Confident Maturity - Colossians 1:24-2:5

Good morning…

Guests…

Let’s open our Bibles… Col. 1:24-2:5

I am thankful for Luis and his zeal for God’s word and that people would know Christ. We are blessed to have multiple men who can bring the word to us on a given weekend and we should thank God for that provision.

As you make your way to Colossians, ch. 1

[Hook] How do you move from a place of uncertainty to a place of confidence

It can be common to lack confidence in your walk with Christ

But what if there was a recognizable pattern in the christian life, where if I could just follow the roadmap then I could be confident that my life was heading in the direction God has for me, regardless of what the world around me might say?

And the Apostle Paul is going to give the Colossian church a roadmap like that

And it is just as relevant and just as true for us today in 2024, so let's give these words in God's word our full attention

[Passage]

Big Idea: Maturing in Christ produces confidence in life.

If you want to live this life with confidence, maturing in Christ is the way to find it.

Not new ideas - But knowledge of Christ

When I am unstable in my faith, it is because I am in need of growth.

Let me just ask right out of the gate this morning: Where in your life are you experiencing anxiety and a lack of confidence?

Where in your life are you unsure what to think?

I would venture to guess that in that area of your life there are competing voices that are making hard to know what to believe

And you’re in good company if that is you

There was instability in the church in Colossae - Outside ideas were coming in and confusing them, upsetting their confidence in Christ.

Last week, we saw Paul point this out in v. 23 when he said, “If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast” - He pointed out the fact that there was instability in their midst

Paul is now going to give us the formula for being stable and steadfast - Let’s preview where he is going to take them - cf. 2:5

He is going to move them in their reading from a place of uncertainty, “If indeed…” to a place of certainty “rejoicing to see your good order and firmness of faith in Christ”

And the way that he is going to do that is by showing them the process for how to grow in Christ

You tracking that? He is going to move them from uncertainty to confidence and the means is by showing them how to grow in their Christian maturity.

So the question for us is…

[BRIDGE] So what is the process that he will move them through to get them from being uncertain to being certain?

What is the process by which the church in Colossae, and by extension us today as a church family will come to maturity and thereby grow in confidence?

In this passage, Paul gives us a roadmap for how we are going to come to a place of being confident in living for Jesus in this life.

This roadmap has waypoints - 4 points that will get us from where we are currently to a place where we are more mature, more resolved to follow Jesus, and more confident in this life, regardless of what may come.

Roadmap for Maturity:

Waypoint #1: Suffering displays Christ (1:24-27)

Let’s just acknowledge at the outset that there is suffering in this world.

Because of sin, there is much that is broken and flawed and brings pain and sorrow.

We don’t need to linger here for very long at all for each of you to be personally aware of various forms of suffering in your life right now.

Physical

Relational

Financial

The list can go on

But Paul has already shown us that Christ is God over all

This means that even our suffering, even our hardship, has a purpose - A God-ordained, providential purpose in our lives as his people.

Now what is that purpose?

Bible study tip: Lots of dependent clauses in this passage - Helpful to read backwards

We are going to start with where this thought ends - v. 27: Christ in you the hope of glory

Then we are going to see how it is that Paul says his suffering reveals that truth of Christ as the hope of glory.

So in v. 24-27, where is Paul ultimately going to land: Christ in you, the hope of glory

He calls it “this mystery”

Now, while we don’t have the time to unpack every term, what I can do is summarize what Paul is saying here.

v. 26-27 - Paul is saying that all of God’s word, the fulness of what God has revealed in Scripture, points to one singular truth.

All of the books of the Bible, all of the law, all of the prophets, all of the Psalms, all of the wisdom books, all of the history, all of the Old Testament, all of the New Testament, is revealing one single truth

Christ in you - The hope of glory.

And he calls it a “mystery, hidden for the ages” - The Gk. word from which we get the word mystery is a word that means something kept back for a time but then revealed in its fulness.

For the people in the OT, they did not see the whole picture of what God was doing, but trusted God by faith in the time in which they lived.

But now, we have the fulness of God’s revealed truth

And this revealed mystery, this fulness of God’s word being made known is Christ in you that is the hope of glory.

Now, perhaps you have seen around the church the phrase, “We are Gospel people”

This is what we mean

Christ in you - The hope of glory

When you follow Jesus by faith, receiving his death on your behalf, thus paying the penalty you owed for your sin, you are not just made neutral before God.

Christ, by his Spirit, comes to dwell within you and your life is now marked by his life within you.

His death in your place

His righteousness to your account

His life in your mortal body

His resurrection as your future hope.

You life is now different, lived for him because he died and rose for you.

It is not dependent on what you do for him, but on what he did for you.

Starting from this truth of Christ in you, the hope of glory, moving backward in his thought, Paul says that he was appointed by God to be a messenger, a steward, of that reality.

Colossians 1:25 “of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known,”

Paul is saying, my God-appointed role in your life as a church family is to help you to see Christ clearly.

So let’s catch up: Paul has been appointed by God to make fully known the truth of Christ in you, the hope of glory - Are we clear on that up to this point?

So now we are left with the question: how will he do that?

How will Paul make fully known the truth of Christ in you, the hope of glory?

Colossians 1:24 “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,”

He will make it known through his suffering.

The way that the church will come to have a full understanding of Christ in you the hope of Glory is through the sufferings of his people.

This is Paul’s starting point for the growth of the church

Suffering displays Christ

We have to acknowledge that Paul is rejoicing in suffering.

This is not the way that people typically talk about suffering. In fact, it is a hallmark of our culture to want to avoid suffering.

We bemoan any kind of discomfort and there are entire industries that are built around the removal of hardship.

Just think about the average life in the Phoenix valley - How many conveniences have we embraced in the pursuit of comfort?

There is nothing wrong with any of them per se, but we at least have to acknowledge that we are prone to run from suffering at any cost.

But Paul says that his suffering is accomplishing something that is causing him to rejoice!

He isn’t running from it - He is rejoicing in it!

So why is he rejoicing?

He says, “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church”

This is a very peculiar statement, that would be very easy to misunderstand.

Let me first tell you what it does not mean so that we can then make sense out of what it does mean.

Paul is not saying that something about the death of Christ was insufficient to accomplish his saving purposes

The death of Jesus on the cross was fully sufficient for all sin, and will always be effective for every person who repent and trust in him by faith.

Paul is not saying that there is some measure of lack in the sufficiency of Christ death. He is instead saying that Christ death now makes it possible for something else to happen.

This phrase means “to provide something that you otherwise would not experience.”

{Illustration - 11:11} That text is meant to remind one another about a time when we were together that is providing what is lacking in our distance.

The Christians in Colossae did not see Christ face to face

they did not see his suffering, his death, or his resurrection.

Paul is saying, “Though you did not see Jesus in person… In my suffering, you see him..”

How?

Because our hardships melt away any illusion that anything else offers hope.

We place our hope in so many things that were never meant to carry the weight of our hope.

Suffering has an incredible way of revealing just how weak money, health, political security, and other things of this world are at actually providing what we think they will provide.

Those lesser things, though good things, will not ultimately sustain you and will not give hope.

You know what will? Jesus will.

Church family:

Don’t despise your hardships.

Don’t waste your struggles by wishing them away.

Don’t waste your diagnosis.

Don’t waste your relational struggles.

Don’t waste your loneliness.

Don’t waste your unemployment.

Don’t waste your circumstances by being angry about them.

Let them be the thing that shows the world that Christ is your source of hope

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

I used to trust in money, but now I trust in Christ

I used to think that my kids being successful would fulfill me, but now I trust in Christ

I used to trust in my marriage to make me happy, now I trust in Christ.

Our suffering in this life has a purpose - It displays him as our only hope.

And when I allow my present circumstances to fix my eyes on Jesus, I can be confident that I am on the path to maturity.

So that’s waypoint #1 - We will suffer in this life, but it will display Christ.

Waypoint #2: Christ gives growth (1:28-29)

Self help books promise to change your life, but they don’t.

You know how I know this? There are new ones every year.

If they did what they claimed, we wouldn’t need new ones!

But you know what isn’t new - Christ.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever and he delivers growth and life change every time when we fix out eyes on him.

And our suffering causes us to do exactly that, which then paves the way for the growth that he brings.

You see that? Suffering displays Christ, so I fix my eyes on him

When I fix my eyes on him, he gives me the growth I need.

Two things I want us to notice about this growth:

First, He is the subject of our growth - v. 28

Him we proclaim

How? Warning and teaching

These are two words that mean to instruct, but one is positive and one is negative.

Warning is the words to counsel in the avoidance of things

Teaching is instruction of right thinking and conduct.

I hear people say that they don’t want to confront sin, just love people

I also see people who only want to confront sin

Paul is saying that to truly proclaim Christ, you need both!

Why? To present everyone mature in Christ

That word “mature” is a Gk. word that means “well-rounded” or “complete”

Paul’s goal in his ministry is for believers to grow into well-rounded followers of Christ

It should be our desire as well.

Listen church family: We cannot be passive, we need to actively grow in our knowledge of Christ, his word, and the errors that lead us away from him

We must teach right conduct and confront sin

We must teach sound doctrine and correct false teaching

Faith in Christ is a two-sided coin

It is expressed through a growth in love for the things God loves

It is expressed through a growth in despising the things God despises.

Maturity in Christ will not come by accident.

No one ever drifted into Christlikeness

No one ever passively was conformed to the image of Christ.

No one ever lived like Jesus knowing nothing about Jesus.

No one ever reached maturity in Christ by looking more like the world

No one ever learned the mind of God by listening to the voices of the world.

Jesus is the subject of our growth - and we need to actively pursue knowledge of him as essential for our maturity as believers.

But he isn’t just the subject of our growth…

He is also the source for our growth - v. 29

Look at v. 29

Colossians 1:29 ESV

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

Notice, Paul isn’t being passive [just kicking back until Jesus does something], but he also isn’t being proud [he isn’t taking credit for it].

“For this I toil” - Paul is actively doing the work of the ministry

“Struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” - He is depending on the strength God provides

The growth that we should desire in Christ is ultimately growth that he will produce - We simply need to be humble enough to receive it.

I know that it is common today to think that we need programs, and branding, and big names to see the Kingdom advance.

I promise you - We don’t.

We don’t need fame; we need faithfulness.

Harvest Bible Church needs its people

to be faithful to minister to one another

to be diligent in learning and in warning and teaching one another

to be consistent in prayer and Scripture reading

to be humble in serving God and one another

to be missional in their relationships outside of the church

We don’t need a platform - We have a provision from God, in his word and through his Spirit, to do the work of the ministry with one another.

All for the sake of Christ, because Christ brings the growth that we so desperately need.

Because of this…

Harvest Bible Church will always preach Christ

We will always magnify Christ

We will always live for Christ.

We will always pursue Christ

We will always be on mission for Christ

We will always seek to make the name of Christ great

Why? Because If we make much of Christ, Christ will do much in us.

Because Christ gives growth.

When our suffering reveals Christ and Christ gives growth, we can know that we are on the path to maturity.

Waypoint #3: Growth brings assurance (2:1-3)

Paul restates the struggles that he has, for Colossae as well as the church in Laodicea, to present them mature

Laodicea is a city just down the road from Colossae (one of the 7 churches in Revelation)

To what end is Paul’s struggle for these churches?

To grow a big ministry? To be famous?

Look what he says: Colossians 2:2 “that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ,”

Full assurance of the Gospel - His concern is that they would be fully assured in the truth of Christ

Have you ever been in a situation where what you thought was true was challenged.

I remember being at a store recently and it came time to pay and I didn’t have my wallet.

Panic, for many reasons.

But the next words out of my mouth weren’t where is my wallet? But, “Do you take apple pay?”

I needed assurance that I would not have to leave all of my stuff at the register and saunter off to find my wallet.

In the midst of the fear and uncertainty of not knowing where my wallet was, the assurance another option helped to calm the immediate concern of how I was going to pay.

Listen: When something exposes that things are not the way you thought they were, you need something to confirm the truth so that you no longer live in fear and doubt, but in certainty.

There are so many competing claims in the world today - And when you hear them, it causes you to be unsettled

What can i trust? What is right? who should I listen to?

You need assurance of what is true

You know what will bring assurance - The knowledge of the Gospel, which is Christ.

He is unchanging

He is always true

He is always the way

He is always the life.

The best thing that you and I can do in this life is let the truth of the Gospel prove itself in our lives and be what gives us assurance.

We don’t need another word from God

We don’t need politics to go our way

We don’t need our favorite celebrity to agree with us

We need to trust the truth of the Gospel, that it contains all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and let it give us assurance.

But for some reason, that isn't enough for us.

We think the gospel too simple, and so we go looking for other things that could give us assurance.

We look for other philosophies and other ideas and other pursuits that could give us the mental and spiritual rest that we long for,

forgetting that what we are longing for can only be found in a full knowledge of the gospel.

Listen to the way that John Calvin puts it:

“For what is the reason why mankind have involved themselves in so many wicked opinions, in so many idolatries, in so many foolish speculations, but this—that, despising the simplicity of the gospel, they have ventured to aspire higher? All the errors… must be reckoned as proceeding from this ingratitude—that, not resting satisfied with Christ alone, they have given themselves up to strange doctrines.”

This is why the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ - because to discover them, you must accept the truth about him.

But if you reject the truth about Jesus for other shiny ideas, you will never discover the riches of the knowledge that comes from him.

And when we are influenced by strange ideas, things that are foreign to Scripture, thinking they will bring some kind of assurance, what is actually brought by them is division.

He says the their assurance will be evident in them being knit together in love - Which means that where there is not love, it is because there has not been Gospel assurance

Magnifying social movements over biblical truth, denying the sufficiency, clarity, and truthfulness of Scripture to embrace progressive cultural values, rejecting God’s design and purpose for humanity in the name of acceptance

All of it breeds conflict and division

But when we all find assurance in God’s word and the truths that are revealed about Christ as our only hope, we will not place our hope in other ideas and will not live in division, but will instead be knit together in love (v. 2)

Love is not a dismissal of the truth for the sake of tolerance, as our current cultural mood would have you believe.

Love is the result of agreeing on the truth - The truth that only comes from the God who is love.

When there is conflict in our midst, it is because there is a lack of assurance from the truth.

But when we are growing in the knowledge of Christ and we are assured of its truth, we will respond in love toward one another, not division.

So, our roadmap to maturity has taken us to 3 waypoint:

Suffering displays Christ

Christ gives growth

Growth brings assurance

and waypoint #4:

Waypoint #4: Assurance imparts confidence (2:4-5)

Distortions of the truth will always bring uncertainty

Colossians 2:4 “I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.”

Let me give you this warning: If you do not know the truth, you cannot identify false teaching and you will be led astray.

When I don’t know my Bible, I have no way to determine if something is biblical or not

Paul says that plausible arguments are what will delude them.

Plausible - Sound good, but aren’t actually true.

And this will ultimately lead me astray if I can only base right and wrong of what sounds good.

Charles Spurgeon once wrote, “The difference between truth and false teaching is not the difference between right and wrong, but the difference between right and almost right.”

And J.C Ryle put it this way:

“Since Satan can’t destroy the gospel, he has too often neutralized its usefulness by addition, subtraction or substitution.”

The most dangerous thing for us as a church family is that we would think that Scripture was not sufficient

Adding to it other ideas that delude, obfuscate, and distort the truth.

The first lie in the garden was that God’s word was not enough

And Paul is admonishing us to pursue a full knowledge of Christ through his word, because that is the way that we will not be deluded by plausible arguments, but can walk confidently in the truth.

Paul knows this…

Colossians 2:5 “For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.”

Paul took us from the uncertainty of Chapter 1:23, to the certainty of verse 2:5,

showing us that the way to know that you are firm in the faith is by fixing your eyes on nothing other other than Jesus Christ.

[CONCLUSION]

Voices all around us create so much uncertainty

What will give us confidence as we mature in Christ

That we would see him as our only hope in life and death and thereby live our lives for him

Allowing our suffering to display him

Allowing him to give growth

Allowing that growth to bring us assurance

and allowing that assurance to impart to us confidence.

And when these things are happening, we can know that we are maturing in Christ.

And Maturing in Christ produces confidence in life.