The Message To Share
For the One • Sermon • Submitted
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Big Idea: If we have been talking about how to share the message of hope and good news with the rest of the world, I want to talk about what that message is. Give the Gospel as seen in the book of Colossians. Lead to the target statement: Jesus in you changes everything.
We have been in this series entitled For the One in which we have been talking about how we are to take this message of good news and hope out into our city. We have talked about a lot of methods for doing this (and we said that it doesn’t look like a list of well rehearsed Bible verses or a gospel tract that you leave on someone’s door step).
We have talked about the barriers that the people we are sharing this message with face on their own journey of faith and how we can walk with them as they step over each of those thresholds. We also talked about the barriers that stand in our own way of sharing this message of hope and good news and how we have to move beyond those. And last week, we put the whole process together as we talked about the Church as the vehicle that carries this message out into the world.
Now, you may have heard a few different things as I was giving that recap depending on where you came in here at. First, you may be thinking, especially if you have missed a few weeks during this series or if this is your first time ever coming to The Outpost, I have just walked into the end of a series and I’m not going to really get what’s going on. Or perhaps, you came here this morning and you aren’t sure where you stand with the whole Jesus thing or even how much of it you believe in so why in the world would I share a message that I am not even sure I believe in the first place.
Here is the deal, yes we have been in a series and if you’ve been here tracking along all this time, I want you to sit everything we’ve talked about aside this morning. We are still in our “For the One” series but set aside everything we’ve talked about up to this point. Because, whether you are a follower of Jesus or not, whether you’ve been here for this entire series or whether this is your first time ever visiting The Outpost church, the claims I am going to lay before you this morning have the possibility of completely changing your life no matter where you came into this room from.
I would feel rather disingenuous if I were to tell you how to share the message of hope that has the power to transform our city, our schools, our marriages, our homes, our workplaces, our mental state, our satisfaction, and our desire for purpose and significance and not share what that message is. If I am going to do that with any sort of success, however, it is going to take a little time so we need to just jump right into things.
So if you have your Bibles here this morning, go ahead and turn to Colossians chapter 1.
While you turn there…do undercover boss bit...
Pay particular attention to how everything on the show changes when the big reveal comes out. People get fired, people get promoted, and sometimes, big sweeping changes happen in the company.
This big reveal is what Paul is doing in the book of Colossians.
You see…(give background to Colossians and the history of the Gnostic movement)
G-o-d is an unhelpful term
Paul wrote the book of Colossians less than 30 years...
To refute the Gnostic teachings about God
Secret knowledge
95% of you wouldn’t be privy to
You had to attain to a higher state of knowledge, understanding, enlightenment to reach this. So being in a relationship with God was really about you becoming a better person. Link to those ideas in today’s society.
They had confused the Colossian church as to who Jesus was and so what we get is the most clearly and concisely stated treatise about who Jesus is and what not just that but how Jesus changes those who follow Him.
If you reduced the entire book of Colossians down to five words, they would be:
Jesus in you changes everything.
This is the good news. This is the message that we have spent six weeks carefully navigating how we can effectively share it. Because, what a shame it would be for this message to get lost in translation because we aren’t clear about it…even more shameful would be for people to reject this message because we failed to present it properly. Here is a little unknown rule about communication…the burden of understanding is always on the communicator. And so we have spent weeks and weeks talking about how we should carry this message out into our city…and it probably doesn’t look anything like you grew up thinking it did if you grew up in the church.
But… This is the message that (and I promise you that this is not exaggeration) can absolutely radically transform your life before you even walk out of those doors today.
Here we go
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
Jesus would say in:
Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
It isn’t that God is just invisible to the naked eye. God’s invisibility has to do more with his nature than anything. You and I can’t even fathom something that doesn’t have an end to it little on something that doesn’t have a beginning. Like don’t even dwell on that too long or it will short circuit your brain.
And so, if this God is real and if this God has a desire for our lives how else would we know that God unless He made himself and his will manifest for us. How would he communicate his nature to us? Well…he would have to speak our language…the language of humanity. And that is what he did in sending Jesus. Jesus is God.
The firstborn over creation doesn’t mean that Jesus is created…that would make him less God. In Jesus’ culture, the firstborn is the one who inherited the Father’s estate. In this case, all of creation.
Maybe the word God is unhelpful because why wouldn’t the cosmic, eternal, all knowing, all powerful, sovereign creator of the universe be a hard concept for us to wrap our minds around.
But what about Jesus? Do we know anything about him? Is he a little easier to wrap our minds around? Yeah and why wouldn’t he be…he was human. God spoke in language that we understand the language that we understand.
The book of John talks about this same concept…here is what it says:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
A word is the manifest revelation of a persons will or intentions.
Jesus is the visible representation of God spoken in a Word that you and I understand.
Can anyone else think of something else we have labeled as The Word? (slowly raise your Bible)
Explain how the Bible is not a handbook for doing good. The Bible isn’t about how to get to heaven. The Bible isn’t about how to live your best life now.
PRIMARILY...
The Bible is God revealing Himself to mankind in a single unified story that culminates in Jesus.
Let’s move on though…by the way we are going to be covering a lot of ground, and there may be times where it seems a little disjointed…that is just how Paul wrote. So to stay with what Paul is saying, it may seem a little disjointed at times but the thing about Paul is that He always wraps it up quite nicely in the end. So I say all that to say....stick with me because this thing is about to go cosmic.
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.
Did you notice how the verse ended?
…-all things have been created through Him and for Him. -Col 1:16b
I think we need to hover over that for just a second because Paul just answered the two largest existential questions that every single person on this earth will deal with at some point in their life. They are:
Who am I? & Why am I here?
The short sweet answer to that first question is:
You are a wonderfully and carefully made human being created in the image of God.
Just as Jesus is the manifest will of God that is responsible for Creation, You were made in his image. That has absolutely nothing to do with what you look like. Made in the image is about your function.
Explain you were created as a creator and gardener…that your function is to take the domain you exist in and bring out the beauty, potential, and life that God has put into it. And in doing this, you answer the second question of why you are here. To glorify God by carrying out the function for which you were created…worship isn’t just what happens during the songs on Sunday morning…you worship by living out the fullest human experience possible as you carry out your function as a person created in the image of the creator and as you realize that it is your creator that makes it all possible.
Your domain might be as a homemaker and so that means - Perhaps you have two or three kids (or more) that God has given you. He has packed them full of potential and goodness and wants them to go on to be world changers and perhaps your job at this place in life is to bring that out of them as you lead them in love and discipline. As you display sacrificial generosity and teach them to do the same. As you show them the beauty of the world around them and how to live fully into the calling that they were designed for.
But maybe that is within the context of your office or up at the base.
That is definitely in your neighborhood and in our city.
That is in your marriage and friendships.
Our world is created to be a beautiful place of rest and vitality. We were created to live in and cultivate fulfilling families, marriages, friendships, and do work that matters. As we live into the function for which we were created, this becomes our reality.
Paul would go on to explain it like this in the very next verse:
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Not only is Jesus the rightful ruler of all things (to include our lives) but all things are actually held together and work the way they are supposed to when Jesus is in that position.
And yet…there is a problem. We begin to see a little hint of that problem in the very next verse:
He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
What in the world is going on with this firstborn from the dead bit? Let’s read on and let Paul explain it for us:
For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him,
and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,
yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—
if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.
HAVE THEM CIRCLE “RECONCILE ALL THINGS”
Now, here is the deal…I realize that was a lot, so let me attempt to break it down in a way that will hopefully make sense to all of us:
Do the plot diagram bit on the board.
Creation - explain that we all realize how things should be. (skinny, good job, happy marriage, happy children and family dynamic, peaceful neighborhoods, a clean environment, whatever you want to put in this box).
Fall - And yet there is something wrong with this. (i’m fat, job sucks, broken marriage, kids are wiling out, polluted oceans, whatever)
Redemption - We are all looking for a solution to this thing. (better diet, better me, self help book, more satisfying sex life, more money, kids who just listen)
New Creation - If we can just get that thing… If I could just loose the weight, if we could just agree on this thing in our marriage, If I could just get my kids to do, If my neighbor would just realize, If I could just stop doing blank, THEN creation would exist as it is supposed to…my marriage would be what it is supposed to be, my kids would blank, my neighborhood would blank, our finances would blank, I would finally have satisfaction in my job.
EVERY PERSON SEES THEIR LIFE IN THESE FOUR TERMS. EVERY PERSON IS LOOKING FOR A SAVIOR OF SOME KIND…EVEN IF THAT SAVIOR IS JUST A BETTER VERSION OF THEMSELVES.
This is the right way to see our lives. If we were to look at this as an equation we would say that it is the right equation but the problem is that we are trying to solve the equation with the wrong integers. POINT TO THE FALL SECTION ON THE BOARD.
You see…Paul has been walking us through these plot points in these verses we have been looking at and it all hinges on who Jesus is…that is pauls paradigm.
Who created everything and is in charge of everything?
Why did he create it and what purpose did he give it? That is the creation bit.
And Paul just outlined the fall bit.
But the problem is...We often insert the wrong integer in the place of the fall and so we end up looking for the wrong savior.
Draw the circle about what is wrong and then draw a circle farther down showing the true root problem.
So let’s look back and see what Paul put in the equation for the fall…here it is again.
And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,
Paul is building on three huge concepts (alienated, hostile minded, and engaged in evil deeds) that all build on one another and are by their own right an entire sermon series.
So let me explain what he’s doing in this really quickly. Paul is saying that we (acting as creators) have chosen to run the world and our own lives as though we were the firstborn over creation. We looked at the world and we looked at Jesus’ authority as the ultimate creator and rejected His authority (ALIENATED) and chose to define good and evil for ourselves (HOSTILE IN MIND) and then live in light of our own definition of good and evil (ENGAGED IN EVIL DEEDS).
We choose to define what is good and evil in our marriages, with our parenting, in our jobs, with our finances, with our leisure activities, with every aspect of our lives and when those definitions of good and evil run contrary to how the creator of the universe has designed his creation to operate, we experience the brokenness that we have come to define as the fall. And so we experience brokenness in every area of our life and that is costly.
It is like the little silica gell packets that come in electronics. The designer of that packaging puts that packet in there to absorb moisture. When that packet works the way the designer intended it to it does a really good job of maintaining the integrity of the product in the package. And yet every single one of those little silica gel packets have some words printed on the outside of them…what are those three words? DO NOT EAT! Has the manufacturer put those words on there to just kill your fun? NO! He knows if you eat that thing it is going end with you getting your stomach pumped in the emergency room. And yet, it is still a big enough problem that they have to keep printing those three words on every single packet that gets shipped out.
I am not saying that every bad thing you experience is your fault…please don’t hear me wrong in that. No. It isn’t just you that is choosing to define good and evil for yourself is it. No you make hundreds of little choices every single day and live out the consequences of your choices. When you multiply that by seven billion people across the world can you begin to understand why our world looks the way it does and why we experience some of the brokenness that we do?
Do the Jack watching nature documentary videos bit. Every single one of them ends the same way…in order for us to avert this looming ecological/environmental catastrophe, something is going to have to fundamentally change in all people everywhere.
Oh how right they are. Something has to change in the heart of man if we are going to fix what is wrong with the world.
But that doesn’t just happen when we try harder or just follow the teachings in the Bible. No, there is something fundamentally broken in us, because of our choice to define good and evil as a collective humanity, that has broken our ability to fix our own situation.
AND YOU FEEL IT DON’T YOU…MAYBE YOU WALKED IN HERE WITH THAT THING.
ITS YOUR KIDS
ITS THE CALL YOU JUST GOT FROM YOUR DOCTOR
ITS YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD DRAMA
IT THE CRAPPY SITUATION AT WORK
ITS THE CRIPPLING ANXIETY OR DEPRESSION THAT NEVER SEEMS TO LET UP
ITS THE LONLINESS
ITS THE BROKEN FRIENDSHIPS
ITS THE MARITAL CRISIS. AND YOU CAN NO LONGER CONVINCE YOURSELF IT IS JUST A SEASON.
Chances are, you may very well have walked in here with something that if I asked you to come write it up on this board you could. Now…I would never do that but you wouldn’t have any trouble filling in what that fallen thing is.
Here is what Paul said will fix this thing that is broken in us:
and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.
Our choices to define good and evil for ourselves has broken the fabric of our reality and of our own humanity. It has done this because that choice to define good and evil for ourselves was a rejection of our relationship with God that allows us to function the way we were created. Someone had to right that wrong. And because God is perfectly and infinitely just, someone had to pay the penalty for our choice in order to restore that relationship.
And the claim of the Bible is that the only person truly good enough to do that be God himself. And so He came. He came in the fullest expression of His love and grace and forgiveness, and paid the debt of our transgressions to restore the relationship.
Here is what Paul says in chapter two of this same book:
When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
If we rightly see the cause of our fall then we will rightly look for the right savior…and it isn’t just a better version of you.
But redemption isn’t the end of the story is it…we still have the resolution…or in our case…re-creation.
If we have asked for forgiveness for all the ways in which we have ruled our own life and looked to Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross as the payment for all of that wrong it completely changes our story. Deciding to make that choice is what can allow you to walk out of here completely changed today. When we make that choice, Jesus move in and begins to change some things:
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
And:
But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
Jesus begins to transform your heart…here is what paul says in the rest of the chapter:
So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience;
bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.
Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
When we begin living this way, this is the result:
Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.
Now, all of a sudden, the purpose, significance, and fulfillment we were meant to have from the beginning through that relationship with our creator is restored. Now as we begin to move into our marriages, our parenting, our jobs, our finances, or leisure activities, we do so in relationship with our creator leaning on his definition of Good and Evil. And when we do that, we begin to see a transformation back to the way things should work…back to the way our hearts long for the world to work.
And that is what the rest of the chapter is about.
New and transformed relationships between husbands and wives.
Transformed relationship between children and parents.
Transformed relationship between fathers and their children.
Transformed jobs.
Paul just doesn’t talk about jobs though…he is specifically referencing slaves…those people who are in a position that they may not want to be in and yet, Paul gives freedom as he transforms our relationship to our job…even the really crappy ones.
But He doesn’t just aim at the slaves, Paul challenges the masters to live in a new way. We don’t have the time to go into it but Paul was writing words that would lead to the abolishment of slavery in several cultures over history…although sadly not ours.
The hope for our marriages,
The hope for our children, our homes, our jobs, our friendships, our finances, our health, our environment, our societies, for all war, and all brokenness is a renewed humanity living in relationship with its creator and allowing Jesus to define good and evil in every area of life.
Only when we choose to look to Jesus for redemption from our fall do we find true freedom and life. Here is how Paul actually starts off the section of Colossians we began with:
For He rescued 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.
Yall this isn’t just marriages and jobs and parenting and finances and relationships though...Do the real view of heaven and hell bit…
Jesus doesn’t just want to redeem our humanity and relationships and jobs though…Jesus wants to redeem our eternities. Death is probably the most out of place thing in this creation. We know deep down it shouldn’t exist. We know that this can’t be it. We know that even as good as it may get here on earth there are still problems. There are still bad circumstances. There are still bad jobs. There are still health issues that take loved ones too soon. There is still war. There are still bad marriage problems and even though we might operate with a new perspective in all of those areas and in ways that can make them as healthy as humanly possible...There has to be something more. That’s actually how the story ends. There is more. There is a return to the ideal. The story doesn’t end with you and me flying off to some cloudy space in the sky with harps and wings in an eternal sing along in the sky…the end of the story see’s heaven (the kingdom of the beloved Son) come down to earth and all us put right. No more death, no more pain, no more tears, no more strained relationships, no more loss, no more mental illness, no mar war.
And so the best news of all is that if you have chosen to follow after Jesus, not even death itself is the end of your story.
And so I want to close with a question and an observation.
What do you see as the cause of the fallen places in your life and what are you looking towards to be your redeemer?
Point out on the blackboard…and help them to define that.
I want to finish by looking at an encouraging observation about this whole book.
Rattle through verse 7 through the end of the chapter.
There are eleven people…eleven ordinary people just like you and me written right into the text here. These aren’t the heavy hitters like Peter, or Paul, or John. Some of the guys on this list we know basically nothing about and yet because they are living the transformed life following Jesus, Paul is trusting them to make a huge impact on the church in Colossae.
And if you are already a follower of Jesus, this is how this message ties right into our series we have been in. God especially loves using the ordinary people to do extraordinary things as they carry this message of Good news into the world.
And here is how this entire book ends:
I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my imprisonment. Grace be with you.
Explain…why this was a big deal that paul wrote this…he was imprisoned.
Are you ready for the big reveal…This is the part about this whole book that blows my mind.
There are no circumstances in your life that hinder God from doing His work in and through you.
If you are a follower of Jesus…there is nothing that can keep you from living out your function as an agent of redemption carrying out the good news of this Gospel we have been talking about.
If you are not a follower of Jesus…there is no jail cell so deep, there is no circumstance so bad, there is no sin so big, there is no skepticism so severe that it could keep you from the love of Jesus. There is nothing you have done that can keep you from experiencing the freedom that is found when you call out to Jesus…save me. Your marriage isn’t at a place that Jesus can’t fix it. Your kids aren’t at a place that Jesus can’t fix it (maybe he does that through you but maybe he does that through some other means as you are just praying your heart out for them) there is no job so bad that Jesus can’t redeem it and give it purpose.
Did you notice that Paul was still in chains…you see, it isn’t that following Jesus makes everything better necessarily but that our perspectives are so radically shifted. There is no circumstance so grand…not even death itself…that it means the end of your story.
Call to salvation...
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world.