Growing in Christ

Sometimes they pray for those things, sometimes they pray for every single member in the family except for one, and you kind of realise what they don't care for during that moment as well. It's a little bit ruthless. But my point is that when you hear what somebody's giving thanks for and you get to listen into their prayers, you get to hear what's on their heart. Now it's one thing to listen to what a kid cares about, but it's another thing altogether to hear what an apostle cares about. The apostle Paul is the one who penned those words that Tony just read for us, and an apostle is a God-ordained carrier of Jesus' authentic message.

The apostles show us what Jesus wants and what He cares about. This is what we get in the opening passage of Colossians. We hear about what Paul is thankful for, and we hear what he has been praying for. And these things tell us a lot about what Jesus wants for the Colossians and what He wants for us too as a church. So as Tony mentioned, we're starting a new series today, an eight-week series in the book of Colossians called the All Sufficient Christ, Why Jesus Is All You Need.

We're gonna be spending eight weeks in this beautiful letter, which gives us one of the most exalted and lofty visions of Christ that we have in the New Testament. And Paul paints this exalted picture of Jesus to show us that He is the all-sufficient one, that He is all that we need for life and growth in the Christian life. It teaches us that Jesus is not just the ABCs of Christianity. He's the entire alphabet. He is the point, pioneer, and perfecter of our faith.

He is the A to Zed of Christianity. And the truth is that this is a message that the Colossian church really needed to hear when Paul wrote this letter to them around AD 60. He wrote this letter while he was in prison in Rome. There are some suggestions it could have been during an imprisonment in Ephesus, but the most likely is Rome. And the reason we call it the letter to the Colossians is because these Christians lived in a city called Colossae.

Colossae is located in Roman Asia Minor and in what we call modern-day Turkey, or used to be called Turkey. So we'll put a map on the screen so you can see it in just a moment. It's just here on the screen. So Colossae used to be a significant city during the Persian Empire. Xerxes actually visited the city, but trade routes began to change over time, and by the time of Jesus and the apostles, Colossae had become quite insignificant.

Trade routes had started to go through Laodicea instead, so that became big, and Colossae is what one scholar called perhaps the most insignificant city that Paul had ever written a letter to. It was a very small and insignificant city by the time Paul was writing to them. And the apostle Paul himself had never visited the city. Paul had actually spent time in Ephesus. He spent his longest time in his missionary journeys in Ephesus.

He spent three years there preaching the gospel. And so it's likely that a man called Epaphras came from Colossae, travelled to Ephesus, heard the gospel, and then took it back to Colossae. And as he shared the gospel in his city, a church began. Now we learn in the letter that Epaphras has gone back to Paul now that he's in prison in Rome, and it seems that he's asked Paul for help because the Colossian Christians were being threatened with false teaching from within their ranks. So if you go and read Colossians 2, you hear how Paul is warning them.

He says, don't be deceived by this. Don't let anyone pass judgment on you with these sorts of things, because he's trying to counter false teaching that was threatening the viability of this church. Now the false teaching is highly debated amongst scholars. Colossae being located near these different highways, they had access to all sorts of different philosophies and teachings. It's probably a syncretistic teaching that they were receiving.

So syncretistic is a word that means a blending of different religions and philosophies and things like that. It seems like the false teachers in Colossae blended some Jewish elements, make sure you don't eat certain foods, you've gotta have a Jewish diet and so on, and some Greco-Roman philosophy and pagan elements. Okay? The world was created by God, but there's also all these different powers and forces that we need to placate if we're gonna be, you know, right in the world and be at peace. So these teachers seem to have combined a few different things.

Now it's hard to pinpoint down, oh, this is the exact philosophy that they must have had, but the broad scope of it we can nail down pretty well. An expert on the book of Colossians, Douglas Moo, says the false teachers were probably people from within the Colossian Christian community who were bragging about their ability to find ultimate spiritual fulfilment. You'll keep seeing the word fullness come up in the letter of Colossians for a reason, to find ultimate spiritual fulfilment via their own program of visions and asceticism. That just refers to being very harsh, having strict religious practices, things like fasting and whatnot. Someone who's an ascetic, they would claim that you have to be really harsh and strict to be spiritual.

Right? So they were advocating visions and asceticism. The false teachers were apparently suggesting that Christians needed to go beyond the gospel that Epaphras had taught in order to experience spiritual fullness. And so it is often the case with false teachers who are not always subtracting from the gospel, but seeking to add to it. The gospel can be perverted through addition just as easily as through subtraction.

Did you hear that? The gospel can be perverted through addition just as easily as through subtraction. So the gospel might not always be perverted by someone subtracting from it, saying, oh, Jesus is not actually Lord. Someone can also pervert the gospel by saying, well, you need to believe in Jesus, but also this and this and this is essential for you to be saved, for you to have fullness in the Christian life. The Colossian heresy was a Christian heresy.

They weren't telling them not to believe in Jesus, but they were perverting the faith by adding to it, by going beyond the gospel. Their message was, you need Jesus plus a Jewish diet. You need Jesus plus a strict spiritual regime if you're going to be a full-on, proper, full-fledged Christian. You need Jesus plus fill in the blank. But once you say you need Jesus plus this, you don't have the gospel anymore.

You've lost the gospel. This is why Paul writes the letter of Colossians, to reassure them that Epaphras was the real deal, that they had received the real gospel through him, and that the false teachers were heretical and dangerous. But how did Paul do this? Well, Paul begins his letter with the passage we'll be looking at today, Colossians 1:1-14. Paul doesn't begin with an all-out assault on the false teaching, but he actually begins with a light touch.

He begins by telling the Colossians what he's thankful for among them and by telling them what he's been praying for them. And remember, that gives us an insight into what an apostle cares about. It tells us what Jesus cares about this church. And I'll give you a hint. He doesn't care about the things that the false teachers are telling them to care about.

He gives thanks for different things. He prays for different things than the false teachers had been advocating for. Paul's thanksgiving and prayer tells us what should be central in a church and what we need here at Open House Church if we want maturity and growth as Christians. This is why the sermon is titled Growing in Christ, because Paul tells the Colossians about something that has been growing and bearing fruit around the world. He tells them about something that was essential to their past growth and critical for their continued growth.

If you wanna grow as a Christian, if you want our church to grow healthy, then pay attention to what Paul says today. He's going to show us what we actually need. And if you're here but you're not sure about Jesus yet, or you're just visiting online and you're checking things out, if you want spiritual fullness, if you want to grow and develop, Paul is going to teach you about the dynamics of spiritual growth. You're not going to get it by blending different spiritualities together. In fact, it doesn't come through a philosophy at all, but a person.

And if you want to talk about what we're mentioning in this service, please have a chat to one of us because we would love to talk to you more about the gospel and about Jesus. Now with that said, let's jump into the passage, and we're going to break it down under three headings, and the first is this, roots of the gospel. Roots of the gospel. Now that word gospel, if you're not familiar with it, it just means good news, and when it shows up in the New Testament in the Bible, it just means the good news about Jesus. Alright.

Roots of the gospel. So Paul says in verse one, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. Paul wants the Colossians to know he's an apostle. He's not one of these Johnny-come-lately false teachers. He's a God-ordained carrier of Jesus' authentic message.

The Colossians needed reassurance that they'd heard the full gospel from Epaphras and that these false teachers weren't right. So what better person to reassure them than Paul? And this is why I've called the heading for these verses roots of the gospel. Because in these first few verses, Paul is taking the Colossians back to the roots of the message that they'd heard from Epaphras. Paul is the apostolic root or source of the gospel that Epaphras had passed on to them, and he authenticates Epaphras' message.

So notice how much he praises Epaphras in verse seven. He says about the gospel, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit. Do you understand why he's written that now? He's written that because he wants them to be sure that they didn't get half the message from Epaphras.

They got the full message. They got the authentic gospel. The roots of the gospel that came through Epaphras, originally from Paul, were healthy apostolic roots. Imagine someone gives you a seed and they say, here's an apple seed. Now there's a few different ways you could authenticate whether that's genuine.

Maybe, let's pretend you could go back to the store that they bought it from with the receipt. You can say, what seed is this? And look at the receipt, they look at the seed, and they say, it looks like an apple seed. Let me look it up in the system. Yes.

That's an apple seed. That would be like taking the seed back to the source, back to its roots, to find out whether it's genuine. And that's a little bit like what is going on here in these first opening paragraphs of Colossians. The Colossians have been troubled by false teachers. They aren't sure the gospel they received is legit, so Epaphras takes them back to the store, the source, the roots, so to speak, to tell them it's legit.

But how does this work in our day and age? What about today? How do you know that the gospel I preach to you week by week is legit? Because we can't go and, you know, email the apostle Paul and ask him, hey, this is what Ben's been saying.

Is this the true gospel that we should be, you know, staking our lives on? So we can't do that, but we do have access to Paul's writings in the New Testament, in the Bible. And that's why it's so important to bring your Bible to church or your Bible app, to have it open, to be reading through it as I'm preaching to you, because this is the source of the truth. This is what I'm trying to get across to you every Sunday.

Not my own personal agenda, but this, the word of God. I want God's voice to speak. And so we wanna test everything we hear according to the scriptures, whether we're listening to teachers on YouTube or helpful podcasts, we wanna be testing them against the Bible. It's so important to be reading your Bible day by day by day, even if it's just for a few minutes, because you wanna have your heart and mind trained in the word of God to be able to discern between good and evil, between true and false, between what is pleasing and what is unprofitable to you. We need to be people who know our scriptures and test everything according to the scriptures.

This is one way we can know that we're hearing the authentic gospel. We check that it lines up with the teaching of the apostles in the New Testament. Now one of the other things we can do to ensure we've believed the true gospel is to look for evidence of its transforming power among us, and we're gonna look at that next. So we've looked at the roots of the gospel. We're now going to look at fruit from the gospel.

Roots of the gospel, now fruit from the gospel. Now let's go back to the apple seed illustration again. Someone gives you an apple seed. You can take it back to the store in my hypothetical analogy. One of the other things you could do is just plant it, water it, let it have sunlight, let it grow, and let it bear fruit, and see what comes of it.

And if you get apples, then you know the seed was authentic. Well, that's something else that we can see from the gospel. The gospel is a powerful, life-transforming message. Paul says in Romans 1:16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power for salvation to everyone who believes. And when the gospel is united with faith in someone, it's like it's put in healthy soil, and it will grow and bear fruit.

We will see evidence in someone's life and in a church's life if faith and the gospel are united. And you see these things coming together in what Paul says in verses five to six. He says, of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel. Now that word truth there in the original Greek means dependable, reliable, truthful. So the gospel is a truthful word.

It's a reliable word that has come to the Colossians, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing. It's a powerful message that bears fruit. It renews people into the human image that we're meant to be in, who become a fruitful people, who multiply throughout the earth and represent God and share the gospel and help other people join this renewed humanity under Jesus. And Paul says, as it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth. That word understood is the Greek word epignōskō, and it usually means to understand spiritually.

It means here to understand completely, through and through. They didn't have a shallow understanding of the gospel from Epaphras. They grasped it. They got it. They understood the grace of God that was in the gospel, and that's why they bore fruit as a church.

The Colossians had received the true gospel. They had genuinely grasped it. When you get genuine gospel plus genuine faith and belief, then you get gospel fruit. And this evidence of the gospel's transforming power is what Paul rejoices over in verses three to eight of this first chapter. Now what is the fruit that Paul is thankful for?

If you're familiar with your Bible, you might immediately think of the fruit of the Spirit, and that's fine, but he's specifically thinking about the fruit of faith, hope, and love in this passage. If you've read through Paul's writings a few times, you might have noticed this phrase come up. It's a famous triad that he often mentions, faith, hope, and love. Faith, hope, and love are marks of a genuinely healthy church, and Paul points them out in the Colossian church by thanking God for these qualities that are among them. So we see this in verses three to four when Paul says, we always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus.

This is the first mark of a church that is rooted in the gospel. Faith in Jesus, trusting in Jesus. It's a determined Christ-centredness. The Christian life is not about faith in your own spiritual progress. It's not about faith in yourself or faith that you're in the right church or faith in your pastor.

It's about faith in Jesus. It's about trusting in Christ, total reliance and dependence on Him alone. The classic illustration used to explain faith is the chairs that you're sitting on right now. You've got faith in the chair that you're sitting on because you're sitting on it. You're placing your full weight on it.

Now it's probably subconscious because you didn't think about how the chair was manufactured or who it was purchased by or whatever. You're just sitting on the chair because you have faith that it will hold you up, and that's what we do with Jesus. We put our full faith and trust in Him. We put our full reliance and dependence on Christ. That's a beautiful fruit that we see in a church that is rooted in the gospel.

This is the first mark, faith in Jesus. Now the second thing that Paul points out as fruit of the gospel is love. Love. So in Colossians 1:4, we see that it says, we thank God the father since we heard of the love that you have for all the saints. Now the Greek word for love here means the quality of warm regard for and interest in another.

It means to esteem someone, to have affection for them, to have regard and love for them. This is part of the fruit of the gospel, and Paul points it out among the church. He says, I've heard about your love for each other. In fact, love is so key that Paul gives it the highest place among his triad of faith, hope, and love. So we see in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says, so now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.

Love is the fulfilment of the law. Love doesn't need to be told to behave. Love is the driving centre of how God wants us to relate to one another. You don't need to put rules around love. If you love your brothers and sisters in this church, you won't gossip about them.

You won't be harsh to them. Love simply won't do those things. That's why Paul famously said, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude.

Notice it doesn't say, if you love people, make sure you are patient and kind, and make sure you don't, no. He says, this is what love does. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy and boast. Love fulfils all God's commands about how we are to treat one another.

I just want to encourage you as well, church. I see the fruit of love among us. I think about one of our recent prayer meetings. One of our members shared some difficulties they're going through, through tears, and they were held in such high regard by the other people around the table. And they were listened to with love.

One of the other members shared some similar experiences and we held hands and we just prayed for one another. It was just this beautiful moment where I just saw the love of God among us as a church. Now don't worry if you come to a prayer meeting, we're not gonna make you hold hands with everyone. That doesn't happen every time. But it was just a natural moment, a beautiful moment where I saw God's love manifest among us here at Open House.

The fruit from the gospel is faith and love, and it's also hope. Paul said that the Colossians had faith and love, verse five, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Now this is a bit interesting among Paul's writings because he normally talks about faith, hope, and love as three complementary qualities, but here he talks about faith and love as springing from hope. He says, I thank God for the faith and love among you because of the hope. Hope produced faith and love among the Colossians.

What might Paul mean by this? Well, he's talking about the hope of their inheritance, the hope of Jesus' return, the reunion of heaven and earth, and our enjoyment of all things beautiful in a new creation. That's our hope. Hope gives us the resources to love one another. Think about it this way.

Loving one another can be costly. It means entering into each other's pain. It means serving each other with our time. It means forgiving each other when it hurts. And hope gives us the resources to love one another because hope says, the Christian hope says, you're gonna inherit far more than you could ever give away in the Christian life.

You will never go bankrupt loving people because Jesus has promised you His inheritance, that you couldn't spend it all. Imagine if you found out today that some far distant relative you didn't know about wrote you in their will to inherit a billion dollars in a year's time. I guarantee that's gonna put a bounce in your step. You're not gonna worry about little issues that come up, little bills that you need to pay, missing a day of work or whatever else, because you're about to inherit a billion dollars. And that's a little bit like what the hope of the Christian life gives us.

It fills us with the resources. We're gonna inherit everything, the new heaven and new earth. We can't go bankrupt loving on others in this life. The Christian life is meant to be lived leaning forwards in anticipation of Jesus' return and the appearance of our blessed hope.

The fruit from the gospel is faith, hope, and love. Paul thanked God for this fruit among the Colossians. He was reassuring them that they had received the genuine gospel. The roots of Epaphras' message were apostolic and healthy. The Colossians genuinely grasped the message with faith.

They understood the grace of God, and as a result, there was fruit among them. Now that's wonderful, but how do they keep it up? How do they keep growing? Now that they've understood the gospel, should they move on to a spiritual formation program? How do they grow further?

Well, Paul answers this next under our final heading, growing in the gospel. So we looked at roots of the gospel. The roots in the Colossian church were healthy. They received the true gospel. Fruit from the gospel, the genuine gospel bears fruit when it's met with faith, and then growing in the gospel.

Paul has told the Colossians what he's thankful for, and now he's telling them what he's praying for in this last section. So in verse nine, we read, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will. Remember that the Colossians were being pestered by these false teachers saying, no, no, God's will is for you to move on to higher forms, to have more fullness.

You've gotta do this, this, this, and this. And Paul's saying, no. No. No. No.

No. We've been praying that you really know what God's will is. And Paul doesn't say, oh, we've been praying that you just start, like, observing these special Jewish days and start eating a Jewish diet. He doesn't pray for that. He prays that they might stay rooted in the gospel and that they keep enjoying the good news about Jesus.

Remember, the gospel is not just the ABCs we learn at the beginning of faith, it's the whole alphabet. And notice the links between Paul's prayer at the end of the passage and what he gave thanks for earlier. Paul said earlier in verses five to six that the gospel is bearing fruit and increasing. And then in verse 10, he prays that the Colossians might be bearing fruit. What is bearing fruit according to Colossians 1?

Well, it's the gospel. It's the good news about Jesus. This is the thing that is bearing fruit and creates fruit in our lives. A healthy church doesn't just start with roots in the gospel. A healthy church keeps growing in the gospel.

So if you wanna keep growing and being fruitful, don't add on to the gospel. Go deeper into the gospel. Don't add another focus to Jesus. Gaze on Jesus even more. This is how we keep growing in the Christian life.

This is why, after praying that the Colossians might know God's will, that is staying rooted in the gospel, when he says that they might grow in knowledge and wisdom, notice that comes up again in chapter two if you study it later on, it talks about knowledge and wisdom. He says those things are hidden in Christ. Jesus is the source of knowledge and wisdom. It all comes back to Christ. Paul, after saying that they might know God's will, that they stay rooted in the gospel, prays that they might keep bearing fruit in the gospel, and he tells them about the kind of life they should be living.

It's not a life of dietary laws and strict ascetic disciplines and so on and so forth. He talks about it in verses 10 to 12. I'm just gonna look at it in the Bible, so if you've got your Bible open, you can look with me. He says that he's praying that they might live a life that is fully pleasing to Jesus, and he points out four things. The first thing about living a pleasing life to Jesus is bearing fruit in every good work.

Bearing fruit in every good work. Now in Protestant churches, good works has a bit of a bad name because we often talk about being justified through faith alone, not by works. But works are a good thing. Ephesians 2 says that for by grace we've been saved through faith, it is not your own doing, not by works. But then a few verses later in verse 10, it says, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

So good works don't save us. They don't make us more right with God, but they are something that God has created and destined each of us to do. He wants us to bear fruit in our lives. So we should devote ourselves to good works. I love seeing people around here.

When I was living here in the caravan on-site, it was so encouraging for me to see different people would pop into the church. I saw Audrey coming along to do some weed killing without being asked. I saw Jordan and Leon coming along and mowing the lawns and all these different things going on. I thought, wow, this is so wonderful to see the way that you serve one another. That's good works here.

We can do good works in our families, in our workplaces, the good work of sharing the gospel with others. That's something that pleases God. A church that is fruitful has its roots in the gospel, keeps growing in the gospel, and it results in good works. The second thing it results in, Paul says in verse 10, is that they might be increasing in the knowledge of God. Increasing in the knowledge of God.

Now to me, that reminds me of when I was at Bible college and I did a subject called the knowledge of God, and we had big textbooks and things like that. And the knowledge of God isn't anti-intellectual. It's not less than intellectual, but it's certainly not simply a dry academic discipline. The knowledge of God is knowing God personally, intimately, and it's still intellectual. It's good to read.

It's good to learn, but we should be growing in knowing God. And what better way to know God than to keep staring at the gospel, which shows us the justice of God, the grace of God, and the love of God in Christ Jesus. So a church that keeps growing in the gospel will be people that are growing in the knowledge of God, knowing Him. And then in verse 11, he says, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for all endurance and patience. This is something else that becomes evident in the Christian life.

As people who keep staring at the gospel, the gospel declares to us that Jesus endured all that suffering. He went to the cross. He didn't turn back. It helps us to endure with patience all the difficulties that we go through in the Christian life. We will suffer.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians that we are destined for afflictions, but the fruit of the gospel in our lives is that we persevere with patience. We're not outside of God's will when we suffer. That is actually part of God's plan, to grow us as His people and to glorify His name. So we want to be people who are devoted to good works, growing in the knowledge of God, knowing Jesus, growing in patience and endurance. And then the last thing Paul says in verse 11, it says, with joy, giving thanks.

Now there's debates among scholars whether with joy is meant to modify patience with joy or giving thanks with joy. I think that it actually should be in the next verse, verse 12. So giving joyful thanks to the father, and I can explain that to you later if you want. So we're meant to be giving joyful thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. The fourth thing, as we reflect on the gospel, it tells us about Jesus' death for us and the inheritance that we're going to receive, and it should produce joy in us, excitement about the future.

We can give joyful thanks to the Father every single day because it's not based on our circumstances, it's based on our fixed future. Jesus is coming. There will be a day where all of your pain ceases, where suffering vanishes, where injustice is dealt with, and you are in the presence of God, healed and whole and full of joy, and you're looking at the face of Jesus Christ, the one who has loved you with an everlasting love. You can give joyful thanks to the Father that that is yours, that is reserved for you in heaven. It's fixed. These are the four things that Paul points out.

He wants us to stay rooted in the gospel, to keep growing in the gospel because it produces good works, it produces the knowledge of God, it produces endurance and thankfulness. That's a great summary of a life that pleases God. Notice that he introduces the section that way. He says, back in verse 10, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him. But hang on, doesn't that contradict the gospel?

Because doesn't the gospel tell us that God is pleased with us, that our approval comes through Christ alone, not any of our works? So why are we trying to live lives that are pleasing to Him? How does that fit together? Well, Paul explains why we want to live in a way that pleases God, and it's not because we need to qualify ourselves for God's love. Paul says towards the end of our passage, we have already been qualified by God.

It's not our good works that qualify us. Think about qualifying as an engineer. You work hard. You pass the exams. You're officially recognised.

You don't frame the certificate and retire. You frame the certificate, and you get to work. This doesn't make you more or less of an engineer. It doesn't change your previous qualifications. It's just what you do when you are qualified.

And in the Christian life, we don't qualify ourselves. God qualifies us. But then like a qualified engineer, we get to work. We get stuck into the business of pleasing Jesus. But we're not in the courtroom anymore, wondering whether we've done enough to tip the scales of justice that we will be justified.

The gavel's already come down at the cross. It is finished. You are righteous. There is no condemnation. Paul's using what we could think of as more of a family analogy.

Now we're at the dinner table with the Father. We're His beloved children. We're secure. We're not gonna be kicked out, but we wanna think about how do I please the Father? How do I please this wonderful Father that I have?

That's what he's talking about when he says he wants us to live in a way that pleases Jesus, pleases the Father. It's more of a family kind of picture than a courtroom picture. Does that make sense? Paul said in verse 12 that the Father has qualified you, but how? How did the Father qualify us?

Well, verse 14 says, God gave us our right standing through Jesus, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. It comes to us through Christ. You've already been brought into the kingdom of His beloved Son. You don't still need to qualify. You don't still need to pay for your sins.

God has qualified you through Jesus' death on the cross. God has accepted you because Jesus paid your debt for you. God has made you worthy by uniting you with His Son, Jesus. This is the gospel, the good news, and this is the true message we're to keep dwelling on and growing in. It's the gospel that Paul calls in verse six the grace of God in truth.

See, grace is getting what you do not deserve, and the gospel tells us about God's grace by telling us that Christ went through what we deserved for our sins to give us what we do not deserve, adoption as His sons and daughters, co-heirs with Christ who will share in His inheritance. And if you believe this gospel, if you trust Jesus, then God wants you to know today that the true gospel has taken root and is bearing fruit in you, so keep growing in it. The true gospel has taken root and is bearing fruit in you, Open House Church, so keep growing in it. If you will stay rooted in the gospel, if you will stay focused on Jesus, you will not waste your life. You will bear beautiful fruit that will bring joy to others and glory to God.

And if you've joined us today because you're interested in spirituality, then I'm here today to tell you, friend, you're not going to find it anywhere else but Jesus. He didn't only die to forgive you for your failures, He offers you His Holy Spirit to make you a new person, to grow you spiritually, to restore your human image to the glory you were made for. And if you're ready to trust in Him, I would love to speak to you after the service. Please come and make yourself known to me. I'd love to chat to you more.

The true gospel has taken root and is bearing fruit in you, Open House. So don't get distracted. Don't add on to Jesus. Keep growing in Him. Let me pray for us.

Father, we thank you for your great grace that is displayed in the gospel for us. We thank you that you have loved us with an everlasting love, and that you, Father, Son, and Spirit, planned to save us by taking on a human nature, Jesus, by suffering and dying in our place to give us what we do not deserve. We thank you that we are your children now. We thank you that we have your love, and we pray that this wonderful gospel would take deep roots in us, in our church, and that we might bear much fruit for the glory of your name. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.