Hope in the truth

The gold rush of 1849. James Marshall found gold at Sutters Mill, he tried to keep the discovery quiet. But once he told one person, they couldn’t keep their mouth shout and news traveled around the world that there was gold in California, this began the gold rush of 1849 where over 300,000 people traveled across the US and across the ocean in order to find gold. This small piece of hope is all that people needed.

The wise men came not to FIND gold, but to GIVE gold. They travelled a long-distance to find something worth not receiving, but for giving.

How good is your hope?

-How good your hope is will determine how far you are willing to go to follow it. How much it you will allow it to change your life.

Hope is at the center of what Paul talks about in our passage today.

In this book Paul is reminding the people in this church to keep their hope in Jesus and to not let that waver.

-He writes to them because of false teachings that had started to develop in Colossae.

-Colossae was a city on a major highway, so it was a hub of diverse religious ideas and syncretism. A mixing of different religious beliefs together.

-The founding pastor of the church in Colossae, Epaphras had traveled to Paul to receive help in dealing with some of the challenges he faced. A teaching that we will see sounded nice, but was hollow and deceptive and that condemned others who did not hold to certain practices that these teachers found necessary that were outside of God’s Word. Rules about eating and observing certain days.

-They acted as if they had a new form of truth, even saying that they could talk with angels, and that they could help people receive salvation. The problem was that the Gospel of these false teachers was missing something…Jesus Christ.

Paul will refer to “Christ Jesus” twice and “Christ” another time. This we shouldn’t look past. Paul is making a claim that Jesus, this child that was born in Bethlehem, was in fact the Savior of the world. That this child is from the line of David and was the true king of Israel. That this child is not just a person who was born to a virgin, but in fact was God who came down.

These false teachers missed that sufficiency for spiritual growth and salvation can only come through Christ. That we can not be full on our own outside of Him. They were giving people the wrong hope. Not in a hope in Christ, but a hope in their own ability to ascertain certain beliefs and practices for salvation. A hope that would fall short. This is why what Paul tells us is that...

The Hope of the Gospel Transforms

He tells them that they have “heard about this hope in the word of truth, the Gospel”.

And Paul says that their faith in Christ Jesus and love for others COMES FROM their hope in the Gospel. Hope in the Gospel is the foundation of their faith and love.

It shows us that the vertical (faith) and horizontal (love) aspects of the Christian life are built on the hope of what God has promised for them in the future.

He will show them how this hope in the Gospel will transform their live if they continue to believe in it.

But what is hope?

There are 3 elements of of hope: expectation, trust, and patience. Hope must long for something not yet attainable. It must trust in the person who gives the hope or that it is attainable. Hope must be willing to wait.

-We can’t build our own hope, it isn’t something we can control. Hope has to look into the future and being okay knowing there are things they do not yet understand.

If we put our hope in riches, military strength, people, or our own strength or cunning…we put our hope in things that will not sustain. Fortunes turn, strength wanes, people let us down, and strength and cunning will falter.

Because we see some of these things as having “proven results”. The world will claim full experiences, they will offer proven results, it can lead us to feel disillusioned of our hope in the Gospel.But that is why our life as a Christian is one of faith. Trusting the one we hope in, God, more than the words of man that fall short.

That is why our hope must be in God. The future belongs to God.

-The people of Israel had hope that the Messiah would come. That God would fulfill what He said he would do.

-But along the way the people grew weary, they would lose one of the 3 elements of hope. Then they seek some other way to attain their hope. In their ability to fulfill the law, in a king that could give them their hope, in the enjoyment of the wealth and possessions. In all of these we in fact see things that God had blessed them with these things, but they started to believe they didn’t need God in order to attain them.

-But a works based religion can never give assurance.

John 5:45 “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope.”

So for the Christian, what is our hope? Paul tells us in Col. 1:21-22.

Hope is found in community

Paul speaks to these believers as “brothers and sisters” even though Paul had never met many of them. In fact, we don’t have any record that he had visited Colossae. Yet he feels at home with them. You can hear it as he says that “he thanks God for them” that Paul wished to be in community with them. Paul says this to many of the churches he writes to, and he does so earnestly. It can be easy to feel at home with just a few members of your church or even of other Christians. But Paul feels at home with many people in many places, that he can even speak of by name.

Why does God invite the shepherds to the manger? The hope is found in community!

We must encourage one another to keep our hope in Jesus, to not waver in this hope

Hebrews 10:23–25 “Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.”

It says that the Gospel is expanding “Because of you”

This is a plural you and not a singular. It is not the act of an individual that is expanding the Gospel, but it is the corporate church, coming together to do the work of Christ.

Hope is stored up over time

One major piece of hope is that you have to put it in the unseen, it embraces the expectation rather than wanting to find a quick resolve.

2 Corinthians 4:18 “So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

When something is unseen it is given a form of eternality. It has greater worth. The present unwrapped and unknown is worth more in our minds than the gift we already know or have. Kids are always trying to get a glimpse of their presents, but as parents seek to keep the gifts hidden it only raises the worth of the presents for the kids.

Hope is “the totality of blessing that awaits the Christian in the life to come”, it is the fullness of everything we have been promised by God for those who believe.

Hope spreads to others

Paul speaks in v. 6 of the power of the Gospel. That is “grows and increases”

-It reminds us of the cultural mandate to “be fruitful and multiply”

-This came in connection to God’s promises that are now being fulfilled through the church. The church is now those “set apart” (the Saints”) whom God makes multiply all over the world.

-And notice that this started with one person, Epaphras, who most likely heard Paul preach in Ephesus, took this hope back to his hometown, and then saw this Gospel spread throughout. He was so excited from what he heard from Paul that he devoted his life to telling others. He gave his life for this truth.

-The influence of the hope of the Gospel in the lives of these believers has has now reached “the whole world”. This does not mean it has literally been to every person, but rather that what God promised in the OT, that all nations would come to recognize God as Lord, is now occurring through the Gospel. That it has crossed barriers to every people group.

It is a reminder that no matter what other teachers have said, we see the fruit of the Gospel around the world as it grows and spreads even as believers are persecuted, even as in many places they don’t even have a Bible in their language.

If we look at Paul’s prayer at the beginning. "The Gospel, seen almost as a personified force, is at work in the world through those commissioned to proclaim it, where its truth is recognized and its command obeyed, it bears fruit”

How do we hear these stories today about Jesus birth? The stories spread, people heard the story!

This fruit that comes out of the Gospel starts with the life of these believers, that as came to enjoy God’s grace that their lives were immediately transformed and that they started to tell others of this hope that they had. They had received something they didn’t deserve, and they knew others needed this picture of grace seen in a child who came to earth to save them.

-We can see here that the power of the Gospel is seen both in its truth revealed to us but also by its impact in our lives.

-It is people hearing the truth and being convinced of it to the point that they give their lives for this truth. This is our hope. Not that our salvation needs to be earned, but that God has freely accepted us through His Son and we strive to make Him Lord of our lives because of His grace towards us.