Claiming our Riches in Christ: The Book of Colossians
01/19/2003 - The Marks of a Strong Church
Christmas Day was extra special this year for a man named Andrew "Jack" Whittaker of Scott Depot, West Virginia, a little town about 20 miles west of Charleston. On that day the 55 year-old contractor won the biggest undivided lottery prize in history, $314.9 million, and said the first thing he would do with it was give ten percent to his church. I know a lot of you have told me you'd do that too, but this guy actually did it. And when I heard that I thought "Oh wow! We almost started this church in Scott Depot, West Virginia." It was between Audubon and Scott Depot!
It's funny, Whittaker didn't think he won when he watched the televised drawing on Christmas night because they broadcast the wrong powerball numbers. But it's a good thing he didn't rip up his ticket, because when the numbers were corrected the next day he discovered he'd won.
When he told his daughter, Ginger, she couldn't believe it. She's had cancer twice and hasn't worked in a year and said, "I was just getting ready to go back to work, but I think I'm retired now." His wife, Jewell, to whom he's been married for 36 years said, "I'm going to Israel. I want to walk where Jesus walked." Whittaker himself wants to buy a helicopter and expand his business, but mostly he wants to use his fortune to help people.
Life will never be the same for the Whittaker family, even if they did take the lump sum payment of just $111.7 million dollars. They're rich! And they're going to discover both the upside and the downside of instant wealth. They're going to find themselves with a whole lot of new friends and relatives they never knew they had before.
And as I was thinking about Jack Whittaker's story it dawned on me that that powerball ticket would have done him absolutely no good if he hadn't stepped forward to claim his prize. There was no record that that ticket had been sold to him. If he would have ripped it up Christmas night after he saw the wrong numbers televised on the screen he wouldn't have won the jackpot. If he lost that ticket or let that ticket sit in his drawer and never checked the numbers he would have never known the riches that were his. He had to step forward and claim his riches.
And I'm afraid that far too many Christ followers live life like they've lost their lottery ticket. By that I mean they live their entire Christian lives unaware of the riches that are theirs in Christ. They go unclaimed by us. We're rich, church, richer than Jack Whittaker. We really are. Maybe not materially, but spiritually.
As believers in Jesus Christ we are sons and daughters of the king, we are children of the light, we have died with Christ and have been raised with him, we are God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, we have an inheritance in heaven that's worth a whole lot more than $111 million dollars. That's just money. It'll all be gone someday. But our wealth will last forever. It won't rust, rot or get ripped off either. We can't lose it in the stock market. It's completely secure. And when we finally understand how rich we are then and only then can we live the abundant life Jesus promised. And that truth is found in the New Testament book of Colossians that we're going to begin studying today in a series called "Claiming Our Riches in Christ."
If you have a Bible turn with me to the book of Colossians. This morning we're going to look at Colossians 1:1-8. I'm pumped about this three-month series and I want to encourage you to immerse yourself in this book and to come every week for the teaching. And if you have to miss a week or two, then be sure to get the tape or download the manuscript from our website. Stay with it, because I know our lives will be better for it. We'll be better husbands and wives, children, and parents, employers and employees, students and friends, better servants of God because this book is going to address all those areas of our lives. It's going to tell us the truth about who we really are in Christ so that we can act like, because our beliefs shape our values and our values drive our behavior.
Colossians 1:1-8, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, 2 To the holy and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ at Colosse: Grace and peace to you from God our Father.
Colossians is actually a letter written by the apostle Paul from Rome to a brand new church in the city of Colosse. Remember most of the New Testament was written as letters to churches that Paul or others had started as a result of missionary journeys. The apostle Paul wrote 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament and they're all in the form of letters, some personal, but most to churches like this one.
Paul had never been to Colosse. It was a city about 100 miles east of Ephesus, a place where Paul had spent three years starting and teaching a thriving church there. Ephesus and Colosse are located in the country called Turkey today. But in Paul's day it was the Roman province of Asia.
Colosse was a major trade center. It was situated in the Lycus Valley and straddled the Lycus River at the foot of majestic mountains that rise 8,500 feet high. It's in a beautiful area that I visited a number of years ago. The area is known for its mineral springs and chalk formations and while I was there I spent a day splashing around in pools of water until the sunset. It was a breathtaking experience.
In its heyday, Colosse was a thriving city, an economic center, a staging area for Persian troops to assemble for invasions into nearby Greece. It was not only on a river, but it was on a highway that ran east and west from Ephesus all the way to Iran and north and south throughout Asia Minor. But over time the trade routes changed and the earthquakes came and took their toll and so today there's hardly a trace of Colosse. Instead, what we have left is better than a city. We have the legacy of this power packed letter of the apostle Paul.
Paul never visited Colosse, but the gospel did and a church was started there. And now Paul is sitting in his apartment in Rome, under house arrest, with his friend Timothy, waiting for his trial on charges of treason, when he hears a knock on the door. And in walks a man named Epaphras. We don't know if Paul knew this man or not. But he has a gift in his hand, a monetary gift. And he gives it to the apostle, sits down and starts to tell Paul all about this thriving church in the city of Colosse. And Paul's speechless. He doesn't know what to say. He had no idea there was a church there.
Epaphras tells him how he first came to know the Lord through Paul's ministry in Ephesus and was so excited that he went to his hometown of Colosse and shared the good news there. And a church was started and now they heard that Paul was under arrest and they wanted to encourage him and so they took up a collection and sent Epaphras to take it 1,000 miles to Paul in Rome. And it chokes him up. It brings tears to Paul's eyes, because he was getting so discouraged and was starting to wonder if the verse that he wrote in Romans 8:28 was really true, All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. Paul was in prison how could that work together for good. But then the news came and the gift did too and it wouldn't have come if Paul hadn't been in prison. And he wouldn't have written this letter to the Colossians that we enjoy today if he hadn't been in prison. All things do work together for good!
Let me stop right here and remind all of us that God is doing way more behind the scenes of our lives then we're aware of or can ever imagine. Paul didn't know the impact that his life and message had had on a city he had never visited and on a group of people he had never met. And it took a difficult set of circumstances in his life, an imprisonment, for him to discover what God had done through him. And that's what I often hear people say who spend their lives serving and caring for others. When they get down, when they face difficulty, God often returns to them the encouragement they have given to others. And they wouldn't have known it otherwise. If you're really serving the Lord, let me remind you, you're making an impact on people you're not even aware of, maybe people that you've never even met.
So they talk for days and days and then Paul writes a letter to send to the believers in Colosse. Verse 2, To the holy and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ at Colosse: Grace and peace to you from God our Father.
Notice Paul calls them holy, the word holy means "separate," it does not mean "perfect." These people are not perfect. Nobody is. They haven't worked miracles and been canonized in some way. Paul doesn't even know them personally. Instead, the word "holy" means they are a separate group of people, a special bunch in God's eyes. Why? Because they are "in Christ." In Christ, Paul says, at Colosse.
If you're a believer in Jesus this morning you too are "in Christ" and "at the Audubon Y" today. Tomorrow you'll be "at work," but "in Christ," "at school," but "in Christ," "at home," but "in Christ," "at the gym," but "in Christ." But where you are is not nearly as important and as the one in whom you are found.
Let me tell you what it means to be "in Christ." As believers in Jesus we are inseparably linked to Christ. Which means that when God looks at you he sees you exactly the same way as he sees Christ. He sees you as perfect as he sees his Son because all your sin has been forgiven and you are robed in the righteousness of Christ. That's our position in Christ. That's our standing in God's eyes. That's our new identity as believers. That's part of the riches we need to claim. We need to believe that about ourselves because God says it's true and because it will change how we live.
That doesn't mean we're perfect people. We're not perfect in our practice of the Christian faith. We all stumble and fall and make mistakes and mess up. And we always will. We can always live better. But we're perfect in our position in Christ. That can't get any better. That what God does for us the moment we trust Christ. He places us "in Christ."
Which is why Paul can call these people saints in verse 4. This will really blow your mind. If you're a believer this morning, you're a saint. Don't laugh! You are a set apart one. You may not live like a saint, look like a saint, or act like a saint, but that's who you are. Can you say, "I am a saint?" Now put your name after it. "I am saint Bruce." If you have trouble saying it, maybe there are some things that need to change in your life. But that's the way God looks at his children. He calls us saints and wants us to grow to live like saints, separate from the way the world lives. That's what it means to be "in Christ."
Paul's knee jerk reaction to this good news from Epaphras is to go to his knees and pray for the church in Colosse. And we can learn a lot from Paul's prayer. Look at verses 3, We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,
Stop right here. Paul was a thankful person. We're going to learn as we study this letter that there were some real problems in the Colossian church. Some things were going on there that Paul was going to have to deal with. There were false teachers coming into the church and saying that Jesus is not enough, that in order to please God they needed more than Jesus. They needed to live by certain rules or keep certain traditions or celebrate certain holidays or observe certain sacraments. They were trying to add to the gospel. And Paul had to deal with it. But that didn't stop him from being thankful for all the good that was going on.
Isn't it so easy to look at all the things that we'd like to change about other people or about our circumstances or about ourselves and stop being thankful? It's easy for me. But one of the expressions of the Holy Spirit in our lives is thankfulness. Paul puts it this way in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Give thanks IN all circumstances, not FOR all circumstances, not for the illness, or for the accident, or for the struggles, but in the struggles because God is in the struggles with us. And we thank him for that.
Now Paul goes on in his prayer to point out the three marks of a strong church. Look at verse 4, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints.
The first mark of a strong church is faith in Christ Jesus. Faith in Christ is the foundation of a strong church. In the New Testament, faith is always centered in a person and that person is Jesus Christ. There are a lot of people who say, "I have faith." But when you explore that with them you soon find out that they have faith that every thing will turn out right, or faith that good will eventually triumph over evil, or faith that somehow things will all work out in the end. They put their faith in faith. But the value of our faith is not found in our faith, it's found in the person in whom our faith rests. And that person is Jesus who proved his claims to be God.
A lot of people this past year put their faith in Enron or in World Com or in Lucent Technologies for their financial future. But when those companies collapsed their faith did them no good. Faith is only as good as the object on which it rests. The mark of a strong church is a group of people whose faith is founded in Jesus Christ. Is yours? Are you trusting Jesus Christ alone as you forgiver and leader in life? Are you "in Christ" this morning? Nothing is more important than that.
We say it often around here that the church is not a building or a denomination or a political organization or a social club for baptisms and weddings and funerals. The church is a collection of people who have a simple faith in Christ Jesus. I hope you do.
The second mark of a strong church is a love for one another. Because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints.
For a church to be strong there needs to be a genuine love for one another. Jesus said that's how the world will know that we are his followers because we love one another. That's why at Valley View we talk so much about community. It's not enough for us to show up at a gathering once a week for worship and teaching, as important as that is. This is not to be an end in itself, this is only the means to the end of loving one another better. Church is not a place we go to once a week. Church is who we are and how we treat each other. The test of our faith is found in the transformation of our attitudes and our relationships. And people will be drawn to Valley View Community Church not because of its worship and teaching, or beautiful facilities, but because of its love for one another.
I just need to brag on the church for a minute. There are a lot of love stories I could tell you, but the one that comes to mind happened just before Christmas. A man in our church community had a heart attack while driving his car in the city and it resulted in an accident that landed him in the hospital. And by the time I got word of it two of our elders were on their way to visit him and later that Monday night a third elder joined them and were around his hospital bed we he came out of surgery. These are all busy people willing to drop everything in a time of need. They didn't even need me. They were all over it! That's the church loving each other.
A strong church has faith in Christ Jesus, love for one another and the hope of heaven. Look at verses 5-6, the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel 6 that has come to you.
A strong church lives with one eye on heaven. They know that this life is not all there is. They've settled the most important question in life and that is, "Where are you going to spend eternity?" They know that Jesus could come back at anytime and they want to be found faithful. They know that people are the most important thing in life so they value relationships. They are so heavenly minded that they do a ton of earthly good. They have the settled assurance that their real home is in heaven. And they're going there not because of what they've done for Christ. But because of what Christ did for them, removing their sin when he died on the cross. Faith, hope and love are the marks of strong church.
That's the target on the wall for Valley View. That's our agenda and will always be our agenda. It doesn't take a big church to be a strong church. The church in Colosse met in a house, in the home of Philemon. It wasn't a big church. But it was a strong church because it had faith and hope and love. That's what we want for Valley View.
Paul finishes by saying in verses 6-8, All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth. 7 You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, 8 and who also told us of your love in the Spirit.
All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing. One of the neat things about taking a mission's trip to Mexico or some other country is to see with your own eyes the truth of that statement. How the gospel of Jesus Christ is growing and bearing fruit all over the world. It's a faith builder. And I'm sure we'll see it again in the faces of the Mexican Indians who can't read or write, but who love Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all!