Colossians 1:1-2
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Most of us would probably have a hard time finding Norway on a map.
But a quick google search will show you that Norway is known around the world for its prisons. who knew?
They are known to have the most luxurious prisons in the world. Luxury Prison you heard that right.
Halden Prison looks like an IKEA showroom meets an exclusive mountain spa.
Norway spends 91,000 per year on each prisoner. The US spends around 31,000
When we think of a letter written from prison we picture a well lit room paper pen provided at a nice desk with time to think.
In Norway imagine an office nicer than yours in a room nicer than yours with essential oils diffusing.
Our picture of prison is unique in the west to word history.
Paul wrote this letter to the Colossian believers from prison.
Maybe you have heard that Paul was in prison before in other books if you’ve been around church before.
Maybe like me you hear that and picture Paul, quill in hand, at a desk with candles lighting the evening so he can write in peace and comfort.
The hell on earth that would have been a Roman prison in Ephesus should shatter that picture in our mind.
Theologian Michael Bird says “Imagine Paul in prison in Ephesus. He is probably malnourished and short of sleep. He may well have suffered horrible illness: he will certainly have been beaten by guards and other prisoners. He feels helpless and alone in a dark and damp, with the smell of rot, excrement, and death all around him. Picture him then scribbling away on a small sheet of papyrus, squinting for lack of light…What Paul experienced in an Ephesian prison was not serenity, but searing hardship, not soothing tranquility but brokenness and anxiety” (wright & B bird 451).
From that damp dungeon with death and screams in the air God inspired the greatest missionary theologian ever to scribble out the sweetest exaltations of Jesus our Savior to the believers he loved.
To see a few dozen converts grow in the glory of the Gospel was Paul’s unstoppable mission.
To pour out his heart to the church in Colossae was the light for Paul in a dark room.
Each one of these letters from Paul was written for a specific reason to a specific group of believers.
We are embarking on the study of one of Paul’s prison letters, Colossians.
Today we get the privilege to study verses one and two of chapter one, just two verses.
We will see Three Points Today: 1. Unstopped in Suffering, 2. What Makes a Saint, and 3. The Hope We Anchor In
Lets Dive In
English Standard Version Chapter 1
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
2 To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
We are going to see in the first verse what it takes to be unstopped in suffering
Unstopped in Suffering (v1)
Unstopped in Suffering (v1)
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
Our letters today have a structure we all learn and use.
The Greco- Roman world was no different.
They had a structure that Paul and Peter always use just like we do.
Instead of the writers name at the end like we do theirs came at the beginning.
But this is no formality for Paul.
Every word he writes, even in this greeting, is packed with significance and meaning
He means every word he says....these letters represented Pauls presence with the church because he was in chains
As we saw in the opening Paul is suffering for the Gospel.
He is in a prison cell in Ephesus where the Ephesian church is.
Acts 18-19 tell us about the explosive ministry of Paul there, the complex twists and turns poilitcally and the way the gospel turned the city upside down to the point of riots.
Paul made some important people very mad and he was in prison for it.
Paul knew suffering from the moment he beleived Jesus was the Messiah on the road to Damascus
Or this later in his letter to the church in Corinth
But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. 22 Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. 23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?
30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. 31 The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. 32 At Damascus, the governor under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me, 33 but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his hands.
In all of this placed on a scale in Paul’s analysis the weight of Glory in the Gospel outweighed it all.
Thomas Chalmers called this type of weight of glory...”the expulsive power of a new affection”
That means that to Paul the call of the risen Christ from death to life
The risen Christ, fullfilling all the Old Testament Paul knew into this bones, ushering in the New Creation, inaugurating the Last Days the final stretch, saving him from murdering christians to being murdered as a christian.
The Gospel was impossible to outweigh despite the suffering.
Not only was he saved look at what this salvation did to him…Jesus saved him to send him....
Verse one again he is is “An apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”
This title meant not only was Paul present with them in spirit but he carried the authority of one sent by the Risen Messiah himself.
If you were a christian in Turkey in the first century …you had heard of Paul
This Christian community in Colossae had come into existence during that period of prodigious missionary and evangelistic activity associated with the apostle’s Ephesian ministry (c. ad 52 to 55). So effective were the daily evangelistic ‘dialogues’ held in the hall of Tyrannus, where Paul’s bold speaking compelled men’s attention during the long siesta period (the first lunch-hour lectures recorded), that it is possible for Luke to claim that ‘all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks’ (Acts 19:8–10)
Lucas, R. C. (1980). Fullness & freedom: the message of Colossians & Philemon (pp. 18–19). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Unstoppable even in suffering because the Promised Messiah broke into fallen humanity and rose from the dead and sent Paul out.
It was the will of God before the foundations of the world to set his affections on a violent man and take him from death to life for a mission to bring as many as he could from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of this Jesus
I have to ask here of all of us who are saved by the same risen Messiah…what has the Gospel done to you?
Are you saved and sit on it ? Paul was unique in personhood and apostlehip but the call is not.
Are you so anchored in the Gospel that though suffering comes you have hope on the darkest of nights that Jesus is risen.
His resurrection and indwelling of the Spirit is the gurantee that at the graveside of our beleiving family we know death is disarmed and will not get the last word so we can press on.
Christ came to make all things new
He came to take back what Adam gave up to Satan in the garden
Down to the family we have.
We are a family of saints.
This is our second point today
What Makes a Saint (v2)
What Makes a Saint (v2)
2 To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:
A pator i look up to greatly is just up the road in Marrietta.
He says this...”Relationships change people”
It is a relationship with Jesus that saves us and it is in relationship with other believers saved by grace we are to do this life
We were never meant to do the life of the mission of God alone.
Adam was commissioned in the garden with someone…that has always been the plan
Jesus makes our missional family new
Paul had no biological children. He was abandoned almost everywhere he went by all but a few.
There is even some debate as to wether or not Paul had a wife who left him when he converted
God gives us a new family of saints from sinners and its what only he can do.
He is with a young man timothy in verse one. Not a power player by any means.
In the letters paul writes him Timothy is timid, even to the point of needing some wine for his stomach.
The family of God is a band of misfits and that is just how God wants it
Redemptive reversals are what God does.
An unbelieving friend posted not long ago on facebook that christianity is a crutch for the weak.
I thought YES exactly i am busted up and more in need of it then in can even describe…come on in we are all weak and needy
A new family of those in need, unspectacular by the worlds standards
Unseen people in a Turkish valley are the joy of Paul’s heart from a damp prison cell.
2 To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:
Lost sinners made saints, unfaithful rebels now faithful to their Lord, unknown to the world while cherished by the Creator
Paul loves the people of His Savior.
Paul sees the church as the end time fullfilled family of God promised in the Old Testament
Here he applies Israels status to these faithful believers.
As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
Paul makes references in many letters to Daniel 7
All he sees is the inbreaking of the Kingdom and all he puts his energy to is to expand that family to the end of the earth
He does it in starting new works and in building up the families of God he encounters
He preached and saved many in Ephesus
Among them was a man from Colosse named Epaphres.
Epaphres went home and planted the church.
He faithfully preached the Gospel Paul taught him but came to Paul for help and in desperate prayer for his church in Colossae
Look at Colossians 4:12-13
12 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.
The threat Paul and Epaphres longed the people would fight was the lie that there must be more to the Chrisiian experience then the everyday lived out Gospel.
Persuasive and pressuring culture they lived in was selling the lie you need to have mountian top experiences, be more important, move up in the world of religion, follow more rules to make sure you get the good life, and be something more.
One commentator says here:
young converts were under external pressure to conform ‘to the beliefs and practices of their pagan and Jewish neighbours’. Paul’s emphasis on the uniqueness and supremacy of Christ’s work in creation and redemption is therefore to be seen as a reminder that they had no need to look elsewhere for completion of salvation outside of Christ
Paul is saying YOU ALREADY ARE SAINTS. WHAT YOU DID IN ACCEPTING THE GOSPEL IS FAITHFUL
What makes a saint is not the mountain top excluded from the world or the powerful pastor at FBC whatever mega church.
What makes a saint is your everyday faith.
How are you a follower of Christ on a monday unseen by the world but infinitely valuable to the God who saved you
Colossae used to be important but the world moved on.
The financial capital had moved on the world moved on
God had not moved on
He wanted the hearts of those the powerful had forgotten
They received the full Gospel. They didn’t need anything more
Paul is reminding them in the introduction they are not the almost saved, or the not quite but close to faithful
Theologian N.T. Wright says here:
The Message of Colossians and Philemon True Christians and the True Gospel (Colossians 1:3–8)
the Colossian thanksgiving comes alive. It is an impressive piece of re-assurance. In it Paul explains the reasons why, from reports received, he has no cause to doubt both that they are true Christians, and that what they had heard from the lips of Epaphras was indeed the authentic apostolic message.
He is telling us you are not almost who matters to Him.
Just get a few more hundred in attendance and get the coopertive program SBC giving up and you will be God’s covenant people
YOU AND I ARE NOW if we are in Him
can you believe that
Forgotten people in a forgotten place were the reason He set aside His glory and endured the Cross
He cared that on a Wednesday afternoon in the Lycus valley 2000 years ago things were not how they were supposed to be
There was sin and sadness, rebellious roman teenagers, funerals, lonliness, and pain in a small roman town in modern day turkey
So he came and fought hell to make it new
And he sent men like Paul to remind them that you will heard alot of trash teaching that sounds good but know you are already His
My preaching hero Dick Lucas knows this is the aim of Pauls introduction here he says:
It appears that high among Paul’s aims in writing this letter was that of reassuring the loyal believers at Colossae as to their proper standing as Christians, and to confirm the accuracy of the message brought to them by Epaphras
From pagan sinners living in darkness in the Lycus valley to saints.
Surrounded by devout dispersed jews on one side
And on the other Roman culture with its pantheon of gods, emperor worship, and promises of affluence and pleasure.
They became the faithful and true
set apart from the foundations of the world to have the God of the universe set is affection on you to bring you to life.
Not that they may have an escapist faith but live a regular Monday in a forgotten place the way God made us too.
He cares today that on a Wednesday afternoon in a small part of a huge world you are living life in a broken world.
He wants you to be a light in a dark world, colassae was a dark world, so is our part of the world 2000 years later
We call Him Immanuel God with us.
He is not god out there or up there he is God right here.
When you get up when you go to the store he wants to make it all new and for his mission
Monaghan you are already the Saints promised in the Old Testament and the Faithful
Not because of what we do…but because of what he has done
Sinners made saints, adulterous creation made the faithful
What a Gospel What a hope.
This is the last point we have today
The hope we Anchor in (2b)
The hope we Anchor in (2b)
2b Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
Paul wastes no space no word in his opening
The depth of what he says at this ending of verse 2 cannot be overstated
Remember the situation he is in?
Every word has to be theologically packed
In a culture where there is a constant pull to one of 2 ends they needed to know who they already are in Christ
The pull to fall more and more in to Jewish restrictions since they believed in Jesus as the Messiah
The pull the other way to secular culture to add Jesus to the shelf of all the other gods who could fit what they want life to be
How much does that sound like us?
We can fall more and more into southern baptist culture to feel more secure in our faith
Or we can fall more and more into a culture that has no need for the whole gospel and add a jesus of our making to our lives for some self improvement
Paul hits them with a word formula to show that either pull has nothing on the Gospel they have already recieved
Grace- is the most important feature of the Gospel
One commentator says : “the word had been taken up by Christians to epitomize the dynamic outreaching generosity of God which they had experienced through the gospel and the Spirit”
More than 2/3 rds of the New Testament uses of this Greek word for Grace are used by Paul
You talk about a man who knew how undeserving the unmerited saving grace of God is in jesus it is Paul
Have you let the Gospel wreck you like it did Paul?
He is begging this Colossian family you are the Chosen people of god who are the fulfillment of all the Old Testament
It has come through Grace
J.D. Dunn says: “His prayer in effect is that the grace that first set the Colossian Christians apart as “saints” will continue to enable them to remain faithful as “brothers.”
It didn’t just go against the jewish culture it showed that Grace and Saving alone came from Christ
The secular Roman culture attributed provision and salvation to Zeus and Emperor worship
Peace has just as much power packed impact for us
The word is shalom it is what was broke in the rebellion of Eden
It is not a peace in the abscence of conflict.
It is the flourishing we were made for with God
Paul saw the risen Christ as the firstborn of new creation, the new Adam…the inbreaking of the New Creation
It is here brother and sister!!!
DO you know what that means !!!
Paul new we are the fullfillment of the already not yet kingdom of God
The promised restoration of God’s people
Look at this Peace Paul new we are the fullfillment of
Christian Standard Bible Chapter 55
12 You will indeed go out with joy
and be peacefully guided;
the mountains and the hills will break into singing before you,
and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thornbush, a cypress will come up,
and instead of the brier, a myrtle will come up;
this will stand as a monument for the LORD,
an everlasting sign that will not be destroyed.
What greater sign than our God rising from the dead to reign forever in an everlasting kingdom
We get to taste the peace as we live out the Gospel in our everyday
Rome promised peace too
Apox de Roma was the promise if you gave into emperor worship and denied the exclusivity of the Gospel
Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary 1. Opening Greeting (1:1–2)
The scene is set for a letter through which Paul intends, by his writing, to be a means of that grace, and so to bring about that rich and mature peace
N.T. Wright says
Paul has set the stage for what he is about to unpack.
The whole aim is in Colossians 2:6-7
6 So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, 7 being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.
This is for us
Theres nothing better
Paul wants us to know this today
Brother and sister there is nothing better
The Grace to be Saints
The Peace to be part of new creation part of the unstoppable Kingdom of God that broke into humanity when Jesus rose from the grave
Do you have this peace and know this grace?
It is only found in Christ
I pray you reach out to us if you want to know how to follow this Jesus we adore