Colossians
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Glass half emptied, half full
Our attitude deeply affects how we perceive a situation
Two different people waking up on a nice Spring morning
Another person a house over wakes up with no desire for life at all
The circumstances hasn’t necessarily changed, but the perception of it by the individual has
How is a Christian, with a biblical worldview, to look at current events right now?
I argued last week we can disagree on minor things, but in general Christians should be unified
Standing on Scripture, we should be unified in our attitude of what’s going on in the world
As Christians we can easily fall into error with our outlook of world events
We can not pay attention for fear of what’s happening
And just live in fear, or sadness, with half empty kind of view
But what does the Bible say? We need to take every thought captive to Christ and his Word
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.
Those who the world was not kind to, how did they view what is happening on earth?
With an eye on Christ and his working with it: judgement
In like manner, no matter how bad or good circumstances are here on earth, we keep our eye on God and see all events through Him
Such an attitude will keep us, to borrow from a sermon a couple weeks ago, sober minded Christians
To do this, we need to keep the vital doctrine of God’s complete soverignty over all his creation in our view
We need to know all things that happen on earth is a purposeful action from God
(a good leader does all things with a particular purpose in mind)
“Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.
Isaiah 46:8-
(specific context is coming Babylonians, he did not want it getting twisted that he was not in control of that)
There is a desire from Christians to say when disease or plague or natural disasters hit, that is from the devil
And the good we see is from God
And there is a struggle between the two
Such a dichotomy does not exist in the Bible
As we saw above, God ordains all things to happen on earth
I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.
Isaiah
(the coming Babylonian army was not sent from the devil, but God)
And what is God doing in working all events and things on this earth?
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
All the bad, all the evil, allowed by God is for the greater good of salvation for his people
And those who are not dark in the understanding: this working of salvation is of the greatest glory to behold
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
We, as Christians know, that all events on earth is not random
It is not a struggle between the devil and God, and we hope God starts winning out soon
We know that all things are ordained by God, and is established for the working of salvation in creation
How are we, as Christians, to look at current events then?
As a glass half empty? How?
When God is sovereign over all things, and in control, and working it all for eventual salvation?
When we have a desire to be negative like this, we need to take a step back and look at the whole picture
How do we do this? By understanding God’s word as He tells us the whole picture
If we just see it through our eyes, it will be a distorted perspective because of our natural limitations
How do we do this? By understanding God’s word as He tells us the whole picture
Watch the news within the framework of God’s revealed word…that will give you a proper persepective
And you will find yourself saying: it is a good time to be a Christian (it always is)
I want to do a study in Colossians and it has to do with this
We need to locate the thesis, or main point…it helps us understand the book
John 20:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Paul:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Romans 1:16
At the end of his introduction, before the body of the letter
Same in Colossians
Colossians 1:13-14
A shift, from being in the domain of darkness to being in the Kingdom of the Son
What is the nature of this domain of darkness?
Explicit references:
Colossians 1:
After the flood and Noah comes off the boat
Genesis
And at the beginning and end of the letter Paul talks about the spread of this kingdom of light
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
Chapter 1: the spread to the city of Colossae
After the flood, the domain of darkness was just as strong
Nor create an environment where they are allowed to grow and fester
Chapter 4: The spread to further places by Paul and in Colossae
But no power is equal with God. Motive of glory
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”
Genesis
God not only lets them live, but tells them to flourish (establishing good laws to enable it)
If I were a king, and I had rebels at its very beginning, I don’t think I would let them go
Nor create an environment where they are allowed to grow and fester
But no power is equal with God. Motive of glory
The nature of Kingdom Theology in the Bible:
We can go even further back and see the start of such darkness in the fall of man from Satan
The start and spread of Darkness
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Why God allowed and encouraged it (after Noah)
What is the nature of the domain of darkness?
Denying God’s word (Did God really say?)
And desiring to be autonomous instead of being under God (you will be like God)
The domain of darkness, lead by Satan, has been the same ever since
The question remains…why does God allow this? Why not squash the rebellion at the very start?
Because of a promise he made to Satan in the hearing of Adam and Eve
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
There is one who will come and crush this rebellion when it is at its worst
Someone who is promised to come from Eve and crush Satan and his dominion
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
Galations 4:4-7
As I say often, God is not just telling a good story
God is telling the greatest story that ever could be told
That when sin was and is as bad as it could be
Christ came and conquered
And we see this in his kingdom spread in the midst of great domain of darkness
So when we, see the darkness all around
We are not to look at the glass half empty
It is a great time to be a Christian, because we are in this generation, this time and place, to witness what God has ordained to give his Son glory
And us salvation in Him
Colossians 1:
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Now we cannot get it twisted and say since God ordains all things, human action matters not
The Scriptures say God ordains all things and yet our choices intimately matter—we choose things based off of our will
And in our freedom, we choose the domain of darkness every time
We choose to deny God’s word, to question it
And to accept our own
And we choose to be autonomous from God and forge our own path
We needed to be delivered from such an insane and destructive mindset
And so at the right time, when darkness covered the globe, ran by the prince of the power of the air
A great kingdom emerged in Israel
A kingdom unlike the domain of darkness
This is a kingdom that brings creation to where it should be
No longer under the sway of falsehood, but God’s truth
No longer lusting after being autonomous but being subjects in the kingdom of Christ
It is a kingdom of redemption and forgiveness of sins
The very thing that keeps us from the all Good God
And we remain in this dark world to see this kingdom of light be sustained and flourish despite all the circumstances working against it
We get to see this play out