The Mystery: Christ In You

Today we’re kicking off the season of Advent. Because of this season and because we were at a natural stopping point in our study of the book of Revelation I thought it would be good to take a little break and do something else during the month of December.

We are pressing pause on the book of Revelation but we are NOT pressing pause on the theme of the second coming because that’s what the season of Advent is all about.

The word Advent just means “to come.”

During the holidays (especially the latter half of December) we focus on the first advent (or first coming of Christ) with Christmas. Immanuel: God with Us. Celebrate we should such a wonderful truth.

But in celebrating the first coming we must never forget Jesus’ promise that he will come again a second time to finish the project and make all things new.

The Seventh Trumpet and the Mystery of God

The theme of our Advent series comes from a phrase used by the Mighty Angel in Revelation 10: “The Mystery of God.”

Revelation 10:6–7 (CSB)

“There will no longer be a delay, 7 but in the days when the seventh angel will blow his trumpet, then the mystery of God will be completed, as he announced to his servants the prophets.”

The mystery of God will be completed. That’s phrase is pregnant with prophetic significance. So much so that I want us to spend the next four weeks exploring it.

As we said last week - the seventh trumpet is anticipated here in Revelation 10. It is blown at the end of Revelation 11 and it is not completed until the end of Revelation 15.

The seventh trumpet kicks off a complex series of events that culminate with the kingdom of God swallowing up the kingdom of this world.

What does John mean by “mystery of God?”

To what prophets was it announced and what did they say about it?

What does it mean that the mystery of God will be complete? Does that mean it’s incomplete right now?

Those are the questions I want us to answer in this series over the next several weeks.

My goal is that by the end of Christmas not only will you know what the mystery of God IS but that you will life your life in light of that mystery and eager expectation of it’s completion one day.

THE MYSTERY OF GOD

Our text this morning is a classic passage on the mystery of God in the book of Colossians.

For those unfamiliar with this book it was written by the apostle Paul to a group of Christians in Colosse that he had never met. Even so, he writes to them about his love for their church, the supremacy of Christ in all things and the danger of false teaching.

Colossians 1:24–27 (CSB)

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.

A Minister with a Message

Paul starts out this section of the book of Colossians by reminding his readers that he was made a servant of the Gospel by God’s commission. Not only was he made a minister BY God. He was also given a message FROM God.

Our purpose this morning isn’t really to delve deeply into the nature of the call of God on the man of God to preach the Word of God but I just point it out here to show that one’s calling into ministry isn’t something they decide for themselves but rather an inner compulsion by God so that they are not satisfied doing anything else.

Without that calling, a preacher of the Gospel will never be able to endure the hardships that are associated with vocational ministry. Even here we see Paul is suffering for his commitment to preach the Gospel. He’s in prison.

But he’s rejoicing because he’s walking out the call of God on his life.

The Message is a Mystery

So Paul was made a minister by God. He was given a message from God and that message Paul says in a MYSTERY.

Colossians 1:26 “26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.”

That word translated mystery is the Greek word mysterion. It’s use in the Greek NT doesn’t carry the same connotations as it does in our common English use.

The biblical definition of mystery is something that was previously hidden but presently revealed. Before it was closed off and no one could understand it but now it is exposed and open for all to see.

Illustration of Mystery

You ask, how does that work? Well there are several different illustrations we could use but I heard one the other day that I think nails it better than anything else.

The other day Blaise and I were watching a movie and it had a scene of a man kissing a woman on the lips. (camera was zoomed in with the romantic music) I looked over to Blaise and he had his eyes covered up and his tongue sticking out and making an audible groan “YUCK!”

Why would anybody do that? He asked. He gives similar kind of response when he sees me kiss his momma. And from Blaises perspective it doesn’t make much sense why a man would kiss a woman on the lips like that.

But ONE DAY … his perspective will change. One day what is hidden from his sight will be REVEALED. One day what is covered up will become exposed and what is hard to understand will be patently obvious.

That’s the idea behind this biblical word. It was talked about previously, defined biblically throughout the OT but it wasn’t until God’s appointed time that everything really fell into place so understanding could be had.

GLORY GIVEN THEN GONE

What is this mystery that Paul is talking about? What was Paul commissioned by God to proclaim? Why should anybody at all pay any mind to what he has to say?

Colossians 1:27 “God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

“Christ in you - the hope of glory.” Five words that if properly understood have the power to change your life forever.

Defining Glory

Let’s start by understanding this word glory. It’s another important biblical concept.

The word glory comes from a Hebrew word for “weight.” Not wait but weight. It conveys the idea of the weightiness of life. Heft. Meaning. Greatness. Significance.

We still use it in this way in our common parlance.

when we see an unbelievable piece of artwork and say “that’s glorious...”

We shout it out when we hear a compelling song that moves us to the core of our being, “glory!”

When something shines so bright, or is so compelling or so weighty that it moves us internally we feel like we’re in the presence of glory.

We see the idea of glory show up various different ways in the Bible.

The glory is what filled the ark of the covenant in the temple - the dwelling place for the presence of God.

Glory is what filled the holy of holies that the high priest entered into once a year to make atonement for sin.

Glory is what made the face of Moses shine for weeks after experiencing the presence of God though the burning bush and the giving of the ten commandments.

Glory is almost a substitute for the manifest presence of God. It God and the greatness of God on display for all to see.

Glory is what the Jews in the OT craved and pursued over and over and over again.

Glory Given

Human beings have had a craving for glory from the very beginning. It’s a craving that outweighs almost every other craving.

That craving was given to us by God. It was meant to be satisfied IN God and possessed by us insofar as we reflected or imaged God.

The glory of God is what covered Adam and Eve early on in the Garden before sin entered into the world.

Psalm 8:5 says man was “made a little less than God and crowned with glory and honor.”

Before sin, the world was a place of great glory. The grass was greener than any grass we’ve ever seen. The fruit was sweeter than any fruit we’ve ever tasted. Everything was to the nth degree.

Glory Gone

However, because of sin, that glory has departed. Genesis 3 has Ichabod written all over it!

Ichabod (Name given to the son of Phenas after the ark of the covenant was captured in 1 Samuel 4) Through the disobedience of Adam and Eve the glory possessed and enjoyed by human kind was distorted and dampened.

Instead of being clothed by the glory of God Adam and Eve had to make coverings for themselves out of fig leaves. They were aware of their nakedness because they had fallen short of God’s glorious standard.

And what started with them has continued down to us today. Romans 3:23 says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God...”

We fall short of the glory of God and we know. So we spend our entire lives chasing after glory and covering up it’s absence in our lives.

Deposed Royalty

Blaise Pascal described this condition of man as the problem of Deposed Royalty. There is simultaneously a greatness to man and misery to man that only makes sense when understood in the context of glory given that became glory lost.

Today we use all sorts of things to try and chase after glory and cover up it’s absence.

Chasing glory is what causes us to work ourselves to death so we can get the promotion and money and prestige that comes with it only to find that ruined your family and didn’t satisfy.

Chasing glory is what causes us to pursue pleasure through sex and substance abuse and all sorts of excessive behavior only to find that the pleasure is temporary and what you used to use for pleasure is not a slave master from whom you cannot escape.

Chasing glory is what causes us to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like/know and create a life we can’t sustain. You’ve got all of this stuff but you’re still not happy. Why? Ichabod. The glory departed.

We were made for glory. We were made to see it in God and worship him because of his glory and we were made to become like God - reflecting his glory and possessing a reflected glory as a result. But we lost it. So we chase after it.

I heard somebody say this week it’s like chasing glory is like eating cotton candy. It looks so big and puffy and delicious. Surely that thing will satisfy me. But then we put it in our mouths and it just dissolves and melts and turns to nothing.

From thing to thing, person to person, activity to activity we chase after glory but there’s never any there there. It’s empty. Vanity of vanities all is vanity. Have you been there? Are you there right now?

GLORY REVEALED & REGAINED

Paul says, “I’ve been appointed a messenger to proclaim the message that the glory that was given then lost can now be regained. You can have it again. How? Through the Lord Jesus Christ.”

That’s the mystery that’s now been revealed. Christ IN you. The hope of glory.

Not hope in the sense of I hope it can happen or I wish it would happen or if I’m lucky it may happen. No! Biblical hope is a certainty. A firm and solid expectation. It WILL happen you can take it to the bank.

You WILL regain glory.

You WILL find meaning and purpose in life.

You WILL finally be able to rest and stop chasing and stop proving and just be.

How? What’s the secret? Tell me how I can finally be at rest, Paul!? - Three words. Christ. In. You. That’s the mystery. That’s the message.

Christ in you. The hope of glory. The weightiness of life is regained when you have Christ in you.

New Covenant in the Old Testament

Some of you hear that and aren’t very impacted by it because familiarity breeds contempt. You must understand how big of a deal this was for somebody like the apostle Paul.

This idea of oneness with God and communion with God isn’t new. That’s not the mystery. What’s new is how that oneness and glory is obtained.

In the Old Testament the glory resided in the temple and to participate in that glory atonement had to be made.

Without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sin. That’s what passover and what we know today as the Lord supper was all about.

But there were also hints that one day God would do a new thing. That the temple and the sacrifices and the blood were all preparing and pointing to something else. SomeONE else.

It was concealed in the OT. It was difficult to understand. They didn’t yet have the proper perspective (like little kids with kissing) but it would be made clear through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jeremiah 31

One of the clearest examples of this mystery defined by Paul being articulated in the Old Testament is Jeremiah 31. If you don’t have this verse memorized of in your list of familiar passages then you should get it there.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 (CSB)

31 “Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—my covenant that they broke even though I am their master”—the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.

This passage along with many other passages in the Old Testament gave God’s people a HINT that there was coming a day when God was going to do something NEW.

But that new thing wasn’t REVEALED until the appointed time: that is Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension. That inaugurated a new covenant and revealed the mystery God had promised through the old.

No longer will there only be external rules and regulations. There’s going to be an inner reality through the Spirit. A new covenant wherein God dwells in our hearts instead of a temple or an ark.

There will be a transition from cold hearted legalistic external hypocrisy to a warm, relational, spirit-driven sincerity. No longer will it be fear based and duty driven. Obedience will flow from a heart of love and be motivated by delight.

Understanding & Embracing The Reality

Paul is saying that’s available to us RIGHT NOW through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. When we receive HIM and his Spirit comes to live in US, then everything else in our lives will change. We will regain the glory that we lost.

WIth Christ in you there’s contentment instead of greed. You no longer have to work yourself to death to feel like your good enough to be accepted by your peers.

With Christ in you there’s no longer a need to pursue temporary pleasures through that existential cotton candy because Christ has a way of satisfying your soul like no one else can.

With Christ in you everything is different. There’s a different love, a different wisdom, a different kind of desire and different outlook on life.

That is the message Paul says I was commissioned to proclaim. This is the message I was called to proclaim. This is the heart of Christianity and this is the most important message you’ll ever hear.

When you understand that and embrace the reality of Christ in you then everything else in your life will be different.

THE DIFFERENCE IT WILL MAKE

With the rest of our time, I want to show you some of those differences from the life of the Apostle Paul. We don’t have time to flesh them all out but I just want to show you a few things from this passage.

I’ll put them under three headings: You’ll have a different

perspective on your suffering.

purpose for your life.

power for your obedience.

A Different Perspective

The first difference is a different perspective on your suffering.

We saw this throughout the book of the Revelation as well. When you embrace the reality of “Christ in you” then you’ll begin to look at your suffering differently.

Notice what Paul says. Colossians 1:24 “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.”

Why on earth would Paul say he “rejoices in his sufferings?” He doesn’t mean “suffering for Jesus” like we sometimes joke (mission trip to the beach.) He’s in prison, he’s being beaten and tortured. Nobody really comes to see him much.

Even though that’s true he rejoices. Just like Peter and John rejoiced when they got beat up in Jerusalem after preaching the Gospel.

It’s exactly what Jesus said they should do in the sermon on the mount “when you’re persecuted rejoice and be glad for that’s how they treated the prophets who came before you ...” (Matthew 5:12)

Filling Up What Is Lacking

There are really two reasons you can have joy in your suffering - particularly when you’re suffering for the cause of Christ.

First you can rejoice because Christ is WITH you in your suffering. He’s IN YOU. You are IN HIM. That means you’re never again alone in this world. Not only is he with you, he understands the suffering you’re going through because he went through it himself. He’s able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses.

The second reason is because he working THROUGH your suffering. Paul phrases it as “completing in his flesh what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions for his body...”

No small amount of ink has been spilt over that phrase. I think some overcomplicate the phrase. Like the rest of the apostles, Paul sees his ministry as an extension of the ministry of Jesus when he walked this earth. Jesus suffered therefore we will suffer.

God used the suffering of Jesus to bring about good for his body - the Church. Similarly, when we - an extension of the ministry of Christ - suffer and make sacrifices in obedience to God - that too is leveraged by God for the good of the Church.

That gives purpose to our pain. It’s no longer meaningless or random. It’s terrible. It’s not necessarily the will of God. But God can and will use it redemptively according to his purpose.

A Different Purpose

We have a different perspective on our suffering because Christ is in us. He will take our pain and work it for good according to his redemptive purposes.

That leads us naturally to the second thing that’s different when we embrace the reality of Christ in you: a different purpose for your life.

Our purpose becomes the same as Christ’s purpose.

Jesus told his disciples in John 20:21 “As the Father has sent me, I also send you.””

Our purpose becomes what Jesus told his disciples before ascending into heaven.

Acts 1:8 (CSB)

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Our Mission becomes his mission and it’s a great COmission of making disciples, teaching them to observe everything that Christ commanded. (Matt 28:19-20)

Why? Not because it’s a new LAW and they’re bad people if they don’t clean up their lives. No. Remember - Jesus Christ is the HOPE of glory. Our mission is to proclaim that the glory lost can be regained through the faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A Convicting Question

Listen to the way Paul describes his commitment to advancing the Gospel and the Great Commission.

Colossians 1:25 (CSB)

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,

Colossians 1:28 (CSB)

28 We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

The Great Commission was priority number one for the apostle Paul. Every facet of his life was filtered through that lens. A convicting question for us to ask is whether or not it’s priority number one for us.

If the Great Commission is not a driving motivation in your life then you really should ask the question of whether or not Christ really lives in you.

If the Spirit of God dwells in you then the Spirit of Christ will begin to animate your sprit and his mission will become your mission, his loves will become your loves.

Jesus loved sinners. Jesus loved the lost. Jesus loved the Father and was obedient to his mission to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom.

A Different Power

The last difference Christ in you will bring about in your life is a different power for obedience.

We saw this earlier with Jeremiah’s description of the New Covenant. No longer will obedience to God be fear based and duty driven. Now obedience flows from a heart of faith that is delighted to do the will of God because of his great love for us.

As 1 John 4:19 says “We love because he first loved us.”

Or Paul in Colossians 1:29 “I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me.”

Which is similar to Philippians 2:12-13 “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose.”

I could show you this over and over again in the NT. The reality of the Spirit of God living in you gives you a new power for obedience.

It’s no longer about external obedience because of fear or greed.

Obedience that pleases God and advances his purpose is a sincere faith that expresses itself through acts of love.

That’s the kind of obedience that fueled the ministry of Paul and that’s the kind of obedience that God desires from you and me. But it’ll only happen when you’re put your faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

So as we prepare our hearts for the Lord’s table let me ask you whether or not you’ve understood and embraced the reality of the mystery: Christ in you, the hope of glory. If you haven’t, will you receive him today?

All you need to do is acknowledge and confess that you’ve sinned against a holy God and fallen short of his glory. You already know it. You feel it deep inside. All your doing is agreeing with God about the nature of your current condition.

Then, with faith in your heart - the next step is to believe that God can restore that glory you’re chasing after through surrendering your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That means trusting that Jesus is who he said he is and and accomplished what he said he would do.

If you will repent and believe then you can be saved this morning.

For those of you who ARE Christians, let me ask you whether or not the reality of Christ in you has any impact on your life?

Is it shaping your perspective on suffering?

Has it changed your purpose for living?

Do you have a different power for obedience because the very desires of your heart have been transformed by the Spirit of God?