Suddenly, then Gradually

Greeting

All right before I get into my message today, I want to announce something really cool that we are starting today.

We are kicking off a brand new teaching series called, In Christ, and we are going to preach our way through some of the major themes in Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Now, because we are only doing a fly by, we’re going to do a verse by verse daily study online. So beginning this afternoon, on our YouTube Channel, you’re going to see me in my office reading verses and then breaking them down. We’ll do every Monday through Friday, during the entirety of this series.

I am excited about it! I hope you will be too!

So the best thing that you can do would be to subscribe to our YouTube Channel so that you will know every time an episode goes live.

Reading

Colossians 1:3–6 NIV

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people—the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.

Suddenly, then Gradually

Introduction

Has anyone ever lost a significant amount of weight before?

I didn’t say found… I said lost…

It’s an interesting experience because when that happens to you, people who are away from you during that process will see you and then say to you, “Wow! Look at you! You look great!” The gap of time between when they last saw you, and the new you, makes it feel like it was an overnight transition.

But there is another group of people who are near to you and see you daily and they don’t have quite the same perspective.

I’m going to completely be self-deprecating right now and show you what I looked like when I was about 29-30 years old.

Here I am preaching to about 500 high school students… although, it looks like I am at the street taco vender and I’m ordering 4 with everything on it.

In Spanish we’d simply say, “Cuatro con todo.”

During this time I was working full time, 50-60 hours a week. I was also a student at the University of San Diego getting my Master’s Degree. So there was no room for exercise and I was not living a healthy lifestyle. At least, that’s the story I old myself.

Fast forward 5 years… I became an endurance athlete, and I raced triathlons.

Notice I use the word race. I wasn’t there for the participation trophy, I was racing to try and reach the podium. I was into it. I was serious.

Here is what I looked like in 2015 when I was about to do my first Ironman.

Why am I telling you this?

Because some people who were close to me and were in my life during this entire time would say to me, “I never remember you being overweight. Weren’t you always this way?”

To which I would say, bless your heart and bless your ignorance.

Transition

The transformation felt sudden to some people.

But it was daily discipline to me.

And that tension — sudden to some, gradual to others — is exactly how the gospel works.

The gospel works suddenly, and then gradually.

And we’re going to unpack that in these 4 verses that we read this morning.

Text

If we want to understand how transformation really works, we have to pay attention to the verbs — because verbs tell us what moves.

My approach is to read the passage, and then underline all of the verbs becuase verbs are actions words; meaning these are the things put into action.

The approach I want to take today is to actually find the verbs in the Greek language, which this letter was originally written in, and then we’ll work with the English transliteration of those words. So if you see me skip through a verb when I show you a verse, that is likely because in the original language a verb was not written there. It’s almost one for one, but it does not always line up one for one.

Let’s go.

Colossians 1:3 NIV

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,

Paul gives thanks, eucharistoumen, when he prays, proseuchomenoi, for the church in Colossae.

Why does he do that?

Colossians 1:4 NIV

because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people—

This is the Greek word akousantes.

Paul is under house arrest in Rome, and the distance that the news of their faith traveled was 800-900 miles.

What do you think their faith looked like for it to be talked about nearly 1,000 miles away?

Let me ask another question… do people that you know who live almost 1,000 miles away talk about your faith?

The point that I am making is, the church in Colossae was known for their faith and the love that they had for all of God’s people.

I want that kind of faith.

Give me that kind of faith.

Colossians 1:5 NIV

the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel

This is getting really good here…

Paul said that there is faith and hope stored up, apokeitai, in heaven.

Let me ask you, is Paul speaking to their present or is he speaking to their future?

He is speaking to their future…

And now he’s going to hit them with the why.

They have already heard, proēkousate, the true gospel.

Paul is cooking up something incredible just five verses into this letter.

He’s saying that because they heard the true message of the gospel, there is the hope of heaven, which is in the future, that is causing their faith in the present to be talked about all over the world.

Did you catch that?

When we receive the true message of the gospel - not a false message, but a true message of the gospel, we begin to fix our eyes on a future that will cause us to start living differently in the present.

[Pause]

But here’s the danger — if the hope driving your present life is wrong, your present life will be wrong.

And there is a counterfeit gospel competing for your hope called the gospel of self, that is causing a lot of destruction in people’s lives.

The gospel of self tells you to only follow the parts of the Bible that YOU are comfortable with, that YOU agree with, that makes YOU feel good…

That is not the gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus, that is the gospel of YOU. And if you follow the gospel of YOU, YOU will end up in hell because it was never about Jesus, it was about YOU.

And this gospel disguises itself with cliches like:

“Do what makes you happy.”

“You only live once.”

“You deserve to be happy.”

What ever happened to:

“Pick up your cross and follow me!”

“If you want to find your life, you have to lose your life.”

“Any man who wants to follow me must deny themself.”

Do you want to know who said those things? Jesus said those things. He never preached the gospel of “Living Your Best Life Now,” He preached a gospel of death to yourself so that you could live for Jesus.

He didn’t preached a gospel of, “A well balanced life,” he said you have to lose yourself in order to find me!

So let’s talk about eternity… you can either live for now, or you can live for later.

If you live for now, then there is no guarantee for your later.

But when you live for later, everything about your right now changes.

You walk differently.

You talk differently.

You love differently.

You treat others differently.

This is the kind of life that will travel nearly 1,000 miles and reach the ears of one of the greatest church planters in history.

[Transition]

Then we get to our final verse this morning…

Colossians 1:6 NIV

that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.

This first phrase in English doesn’t quite articulate the Greek. It’s the phrase, parontos, which means having come.

The gospel arrives.

That’s the suddenly.

Growing up in a Pentecostal church we would say that the Romans 10:9 experience, to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, wasn’t enough. That’s why people who come out of my background struggle with calls to salvation or praying what is commonly called a sinners prayer. They have a hard time believing that someone who simply mouths some words are now able to receive the gospel in their life.

And, let me be honest. I get it.

But here is the error in that thinking… we refuse to see a seed of repentance until we see the fruit of repentance.

But how many of you know that there is no fruit without the seed.

So we got one camp celebrating a seed, and another camp celebrating the fruit.

But what if I told you that they are both right.

We gotta be happy for the seed, but we can’t stop at the seed.

We gotta be happy for the fruit, but can’t start at the fruit.

Here’s what I know… the word says confess with your mouth and believe in your heart.

I’m sure there’s been a lot of confession without belief, and you might have fooled the room, but you didn’t fool heaven.

So let me put every Pentecostal in the room at ease… God is not fooled. And, you don’t get to be the judge.

Sister Elsa wrote that song for you Pentecostals - “let it go, let it go…”

Stop trying to be the arbiter of everyone else’s salvation.

Let the gospel do it’s work.

Because when the Gospel comes, it comes suddenly.

[Transition]

Conclusion

But the fruit grows gradually.

Paul says, the gospel is bearing fruit, karpophoroumenon, and it is growing, auxanomenon.

Both of these are passive participles, meaning they are the result of the gospel suddenly arriving.

Because when the gospel comes, the fruit will come. The fruit will grow. Because the gospel is powerful. It breaks through the hardest of hearts and coldest of souls. The gospel will come to tomb of dead men and say, “Come out of that grave,” and the bones start to come together and a structure begins to take shape and everything that was once dead is now alive.

You might be wondering, what does the gospel have to do with my struggling marriage - EVERYTHING.

What does the gospel have ot so with my lost child - EVERYTHING.

What does the gospel have to do with my addiction - EVERYTHING.

I am not talking about coming to the building. I am talking about coming to Jesus, bowing your knee to his lordship, and saying to Him, I don’t need you to fix my marriage I need you to fix me.

I don’t need you to just break an addiction, I want you to go to the place of pain that caused me to become an addict and heal that part of me.

I don’t just want you to bring my kid home, but I need you to identify the parts of me that pushed him away so that I can be healed, and so that he can be healed, and so that together, our family can be healed.

We need more of those kinds of prayers.

Yes I need you to fix my situation, but most importantly, I need you to fix me.

When Jesus changes you, the room changes.

When Jesus changes you, your marriage feels it.

When Jesus changes you, your kids feel it.

Then we get to the end…

Just as it has been doing among you, egeneto, which is better translated came to be. Meaning the gospel that came suddenly, is now working gradually, and this all happened because you heard, ēkousate, and you fully knew, epegnōte.

This Greek word is what the Gospel suddenly coming to you should feel like - deep experiential recognition.

This isn’t emotion.

This isn’t our response becuase the priase team started singing our favorite worship song.

This is a deep experiential moment where we have an encounter with Jesus and that moment changed everything.

Let me say this once more and say it a bit differently, the gospel comes in a moment - and then it works for a lifetime.

The gospel doesn’t just forgive you.

It re-roots you.

It relocates you.

And then it remakes you.

Call

For the Unbeliever

Maybe today the gospel needs to come to you. Not emotionally. Not culturally. But truly. You’ve heard it. But you’ve never surrendered to it.

For the Believer

And some of you — the gospel came years ago. But you stopped letting it grow. You received the seed — but you’ve resisted the fruit.