunities. They begin looking at their lives, looking for every day, every second opportunities that they can encourage someone.
Speak the truth of the gospel to them. That's what mission looks like. Get this. Disciples begin to live like the gospel's true, letting it impact their relationships. They begin inviting their friends into community. Their friends meet Jesus.
Their friends become disciples of Jesus. We're back here. Those people begin to make more disciples. It's cycles of disciples. We go make disciple after disciple after disciple. That's what the mission of the church is.
It's to go and to make disciples. So let's keep going. Look at verse 7. We're going to walk through this kind of quickly, and I'm going to try to highlight who all these people are, because there's a lot of different names in here. But what we're going to see is a lot of different names, a lot of different people, and what that means for the mission of Jesus.
Tychicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. Okay, so Tychicus, the first time we're going to see him is actually in Acts chapter 20. We see him in Acts chapter 20. Paul picks him up in Asia Minor, and now he's with Paul in Rome, and he gets the honor of delivering the letter, just like the video showed, to Ephesus, to Colossae, and to a person.
And he gets to deliver the letter to Philemon. So he's a part of the mission. It continues. Verse 9, And with him Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. Now, from the video, Onesimus was a runaway slave. Onesimus ran away from Philemon, and he's found himself in Rome.
And then Rome, he hears the gospel, and he becomes a Christian, faithful brother. And Paul is now entrusting to him also the letters. Go back to Ephesus, to Colossae, and to Philemon. So you can see this playing out, right? Onesimus is walking with the letters. Okay, all right.
Ephesus, Colossae, Philemon. That one wasn't so comfortable for him. But Paul sends him back. So a runaway slave gets to be a part of the mission. Keeps going. Verse 10, Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you.
Aristarchus. We see that Paul picks him up in Acts 17 in Thessalonica, and that he's with him in Rome. It continues on. Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him. Mark got to be a part of one of the first missionary journeys.
And during the journey, Mark leaves. Mark leaves in the middle of the journey. And so Paul and Mark are actually at odds. And what we see here is years later that they've been reconciled because the gospel is true. And now they're together in Rome. A prison is a pretty good place to get over your differences, right?
So Mark is a part of the mission too. And Jesus, who is called Justice. All we know about him is the next part. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. All we know is that he was a Jew who converted to Christianity. He became a follower of Jesus.
That's all we know. And now it starts talking about people who didn't have a Jewish background. They were Gentiles. Epaphras. We know this guy. Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.
For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and Herapolis. So this is Epaphras. Epaphras who planted the church of Colossae and is now in prison with Paul in Rome. And again, we get to see that struggling. He's struggling for them on their behalf in his prayers. I love that.
Luke, the beloved physician, greets you. We see him pick up. He's picked up in Acts. I think it's Acts 18. Luke. Dr.
Luke. Namesake of the Gospel of Luke. Author of the book, The Acts of the Apostles. And Demas. All we know about Demas is that he's with them now and later we're going to see Paul and Luke together and Demas isn't there anymore. It's gotten hard and Demas has left.
It says, I think he chased after worldly things. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, another church that's in the area, and to Nympha and the church in her house. Nympha got to host her church family in her home. How cool is that? And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans. And see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.
All these names, all these people, what we get to see is that the mission is big. That we get to go and to make disciples, but it's a team sport. It's fishermen. It's slaves. It's men. It's women.
It's all of us working together. It's a bunch of people that have been changed by Jesus and joined together in his mission. And it's not a super special team. It's a bunch of people that have been changed by Jesus and invited in. It's a team sport. We all get to make disciples as a part of a team because the mission's big.
Continues on. I'll read 16 again and keep going. And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans. And see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. And say to Archippus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.
Remember my chains. Grace be with you. One of the major things that we've talked about all throughout Colossians is that anytime you see the word you, it's actually kind of the Greek translation of y'all. So Paul's writing this to the church. And so they would have understood this not just as individuals, but as a collective, as a body of believers. And this is one of the only times in the letter where it's the singular version of you.
Look at it. Verse 17. And Paul writes for them to tell this guy, Archippus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you received in the Lord. Archippus, this random guy who is not a major character in this story at all, has a specific ministry that he's been given in the Lord just for him and for him alone. He has a personal ministry as a part of the team. And I want us to realize tonight that just like Archippus had a specific ministry in the Lord just for him, Jesus has a specific ministry for each one of us as a part of the team.
That he has uniquely and creatively designed each one of us to be right where we are doing the things that we're doing with the gifts and abilities that we have for the gospel so that we can go out and make disciples. And in doing so, we grow in our relationship with him. You see, the epic, grand narrative of the history of the world has been given to us. Jesus promises to build his church and to send his Holy Spirit to bring about repentance in people that the church can move forward and make disciples. And 2,000 years later, we're still doing the same thing. It gets better.
I've read the end of the book. Jesus comes back to get his church. We ain't going nowhere. We're not going anywhere. The mission is big and it's going to continue until Jesus comes back. That's a big promise because you've been invited into a mission where the victory has already been won.
And that's huge for us. So this epic, grand narrative of saving the world is accomplished in the ordinary. In the ordinary, but not insignificant. Every one of us has a mission. Every one of us as part of the mission of Mill City Church has a role. Let me help you see it.
I want you to ask yourself these questions. This is how you start seeing it. What are the gifts and abilities that you have? What are you passionate about? Where has the Lord placed you currently in this stage of your life? Where do you work?
Where do you go to school? Who is your family? What are the names of your neighbors? What are the worst areas in our city? You see, each one of us has a part in the ministry. Don't miss this.
Jesus calls us to make disciples. And the way that we do that is we begin praying for open doors with our family and our friends, with the people that we serve so that Jesus would build his church. The Holy Spirit would bring people to repentance. And the gospel would move forward. And what we see in the narrative, in the letter of Colossians, is that Paul is going to say that people that have been changed by Jesus, living that out in the context of community, led by the Holy Spirit, the mission is going to move forward. And every one of us has a different Job and a different role.
Each person has a role as a part of the team. And this means that we've got to constantly remind ourselves that the church is people. The church is not a building. The church is not an activity. It's not a club or an organization. It's a group of people that have been rescued by Jesus, transferred from death to life.
The church is people. And the church is God's chosen vessel to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, and there is no plan B. We are the mission. We get to take the mission forward. In the 1940s, around the time of World War II, there was a ship that was commissioned to be built. It was the SS United States.
And it was supposed to be the biggest and baddest ship on the ocean. It was a troop carrier. The SS United States was built to carry 15,000 soldiers at 51 miles per hour and make it to any destination in the world in less than 10 days. That means she was faster than any ship on the ocean at the time. But see, by the time it was finished in 1952, World War II had ended.
And in the 17 years of service that the SS United States had, it was only put on standby one time, and that was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And so at the end of 17 years, a ship that had been designed to carry troops into battle was retired and was converted into a luxury liner. The SS United States, which could carry 15,000 people, had its barracks converted to state rooms that could carry 2,000. It became a luxury liner for presidents and for heads of states and for celebrities who wanted to make it across the ocean in style. Mess halls were converted into four restaurants, three bars, two movie theaters.
The deck was kept open, but they put in a heated swimming pool. They installed 19 elevators. And people that rode on the SS United States got the luxury of being on the first air-conditioned ship on the ocean. The SS United States was designed to be a troop carrier and was converted into a luxury liner. You see, the faces of soldiers that are preparing for battle and their conversations are much different on a troop carrier than they are sitting by a pool eating bonbons. The allocation of resources on a troop carrier are different than that of the opulent wealth of a luxury liner.
The troop carrier is going to go as fast as it can because it's got an urgent mission where the luxury liner just takes its time. It just goes at its own pace. And what Paul is going to consistently say throughout this letter, he's pointing to the church at Colossae that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, that all things were created by Him and for Him, that He spoke creation into existence, including us, humankind, and we rebelled. We decided we wanted to be like God, and we broke the relationship. We brought sin into the world, a relationship that we were incapable of fixing, that the Old Testament sacrificial system and the laws were a mere shadow of the atonement and the reconciliation that needed to be done.
But God promised that He would rescue, that He would redeem, that He would save, that He would accomplish salvation for His glory, and Jesus steps into history. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life. He trained up His disciples. He did miracles. He taught. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and I'm going to give my life as a ransom for many.
And Jesus goes to the cross. And on the cross, the wrath of God is poured out on Jesus so that we could be forgiven of our sins, so that we could be offered redemption. And Jesus dies, and they place Him in a tomb. And three days later, Jesus walks out victorious, showing that He conquered sin, death, Satan, and hell. And He hung around with His disciples for 40 days. And He told them, I'm giving you the mission.
Go and make disciples until the end of the age. And I'm ascending into heaven, but one day I'm coming back. But don't worry, I'm going to send my Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit descends on 120 ragtag believers, and the gospel moves forward. The believers go from 120 to 3,000. The gospel begins to move from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.
And now Paul and Epaphras are in prison. And 2,000 years later, the mission is still moving forward. The church is a troop carrier, not a luxury liner. We have been designed for mission. We have been invited into the mission of Jesus. The ministry of the church is not designed to be a blessing to the body just as a means of itself.
But we're to be the agent through which Jesus works by His Holy Spirit to save the world. We're the mission. And so as Paul comes to the end of this letter, he's shown them that the gospel is the most beautiful thing in the world, and changed by it as people who are living in community. We get to use our ordinary, everyday lives on mission as we make disciples. That people who have been changed by the gospel and choose to live that out in community will change the world on mission. Mill City Church is a gospel-centered community that has been called into the greatest mission the world has ever seen.
Mill City Church is you and you and you and you, y'all, us. And we've been called into it. The band's going to come back up. This summer's been great for us. We've grown. We've been able to grow in health and what it looks like to be healthy.
And when I say healthy, I mean we've grown in our understanding of the gospel. We've begun confessing and repenting of sin. We've grown in what it looks like to live in relationship with each other and community. And we are at one of the most beautiful places in our church history that is a people that have grown to understand the gospel and are living that out in community. It's time to go all in. The church is a troop carrier and we've been designed for mission.
And I just want to tell you a little bit about our future. Here's where we're going. That because of those things, we get to, over the next couple of months, we're going to be focusing on mission. Next Sunday will actually be our last Sunday here at FBC West Columbia. And then we're moving our gatherings to Glen Forest School. And the reason we're doing it is we're doing it for mission.
We've got the opportunity to go into a school that is underloved, underappreciated, underfunded, that has very little volunteers. And we get to go in. We get to go from a place that's free to where we're actually going to pay to use the space because it's going to help the school. We're going to go from a church to a school. We're going to get to serve them. We're going to adopt them.
We're going to be moving our gathering time from the evening to the morning for mission. We're leveraging ourselves for mission because what we're saying is we want our church family to get up and to worship together on Sunday mornings and then to use the rest of the day to live normal, everyday life with people on mission in the afternoons and evenings. So that means that to see the mission of Jesus go forward, you might have to invite people over to your house to watch the Broncos play. It may be that you need to go play a round of golf. Or invite your neighbors over for a cookout. That's what it looks like to live on mission.
We're going to get into that neighborhood. We're going to get into the neighborhoods around Glen Forest. Not only that, the teaching of our church is going to be very missional over the next couple of months. Dawn of the church is Acts 1 and 2. It's the beginning of the mission. And then the Sunday in between, we're going to be throwing a party.
We're going to be inviting people from the surrounding neighborhoods. And we're going to be inviting our friends. Then on September 7th, we're launching Kingdom Come. It's a series where we look at how the kingdom of God moves forward in the lives of people. Our community groups are going to be focusing on a who. We're going to be focusing on areas like West Hill, like Glen Forest School, USC, and Midlands Tech.
And all along the way, we're going to continue to see our church family make disciples and bring people into community. We're going to continue to see group leaders trained and groups multiplied out. We're going to see our church continue to grow. And then we're going to multiply more churches. We're going to continue to have an impact in the city because we want to see marriages mended. We want to see children and parents relating to each other the right way.
We want to see darkness driven back in our city. And so in a second, we're going to sing. We're going to sing and pray that God would give us the courage that we need to step up and to step out. The mission's big and we've been invited in. And so I'm going to ask you that as you sing, pray for courage. Pray that God would lead us.
Jesus has called us into a mission that he's already won. And we need everybody to get on board the truth carrier. It's time to go all in. And it's time for each one of us to fulfill the ministry that Jesus has given to us. Let's pray.
God, we are humbled by the fact that you would call us in. That we would get the opportunity to be a part of your mission of saving the world. In normal, everyday life. God, when it's about the mission, when it's all about Jesus, we put our preferences to the side. We put our wants and desires to the side. And we chase after you with everything.
Because the gospel's true. Or teach us what it looks like to live on mission. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's stand as we respond and sing. That we, when we yap. If we love others.
Amen. Amen.