Immanuel Sermon Audio
Grow Up (Colossians 1:24-29)
If you have a Bible, take it out and find the book of Colossians chapter 1. Colossians 1 is our passage this morning. There's an outline in the bulletin. If you'd like to follow along in the outline, you can do that as well. Next week we're going to jump back into our study of the Gospel of Luke. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. We'll jump back into Luke right where we left off a couple of weeks ago. This morning is part four of four in a short series called Grow-Up, striving for maturity in Christ. And so we've talked about children and we've talked about parenting and we've talked about growing up and if you are a parent, you know that sometimes you just have to laugh at your kids, right? Sometimes you get mad at your kids and you just feel like you need to shake them, shake some sense into them. But sometimes you just look at your kids and you just laugh at them because sometimes your kids eat and they end up looking like this. That's when dad leaves the room and says, "Mom, your kid needs you, your son needs you, your daughter needs you." That peanut butter picture gives me nightmares. Chocolate cake is bad, but peanut butter, that is not good. Sometimes your kids go into the living room with a bag of flour and do that. If that happens, just laugh. It's funny. You're going to laugh about it someday, you might as well laugh about it right now. It's funny. And this one I found on the internet this week, sometimes your kid takes a bath in a five-gallon bucket of paint. That one was making the rounds this last week. You look at some of those pictures, you say, "I think that had to be staged." Surely that really didn't happen. Maybe it did happen. But sometimes as a parent, you just look at your kids and you just have to laugh. But as a parent, one of your most serious goals, one of your hopes, one of the things you are working for and praying for is that your kids would grow up, that they would be mature. You want them someday when they are grown adults to act like grown adults. Because you know, someday they're going to be a grown adult. And if they still act like a child, when they are a grown adult, it's going to be problems. There's going to be trouble. There's going to be difficulties for them in life. And so you want your kids to grow up, you want them to mature. In this series, what we've been talking about is a very simple idea that your heavenly father wants the exact same thing for you in your spiritual walk with Jesus Christ. He doesn't want you to be a child in your faith forever. He understands and he knows and we know that maturity doesn't happen overnight. You just don't become a Christian one day and then the next day you're a mature faithful follower of Jesus Christ. You know the Bible, you pray faithfully, you don't have any struggles or problems. That doesn't happen. But what Jesus is talking about, what Paul is talking about, what Peter is talking about and the passages that we've been studying is this simple idea that God wants you to grow up. He wants you to mature in your faith. He doesn't want you to wallow around in spiritual immaturity but he wants you to strive for maturity in Christ. And so three weeks ago, we looked at Ephesians 4. If you want to grow up, you need godly leaders in your life. You need sound doctrine in your heart and in your mind and you also need the local church. You can't do this on your own. You can't grow up on your own. Two weeks ago, we looked at 1 Corinthians 3. We talked about the idea that in your church, you need unity if you're going to grow up. In 1 Corinthians 3, we talked about you need a biblical view of leadership. Not only do you need biblical godly leaders in your life, but you need to think rightly about them, right? Submitting to them when appropriate but not putting them up on a pedestal where they don't belong. 1 Corinthians 3, you also need a biblical view of grace. You need to understand that it is God in His grace that finds you. That's what we just sang about. Your grace found me. Not I came and stumbled across your grace and found it, but your grace came in your grace found me. Last week, we looked at 2 Peter 3. If you're going to grow up, you've got to pursue holiness. You've got to be rooted in the Scripture. Cory talked about that earlier in the welcome and you've got to grow in grace and in knowledge. This morning, our passage is Colossians 1. I want you to look with me as we read it, starting in verse 24, and we're going to read down to the end of the chapter verse 29. This is the Word of God, Colossians 1 beginning in verse 24. Paul says this, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body that is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you to make the Word of God fully known. The mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints, 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. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works within me." This is the Word of God, let's pray. Father, give us wisdom, give us understanding as we look at these verses. We believe that this is your Word, we believe that it's true, we believe that it is profitable to equip us for every good work. We believe that it's powerful to help us grow up into mature. And so give us ears to hear your truth this morning, give us hearts to receive it. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Just like the last couple of weeks, want to ask and try to answer a very simple question. According to Colossians 1, 24 to 29, what do we need to do to grow up as followers of Jesus Christ? Three very, very simple ideas. The first one is this. We need to have a sanctified view of suffering. If you're going to grow up, you've got to have a sanctified view of suffering. Now suffering for Paul, when he wrote this letter, was sitting in a prison in Rome for nothing that he had done wrong or illegal or immoral. That was his suffering, as he talks about suffering, I think you understand suffering. Maybe you've never sat in a prison in Rome for something you didn't do, but you've experienced suffering. You've lost loved ones. You've stood by the grave side. You've had heartache in relationships and in your family. You've had disappointments in job, financial difficulties, physical illnesses. You know and you understand what it is to suffer. Think about this word sanctified. It means to be made holy or right or true. And what I'm saying is if you're going to grow up, your view of suffering needs to be made holy. It needs to be made right. It needs to be made true. You need to understand what's really happening when you suffer. I'm always amazed at the number of Christian people who talk about karma. Maybe they're just joking. I hope that they're just joking. But I hope you understand karma has zero to do with Christianity. Nothing. Karma is an idea borrowed from Hinduism. It has nothing to do with the Christian view of suffering. The Christian view of suffering, the biblical view of suffering is far more sophisticated than this simple, simplistic idea of karma. But you hear people suffering and they say, "Well, it's karma. It's karma. It's not karma. That's not what we believe. Look what Paul said in Colossians 1 verse 24. This is a strange verse. It starts off with this, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake." That's a weird verse. "I'm suffering," okay, I understand, "and I rejoice in it." That's odd. Most of us don't rejoice in suffering. Most of us suffer and we want to try to get away from the suffering. We suffer and we feel like maybe God is punishing us for something. Paul suffers and he says, "I rejoice in it. I'm worshiping in it, not just in spite of it, but through it. I'm grateful for it. And I'm suffering," he says, "for you." And look what he says. It gets even stranger. In my flesh, Paul writing, "In my flesh, I am filling up what is lacking in Christ afflictions for the sake of his body that is the church." Does it sound a little bit blasphemous to you to be in church and to read that there is something lacking in Christ afflictions? That's a strange phrase, right? It almost sounds like Paul is saying, "Look, Jesus gave it 99.9 percent and he got it most of the way." I mean, he did his best, but there's just a little bit lacking. It just needs a little bit more. Look at this verse one more time. "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake. I'm suffering for you because in my flesh, I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ afflictions for the sake of his body that is the church." Let's be clear that when he says something is lacking in Christ afflictions, he's certainly not saying that Jesus' sufferings and his afflictions and his death on the cross is lacking in power, right? He's not saying, "Jesus almost did enough to save you, and now I'm somehow suffering for you to put you over the edge." That's not what Paul's talking about. What Paul is talking about is the idea that some people have never heard about the afflictions of Jesus Christ. They don't know. He suffered for them and it's powerful enough to save them, but they have never heard. Hold your spot in Colossians and flip back to the left and find Romans chapter 10. Paul describes it plainly in Romans 10. This is what he means when he says, "I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ afflictions." Not in their power or their ability to save, but in their knowledge and in people hearing. Romans 10, verse 13, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." That's good news. But then he says in verse 14, "How will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they're sent, as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? This is what's lacking in Christ afflictions. Paul understands there are people in Colossae and in other cities who have never heard that Jesus was afflicted for their sins. And he also understands that in his personal suffering God is using his situation so that those who have never heard would now have the opportunity to hear the good news about Jesus Christ. And in that sense he says, "I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ afflictions through my suffering. My suffering is pushing the gospel to those who have never heard it, giving them the opportunity to believe. And because my suffering does that," Paul says, "I rejoice in it." Now, very, very practically, what does this mean for you? We listen to Paul. We say, "Great." That's Paul, the apostle. What does this mean for you? Two simple thoughts of application. Number one, some people would not listen to you if you weren't suffering. Some people are not going to listen to you if you are not or you weren't suffering. There's people in your life that you could drag to church with you on Sunday morning. You could sit them in a pew and they could listen to every word that comes out of my mouth as I stand on that platform, on this platform, and they're really not going to listen to me or any other preacher or anybody who wants to talk to them about the Bible or an evangelist or Billy Graham on TV or whoever, they're not going to listen. But when you suffer, it's almost like God hands you a megaphone. And in the midst of your suffering, when you look at these people who will never listen to what I say in a sermon, when you look at these people in the midst of your suffering and you say, "You know what? I believe that Jesus is good and faithful and enough and better and the best, and He's still the blazing center of my life, even though I'm suffering, they're going to listen to you. They won't listen to me, but they'll listen to you." And Paul understands that. There's some people who will not listen unless you were suffering. And suffering gives you the ability to speak to these people. It gives you the ability to be heard by these people. A similar idea but slightly different. Some people would not have the opportunity to hear you if you weren't suffering. All things being equal, Paul probably did not want to be sitting in prison in Rome. A lot of places he could imagine himself being that would have been more pleasant. But Paul understood I'm here for a reason. God's in control of it. And while I'm here, I want to make the Word of God fully known. And there's people that I'm going to rub shoulders with here in prison in Rome, unjustly incarcerated that would never have the opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus unless I were here. Now you say, "Well, I hope that I don't end up unjustly incarcerated just so somebody can hear the gospel." And I hope that doesn't happen in your life either. But when you suffer, you find yourself in places and situations rubbing shoulders with people you would never rub shoulders with otherwise. And you now have an opportunity because of your suffering to share the good news of Jesus with them that the Word of God may be fully known. And when that happens, you ought to rejoice. You don't have to rejoice because suffering is so pleasant, but you rejoice that now you have the opportunity to be heard, now you have the opportunity to rub shoulders with people and to share the gospel with them. Paul says, "I rejoice in my sufferings." If you're going to grow up and if I'm going to grow up, we have to stop avoiding suffering and being so confident in our comfort as Americans. We have to stop being so quick to blame God, punishing us, He's judging us. So quick to turn to other false religions and start talking about karma and have a sanctified view of our suffering for the opportunities that it gives us and for the voice that it gives us. Paul rejoiced in his suffering. What do you need to grow up? Number two, you need to understand unity with Christ. You need to grasp the doctrine of unity with Christ. This one will make your head heard a little bit. This is a difficult concept. I want you to look in the scriptures, Colossians 1, look at verse 25. Paul says that he has been made a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to him for you. And here's his job as a minister to make the Word of God fully known. Look at verse 26. Verse 26, he starts talking about a mystery and he says it's been hidden and it's been somewhat revealed and now it's revealed, but it's this mystery. Verse 27, he says, now it's being made known to the Gentiles. That's the non-Jewish people. He's a minister. He's making known this mystery to the Gentiles and at the end of verse 27, he gets right down to it. He says, this is the mystery. It's Christ in you. This is something as a mystery that Isaiah and Jeremiah and David and these Old Testament saints didn't understand, but Paul says, now it's been made fully known. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, if you've confessed your sin to God, you've repented of your sin, you've trusted in the sufferings and the afflictions of Jesus to save you. If you've done that, Paul says, here's this mystery. Now you understand it, Christ is in you. You and Christ have been united. The two of you have become one. Sometimes the Bible says that we are in Christ. Sometimes the Bible says that Christ is in us. Sometimes it says that we're joined to Christ. The idea is unity with Christ. Think back to the last wedding you went to. If it was a Christian wedding, pastor maybe stood up at the front and the pastor maybe read some scriptures from Genesis or maybe from the book of Matthew and he talked about there's a husband and a wife and the two of you are now becoming one. You come into this place as two, you leave this place as one, you're united together. That's the idea behind union with Christ or unity with Christ. Once you were two, but when you put your faith in Jesus, you are united to Him by faith. When God looks at you, He doesn't see only you, He sees you through Jesus. He sees Christ in you. That means when He looks at you, regardless of your race, regardless of your ethnicity, regardless of your age, regardless of whether you've sinned or you haven't and you have, God sees a sinless Jewish male when He looks at you. There's verses in the New Testament that sometimes call us sons of God. And sometimes people get uneasy and they say, "Well, shouldn't it be sons and daughters of God?" It shouldn't. It has nothing to do with our men more important than women. It has to do with Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And when you're united to Him, when the two of you become one, God looks at you and He sees you as the Son of God, Christ in you. And He says, "This is the hope of glory." Here's one more way to try to wrap your mind around it from everyday life. Have you ever seen high school students who are good at athletics and they sign a letter of intent to play college somewhere, right? They put a table up and the local newspaper comes and they have the papers there, they're going to sign the papers. And usually, when I've seen these things, the student athlete takes a t-shirt of the college that they're going to play for and what do they do? They put the shirt on or they take the hat and they put the hat on. And what they're saying is, "I am putting on this school. I'm now united and connected with this school." It's the same thing when those college athletes go pro. There was an NBA draft on TV a couple of nights ago and they start calling out guys one at a time and they walk up on the stage and they shake hands with the commissioner. And then whoever drafted them, they give them a hat and they put the hat on. And what they're saying is, "I'm connected with this team now. I'm united to this team. I represent them. They represent me." But there's a connection here and there's a relationship. Paul is saying, "If you want to grow up, you've got to understand that as a believer, you are now united to Jesus." The two of you have become one. You have put on Jesus Christ is in you. What does that mean? Two very, very simple thoughts of application. You're going to love me for these. These are so easy. Are you ready? Number one, Jesus is central to Christianity. Is that simple enough? Paul says, "If you're going to grow up, you have to be united to Christ, united to Jesus." Paul never is satisfied to say, "I just want you to believe in God and try to be a good person. I just want you to kind of know what the 10 commandments are. And I want to make sure you vote for this certain political party. And I want you to get on Facebook every morning and post a lot of Bible verses and inspirational thoughts and pretty pictures on and on and on. None of those things mean you're a Christian. None of them, Paul says, "You need to be united to Jesus Christ." Listen, if Jesus of Nazareth is not the blazing, all-important sinner of your life, you're not a Christian. You can say, "Well, I believe in God. I've always believed in God. I've always gone to church. I've always this. I've always that. It doesn't matter." Paul says, "Being a Christian growing up to maturity means you are united to Jesus Christ." That means you need to understand who He is. Why do we bring kids to VBS and teach them about who Jesus is all week long? They need to know that. Why do we explain to them what Jesus did on the cross for them? They need to understand who Jesus is and what He did so that they can trust Him and be united to Him. Paul says, "First of all, you've got to be united to Christ. Jesus is central to Christianity. None of this vanilla, generic God in general business. You're talking about unity with Christ. Secondly, unity with Christ results in a Christ-like life." That's pretty simple, I think. I'm not talking about sinless perfection. I'm not talking about you never do say or think anything sinful again, but I'm saying if you're really united to Jesus, you're going to become more and more and more like Him. It will happen. If you look at your life and you say, "You know, I made some decision 20-30 years ago, and I don't really look anything like Jesus," maybe you really didn't make a genuine decision to follow Jesus Christ. If you're united to Jesus, if Christ is in you, if you've put on Christ, over time your life ought to become more and more Christ-like. Last idea is this, okay? How do we grow up? You need to engage in the mission. This is really what Paul is talking about to the Colossians as he rejoices in his sufferings, as he talks about being united to Christ, talking about being a part of the mission. You understand that when Jesus left this earth, he gave us a job to do, Matthew 28. The job is, the mission is, make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you, baptize them when they trust in me, but go make disciples. Acts 1-8, Jesus said, "I want you to be my witnesses. I want you to go out and tell people who I am and what I've done. I want you to do it at home. I want you to do it close to home, and I want you to do it all around the world. You're going to be my witnesses everywhere." If the mission that Jesus gave us when he left this earth has no impact on your life, you need to grow up. That's what Paul's saying. If the mission to make disciples has no impact on the way you think, the way you spend your money, the way you spend your time, the way you think about church, the way you think about work, the way you raise your kids, if that mission has no impact on your life, Paul would say, "You've got to grow up. You've got to engage in the mission." Look what he says in verse 27, he's talking about the Gentiles. That's everyone on planet earth who's not ethnically Jewish. That's our target. The Jews and the Gentiles, that sums it up, everybody. Every person on planet earth, that's who we want to make disciples of. Look what he says in verse 28, "We're proclaiming Jesus, we're warning everyone, and we're teaching everyone." Why? Because we want to present everyone mature in Christ. Everyone, we're warning them and we're teaching them because we want everyone to be mature in Christ. We want them to grow up. Two thoughts about the mission as we wrap up. Number one, the mission is global. We've talked about that. It's global. That's why the mission statement of our church is, "We believe that God is with us, Emmanuel, God with us, God is with us for His glory, for the world, for this city, and for you." Our sights are set on the whole world. The mission is global. Secondly, the mission is difficult. It's not an easy mission. Paul talks about in verse 24 that he is suffering, and he talks about in verse 29 that he is toiling, and he's struggling, and he's using all the energy that God has given him to bring this about. Talk to missionaries today and they talk about groups of people around the world. Sometimes you hear missionaries talk about unreached people groups. These are groups of people who live on planet earth. No one in that group of people is a follower of Jesus Christ. They're unreached with the gospel. There's thousands of those groups, millions of those people. Sometimes they talk about unengaged people groups. They're not talking about are they married or not. It's talking about is they're a missionary. They're engaging them with the gospel, sharing the gospel with them. There are thousands of groups of people on planet earth that are not engaged with the gospel. They can't go to church. They can't open a Bible. They don't have a missionary there to tell them about Jesus. Some of those unreached, unengaged people groups are unreached and unengaged because they are geographically hard to get to. They're in the middle of the Amazon or they're in the sticks of Africa or they're in the inland China. Some of those unreached, unengaged people groups, remember this is our mission, to go to them. Some of those unreached, unengaged people groups are not reached and not engaged because governments of these countries or other religions in those countries are hostile towards Christianity and towards missionaries and so it's hard to go. And Paul would say to us, if he were here today, it's always been a hard mission. It's never been easy. I sat in a prison and suffered to push the gospel to those who have never heard. If the gospel's going to get to those who have never heard, somebody's going to have to suffer. It's not an easy mission. It's a difficult mission. But Paul says very plainly, verse 28, our goal is that we may present everyone mature in Christ. That's why we take mission trips to Kenya, is not to go build homes, although we build homes, is not to go win converts, although we see people converted to faith. We go to present people mature in Christ. That's why we do VBS. We bring kids in and we decorate and we play games and we do all this stuff so that we can get all these kiddos here and we can sit them down and we can tell them the good news about Jesus Christ in the hopes that we can present them mature followers of Jesus Christ, that we see them grow up. That's why we take offerings. At the end of the year, a world mission's offering, a VBS emissions offering so that we can send people around the world to preach Jesus so that we can see people grow up in faith and to be mature in Jesus Christ. We want to see it on the ends of the earth. We want to see it in Odessa. We want to see it in our church. We want to see it in your family and we want to see it in you. Our desire is Paul's, that you grow up and that you grow up to maturity in Christ. Let me pray for you. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that not only do You call us out of darkness and out of sin and into Your Kingdom, not only do You give us life, but Father, You also call us to grow up, to be like Christ, to be mature in our faith. And Father, You give us everything that we need to do that. You've given us Your Word, You've given us Your Spirit. We have Christ living in us, the hope of glory. We have church. We have leaders in our life who can set an example and teach us. Father, we have a mission to fulfill. And as individuals and families and as a church family, we want to take seriously Your charge for us to grow up. We need Your help for that to happen. We need each other for that to happen. But we pray that You would bring to completion the work that You've started in us, that we would be found faithfully following Jesus, mature in our faith, grown up. Father, we pray for those who are here who have never truly trusted in Jesus and turned from their sin. And we would love to see them do that today. Father, we pray that You would touch their heart and that You would draw them to Jesus Christ. Father, for those of us who know Jesus, we want to recommit ourselves. We want to resolve in our hearts to grow up and to do the things, to strive after the things that You've told us will help us to grow up. Father, be honored as we sing together, as we worship, as we lift up the name of Jesus Christ. And we pray in His name, amen.