For the Cause - "Christ we Proclaim!" (Part 2)
Notes
Transcript
Colossians 1:24-2:3
24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I am completing in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for his body, that is, the church.
25 I have become its servant, according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known,
26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.
27 God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
28 We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
29 I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me.
1 For I want you to know how greatly I am struggling for you, for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me in person.
2 I want their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love, so that they may have all the riches of complete understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery—Christ.
3 In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Last week we began a two-part message on this same text. And we said at the outset that we were looking at this with an eye to catch hold of Paul’s passion. We acknowledged that there was something special and unique about the apostle that is true only of him, but then we quickly remembered that we have all been commissioned by our Lord to advance the spread of the good news about Jesus to all the world, starting right here in St. Mary’s county.
Have you ever turned your thoughts to the vastness of the labor we have before us in the Great Commission?
STUDENTS (Lunch room)
BASE (inching home)?
These folks are DEAD in their trespasses and sins?
Are your spiritual eyes in tune to the reality that all around you - whether its at school, on the base, your next door neighbors, the people at your kids’ soccer games, or the folks wandering around the grocery store, there are SO MANY PEOPLE who are lost, and completely without the hope of eternal life that you have?
Leonardtown Baptist Church - we have SO MUCH WORK TO DO for the CAUSE of Christ. We need to spend ourselves - all that we have - to reach this lost and dying community.
Make room in the pew next to you for the friend you invite - make room at the table in your ABF for a visitor who needs to get plugged in here, make room in your car for your children’s friends to come to church with you, make room in your home for your lost neighbors to come and see how your family serves and worships Jesus, I beg of you make room in your hearts to enlarge your vision for fulfilling the great commission right here in St. Mary’s County. ALL for the Cause.
So let’s see what drove Paul in his ministry. And let’s remind ourselves today of the first three ways we said we can learn from the Apostle and give ourselves to proclaim Christ.
1st we said:
1) Make Christ visible to others by enduring your sufferings with joy.
1) Make Christ visible to others by enduring your sufferings with joy.
24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I am completing in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for his body, that is, the church.
Now we don’t have time to re-preach every point. So get the faithlife app and catch up on last week’s sermon. Or go search for Leonardtown Baptist Church in your podcasts app. But in short, we said what was lacking was the physical presence of Christ’s body, and so we as representatives of Christ can demonstrate to others the very same enduring joy that Christ had when he endured the cross. Christians should be marked by joy amidst trials, and this makes Christ’s body visible to our neighbors and friends.
Secondly, we said:
2) Make Christ known to others by explaining God’s word in full.
2) Make Christ known to others by explaining God’s word in full.
25 I have become its servant, according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known,
26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.
Paul has SPILLED THE BEANS about the mystery.. and now we can’t un-know what we know!
When we give our lives for the cause of Christ, we should strive explain God’s word in full - in such a way that Christ is the central key to unlocking the mystery that had been hidden in plain sight for ages and generations.
Then thirdly, we noted should:
3) Make Christ glorious to others by expecting promise fulfillment.
3) Make Christ glorious to others by expecting promise fulfillment.
27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Christians of all people should be known for the hope they have, and 1 Peter tells us we should be ready to share that with others.
15 but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.
If you are living your life in joyful expectation of the fulfilment of all the promises of God, others should notice a difference in you - and you should be able to share with them the reason for that incredible hope you have - JESUS CHRIST in you!
So that brings us today to our fourth way to live our lives for the Cause of Christ, and that is… to
4) Make Christ central to others by exhorting everyone toward maturity.
4) Make Christ central to others by exhorting everyone toward maturity.
I get this from what Paul says in Colossians 1:28
28 We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
Our Great-Commission-given task as disciple makers is to teach everyone to observe all things.
So we do this by proclaiming Jesus. Proclaim CHRIST and do so in a way that warns people and teaches them with all wisdom.
This is the task of a life-time.
We must all be life-long learners.
On this side of heaven, as 1 Cor. 13 tells us - we will only know in part!
That’s why we stress Adult Bible Fellowships around here. Most people easily understand why we’d send Children to a Bible fellowship - to teach them about spiritual things. But this text reminds us that our task as teachers and learners of the gospel has a goal of presenting everyone mature in Christ.
Your elders care a great deal about everyone at Leonardtown Baptist Church. We care about when you’re here and not here. We care about whether or not you’re in an ABF or not. We want every adult to consider it a part of normal Christian life to be a part of a Bible Study with other believers.
I heard someone once compare pastoring to sitting down to dinner with your family. We see the church as a family right? So when your family sits down for dinner, say you’re a family of 5. You don’t just say - OK, five people are at the table, let’s eat! No - you want to know that all FIVE FAMILY members are there. What if one child is out playing but one of your children invited a friend for dinner. Would you just say “eh, we’ve got five, we’re good...” - NO you care deeply about the safety and whereabouts of all of your family.
That’s the way it is with our church. We do our very best to pay close attention to who is at the table. We want to know you’re well and that you’re being fed. Because we believe that is what the cause of Christ demands of us....
LOOK CLOSELY at verse 28 in the ESV (a more word-for-word translation) and notice that THREE TIMES the Apostle says we warn EVERYONE, and we teach EVERYONE so that we may present EVERYONE mature in Christ.
28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
Maturity in Christ is not just for the elite Christians - there is one image into which we are all being transformed, and God has designs for EVERY ONE OF US WHO PROFESS CHRIST to be MATURE because we’ve made Jesus the central focus of our teaching.
The next thing Paul shares in verse 29 is that he…[labors]
29 I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me.
So in your endeavors to spend your lives for the Cause of proclaiming Christ, you ought to...
5) Make Christ praiseworthy to others by exerting yourself with God’s energy.
5) Make Christ praiseworthy to others by exerting yourself with God’s energy.
F.F. Bruce says in his commentary on verse 29:
“Paul’s apostolic work did not rest with the conversion of his hearers. That was a beginning; the end would not be reached until the day of Christ, and the quality of his ministry would then be tested by the quality and maturity of those whom he could present as his spiritual children. What joy would be his if they were genuine and worthy believers; what shame if they were not! No wonder that he toiled and agonized for their growth in grace with this day of review and reward before him. But here he gladly acknowledges that the strength required for such unremitting labor is not his own; it is the strength powerfully wrought within him by his enabling Lord.”
That is extraordinarily encouraging to me. Keeping up with sheep is exhausting. There’s a lot of you - and you all kind of tend to go your own direction at times wandering here, getting stuck on this cliff there, getting banged up and bruised up over there. But Paul’s strength is a God-given strength. And I should be quick to add, this is not a strength unique to the apostle Paul. He has already prayed for the Colossians in verse 11 that they be strengthened with all power according to God’s glorious might. And Peter says, in what is becoming one of my favorite verses in the Bible,
10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:
11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Notice how God receives the glory when we serve in His strength and not our own.
Friends, I don’t know about you, but as I began this message and shared with you the great and overwhelming task of reaching the lost in St. Mary’s County I feel sometimes like crumbling under the weight of the task, or balling up like a Roley Poley and just trying to hang onto Jesus and ignore the world around me. But it’s reminders like this from Colossians 1:29 that energize me and give me vigor and passion to press on for the sake of the kingdom. We are called to exert ourselves - that word for labor is Greek for “THIS IS STINKING HARD WORK!” It’s gonna take sacrifice, sweat, long hours, late nights, giving things up like my own personal preferences, and my own penchant for everything staying the same around me, and getting my hands dirty in the mess of other peoples’ lives and their understanding of Christ. I’m going to have to ask hard questions, and I’ll have to take difficult stances and I might get laughed at, or persecuted or thrown in jail one day for holding the line - but by God’s grace, and in his strength, I want to give everything I can muster for the sake of his Kingdom whatever the personal cost may be.
And the only way I can be so all-in, is if I know that that energy, and that passion and that power is God’s power and not mine. If Christ is powerfully at work within me, I’ll get the sense of there being a limitless fountain of strength and energy upon which I can draw to exert myself for this cause. I won’t grow weary in doing good. I won’t shrink back from the difficult conversations, and I won’t look back once I’ve put my hand to the plow - if indeed I am prayerfully dependent on the power of God to give me all I need for the tasks he’s put before me.
So friends, let’s be the kind of people that exalt Christ by our seemingly limitless amount of energy to do what God has called us to do - not because we are super-human, but because we are endeavoring to ask God for more and more energy to give ourselves for the cause of Christ.
The last way to live your life for the cause of Christ I’m getting from Chapter 2:1-3. And that is we should
6) Make Christ valuable to others by engaging in Christian community.
6) Make Christ valuable to others by engaging in Christian community.
Look at chapter 2 beginning in verse 1
1 For I want you to know how greatly I am struggling for you, for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me in person.
2 I want their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love, so that they may have all the riches of complete understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery—Christ.
3 In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Now before I get to the heart of the point I’m making from this text, I want to draw your attention to verse 1 and remind you about the second message in Colossians - where we talked about how Paul was praying for and encouraging a body of believers he had actually never met.
Paul’s heart didn’t agonize over his own little circle - he cared about the church universal.
Listen: “When the tide is in, all the ships are riding high. When the Holy Spirit is working, then we’ll all be riding high; none of our churches will be scraping bottom.”
We need to get a vision like Paul’s for the capital “C” Church!
But then notice verse 2 - where we focus in today.
Paul says
2 I want their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love, so that they may have all the riches of complete understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery—Christ.
This, to me, is a staggering truth that we all need to hear.
Notice how the riches of complete understanding and knowledge of Christ comes - through the brotherly love in the CHURCH!
That kind of shoots the whole argument about being a Christian that is fine without the local church out of the WATER. You may be a Christian, but you’re certainly not a Christian who is mature, or complete. You’re a POOR Christian. And I mean that quite literally - you are POOR in the understanding you have of Christ if you are not involved in the loving relationships that take place in a local church.
I say poor because of this word in verse 2 - there are RICHES to be had. There’s a VALUABLE WEALTH of UNDERSTANDING for you - if you will engage in the knitting of your heart together with hearts of other believers in Christ.
God has designed by his providence and grace a sort of interdependency in the BODY of Christ - such that you can’t possibly know all there is to know about Christ unless you are experiencing him in His BODY and HIS BODY is interdependent - by design.
After listing several spiritual gifts in the first part of 1 Cor. 12, Paul goes on to say this...
11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.
13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many.
15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.
16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?
18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.
You say, well I wouldn’t have done it that way - I hated team projects in High School, and I don’t like trying to work with other people - I just want to do my own thing. Just me, and Jesus. That’s as ridiculous as saying that a body should be made up of a head and a hand. It’s OBSURD.
Friends, there are people, ministers of the gospel - who have told me: “ministry is great, if it weren’t for the people.” That is such a travesty. You know why? Because the people are the church - and the church is Christ’s BODY and the way you get to know Christ more intimately, and understand his love more manifestly is by being involved with other people! WE NEED EACH OTHER.
This is why we make such a big deal around LBC about being at Sunday Morning Worship services. It’s the Lord’s day, and it’s time to be gathered and encouraged and strengthened by one another. Men, you ought to make coming to church a priority for your family. Single Mom - get your kids to church. Youth - tell your parents you want to come to church. And let me give you all some of the best advice I’ve ever heard. My pastor friend from Tallahassee, Dean Inserra says this ALL THE TIME:
“Sunday Morning Church is a Saturday Night Decision.”
Make fun of yourself not wanting to go to the gym, but then putting things out the night before.
“Sunday Morning Church is a Saturday Night Decision.”
Test me out on this. I am telling you - if you want to know Christ more, and more SPECIFICALLY IF YOU WANT OTHERS to know Christ more… If you want to grow in maturity and see fruit in your life and the lives of those around you… Make Christ valuable to others by engaging in Christian Community.
Conclusion
LBC - there’s a HUGE mission field around us. We’ve planted one church - and that church is thriving with several hundred people attending every Sunday - PRAISE GOD. But there are still well over 100,000 unbelievers in St. Mary’s County. If every church we planted had 500 members, that would be 200 more churches to plant. OH, HOW WE DESPERATELY NEED TO LIVE OUR LIVES FOR THE CAUSE OF CHRIST.
So I pray that you will prayerfully consider how you can ...
1) Make Christ visible to others by enduring your sufferings with joy.
2) Make Christ known to others by explaining God’s word in full.
3) Make Christ glorious to others by expecting promise fulfillment.
4) Make Christ central to others by exhorting everyone toward maturity.
5) Make Christ praiseworthy to others by exerting yourself with God’s energy.
6) Make Christ valuable to others by engaging in Christian community.
You say, Pastor Jason - I’m just one person. I am not sure what difference I’ll make, or what impact I can have on the vast amount of need all around me.
Let me remind you to look back at point number 5, and then allow me to share one illustration as I close this morning.
R. C. Sproul tells the story about a woman in Africa who became a Christian. Being filled with gratitude, she decided to do something for Christ. She was blind, uneducated, and seventy years of age. She came to her missionary with her French Bible and asked her to underline John 3:16 in red ink. Mystified, the missionary watched her as she took her Bible and sat in front of a boys’ school in the afternoon. When school dismissed, she would call a boy or two and ask them if they knew French. When they proudly responded that they did, she would say, “Please read the passage underlined in red.” When they did, she would ask, “Do you know what this means?” And she would tell them about Christ. The missionary says that over the years twenty-four young men became pastors due to her work...
You never know the impact you will make. Simply give yourself to the Cause, and proclaim Christ, and watch what God will do - for his glory and for the sake of His Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Let’s pray.