Walk the Line

Colossians chapter one verses nine to fourteen. While you're flicking there, and before we dive into those verses, I just thought I'd give you a little bit of background to the book of Colossians. Colossians is known as a prison epistle because Paul is actually writing this letter from a prison in Rome. Now I imagine it wasn't very much like one of our prisons today. He probably didn't have a bed and three square meals.

It was probably very cold and chained to a Roman guard. And so Paul is in prison, and he's writing this letter to the church at Colossae, which was a town in modern day Turkey. And the interesting thing about Colossians is that Paul had never met this church. He'd never met them. A lot of the others like Ephesus and Thessalonica and all those, he had met, but he actually had never met those at Colossae.

Epaphras, a man named Epaphras, had actually come to Paul in Rome, and he had told him about this church that he had planted at Colossae. And from what is in the letter to Colossians, we can sort of deduce that there was some dangerous teaching that was starting to infiltrate the church at Colossae. There were starting to be people that were coming and saying to these people, yeah, you need Jesus, but you need something else. You need something more. You need to worship angels.

You need to keep the Jewish law. You need Jesus, but you'd also need this. And so we've actually been walking through the book of Colossians in our evening service at Bray Park, and we titled the series Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Because what Paul is saying in the letter to the church at Colossians is that Jesus is everything you need.

He's encouraging them to press on to full maturity in Christ. He's talking about their new life in Christ and that Christ is everything they need. And so in these few verses that we're gonna look at this morning, Paul is gonna talk about our new life in Christ. He's gonna talk about how we should live in this world in light of Christ, and he's gonna say that Christ is enough. And he's gonna use this language of walking.

And is there any Johnny Cash fans in the room? I am. I definitely am. Yeah. There's a couple, which is good.

Yes. That's good. He is a really great singer songwriter. And probably aside from "Ring of Fire", "Walk the Line" is probably his most well known song. I'm not gonna sing it because that would not go well.

You would all leave. But Paul this morning, he's gonna talk to us about how do we walk the line. In light of Jesus Christ, in light of who He is and what He has done, how now should we live? Now if you're not a Christian, you're so welcome here. I know that you're so welcome to be here.

You might think that all that being a Christian is is walking the line. You might think it's doing the right things, going to the right places, you know, saying the right things, behaving in a certain way. And Paul is gonna show us that the good news of Christianity is far greater than that. He's gonna show us that it's not about how you walk the line, but it's understanding that someone walked the line for you. And that, my friends, changes everything.

So we're just gonna look at these first few verses, and we're gonna start in verse nine. And it says this from the ESV, so it might be a little bit different to what's on the screen or in your Bibles. But it says this in the ESV: "And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you." Now I just wanna stop there, if that's alright. I just wanna say, it would have been so easy for Paul to become bitter with God.

I mean, he is an apostle of God. He has been tasked with preaching the gospel, with planting churches, and he's doing a lot of good work. And here he is, stuck in prison. It would have been so easy for him to just say, God, what are you doing? I have so much work to do.

There's so much to be done. There's churches to be planted. Why am I locked up in this cell? It would've been really easy for him to become bitter with God. That's not what we see from Paul.

You know, in verse three, he says, we always thank God. Now in verse nine, he's saying, we always pray for you. This is a man that's not overflowing with bitterness. He's overflowing with prayer and with thanksgiving. And so I wanna ask the question this morning.

How can Paul be so steadfast in the face of trial? How can Paul overflow with thanksgiving and not bitterness? Because, you know, I'm not sure what you might be facing this morning. You might be facing an illness or relational difficulties or financial difficulties. And so I think it's important that we ask this question.

How could Paul be so steadfast in the face of his trial? And I believe that the reason Paul could be so steadfast was because he had a resolute trust in the goodness and the sovereignty of God. He had a resolute trust in the goodness and the sovereignty of God. In other words, he trusted that he was sitting in that prison not for his harm, but for his good, for others' good, and for God's glory. And, you know, we have the advantage to sort of look back over what happened.

And if we look at what happened while Paul was in prison, he wrote four letters of the Bible. He wrote Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon. He received people for two years, it says in Acts 28, preaching the kingdom of God, teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus. The gospel went out from that prison. You know, we read in Philippians that the Roman guard was converted.

We read that some of Caesar's own household was converted. Onesimus was converted. God used Paul's time in prison mightily. And I think that shows us, friends, that Paul was not imprisoned by some random event. He was in there by the sovereign direction of God.

And you see, Paul, knowing that, that enabled him to look beyond his circumstances and see God's navigation. It enabled him to look beyond what was happening to him and see what God was doing through him. Friends, there's a big difference between looking at what is just happening to us and what God is doing through us. And you see, I think the reason that we too can have a steadfastness in the face of trial is by trusting in the goodness and the sovereignty of God. And so friend, you might be going through something right now, and maybe you need to ask yourself, is there a glad submission in me to the sovereign will of God?

Is there a trust in me in the goodness of God? Do I believe that what I'm experiencing is ultimately for my good? Do I trust God? Now, I'm not saying that we can't wrestle with God. I'm not saying that we can't pray to God and ask for Him to change things.

I mean, that's what Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. He said, Father, remove this cup from me. But I am saying that like Jesus and Paul, we also have to get to that point where we say, not my will, but yours be done. And so Paul, I believe in these early few verses, he gives us this beautiful picture of trust in the sovereignty and the goodness of God. And he's overflowing with prayer for the Colossians.

And what does he pray for them? Because he prays for a couple of specific things for the Colossians. Here he is languishing in this prison. He's never met them, and we're about to learn what he's going to pray for them. And we'll read the rest of verse nine, and it says this: "We've not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding."

Paul asked God. He says, I'm praying that you would be filled with knowledge of God's will. Now, I want you to notice there that Paul is asking God to fill them up, which indicates that they're not already full. You know, if you have a full tank of petrol, you don't fill it up. You don't take it down to the petrol station and fill it up because it's already full. And so Paul is saying, be filled.

And what I think that means is that following Jesus, following Christ is a process of being filled with increasing knowledge of God, with increasing experience of God. In other words, following Jesus is not a one time filling. It's not a pray the prayer or sign the card. It is a lifetime of being filled. It is a lifetime of pursuing Christ, of growing in your knowledge of Him, of growing in your relationship with Him.

Now, the good news of the gospel is that because of Christ, we're one hundred per cent justified before God. But He is growing us over time. He is sanctifying us over time. You know, think about it this way. Parents, when you have children, when you brought them home, they instantly, even when they're born, they instantly became your child.

You loved them. They didn't have to earn their way into your family. They were just a member of your family. But you see, when you take them home, you feed them, you read to them, you enrol them in school, you teach them life lessons. And you do all of these things because you love them, because you want them to grow into fully formed, fully mature adults. But you see, when they're growing and when they're learning and they make a mistake, you don't kick them out of the family, do you?

I mean, when they're walking and they're learning to walk and they stumble and fall over, you don't go, oh, what are you doing? You know, we're a family of walkers and you fell over, you're out of the family. I mean, you don't do that. What do you do? You pick them up.

You encourage them, and you say, keep walking. Keep walking. You don't stop loving them. And when they fall, they don't stop being your child. And you see, I think this is a really powerful picture of our relationship with God.

Because you see, friends, when we trust in Christ, we become right now and forever a child of God. We were brought in by Christ to the family of God. We didn't earn our way in. We didn't bring ourselves in. Because of Christ, we were made a member of the family of God.

And even as we stumble and fall about, God picks us up and He says, keep walking, my child. Keep walking. And see, this is a really beautiful and powerful picture. And what it means is that being a Christian, following Christ, is the process of becoming who you already are. You are already right now a child of God.

So now you can live as a child of God. You're right now a member of God's family. And this is what Paul says next. Look at verse 10. "So as to walk..." So we're filled with knowledge of God.

We're filled with knowing who Christ is, knowing our position in Christ so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. Now here's that language of walking. Paul is saying, I want you to be filled with the knowledge of God. I want you to be filled with the knowledge of who Christ is because the more you know God, the more you will walk in a way that is pleasing to Him. In other words, I'd say it this way.

True knowledge of God leads to transformation of our hearts and lives. Knowledge of God is not just about information. Knowledge of God is about transformation. Because as we fill our hearts and minds with knowledge of Christ, knowledge of who we are in Christ, of who Christ is, transformed lives naturally flow out of that. They naturally flow out of that.

You know, Tim Keller, a Presbyterian pastor that many of you might have heard of or read his books, he says that when he married his wife, Kathy, he got to know her so well. He got to know her likes, her dislikes, how she responded, how she acted, so that when he was in certain situations and events, he would not only think how he would respond to that event, he would think about how his wife would respond to that event because he knew her so well. And I think there's a parallel because knowledge of her life, her likes, her dislikes transformed the way that Tim Keller thought and lived. And I think that's what Paul is saying here. When we have a foundational, a deep knowledge of who Christ is, that changes the way we think and we live.

Now notice Paul, he didn't say there that transformed lives lead to knowledge of God. He says knowledge of God will lead you to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. In other words, knowing God begins with faith in Christ, not transformed lives. You know, the reason I think so many Christians often burn out or have no intimacy with God, have very little desire to know God, is because their starting point to know God is a transformed life. It's good works.

You know, I've spoken to so many young adults over the years who've said to me, yeah, you know, I'll start coming back to church soon. There's just a few things I've gotta sort out in my life first. And I just think, no. You don't understand. You don't understand the radical nature of the gospel.

You don't start by fixing yourself. Christ will transform your life. See, the gospel, the good news, it starts with who God is and what God has done. It doesn't start with what we can do and what we have done. And only the gospel really gives us the power to grow.

It really only gives us the power to change. You know, I think about it a little bit in terms of a car. If you buy a car, no matter how expensive that car is, no matter how fast that car is, no matter how new that car is, if you don't fill it with petrol, if you don't fill that up with petrol, it's not gonna go anywhere. You can threaten it. You can kick the tyres.

You can, I don't know, yell at it or try and push it. You might move it a little bit, but if you don't fill it with petrol, it's not gonna go anywhere. Friends, what I'm saying is that the gospel is the petrol that fills our tanks and that allows us to pursue Christ and to be transformed into His image. And it's only the gospel. It's seeing a God that dies in our place for our sins.

That is what warms our hearts, affection, and attention towards God, and that is what leads to transformed lives. It's the gospel that enables us to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to bear fruit in every good work. It's not the way that we walk that makes us worthy, but it's that we are made worthy, so now we can walk towards Christ. And our lives, when we understand who we are in Christ, begin to display the fact that we have been made worthy, that we have been made a child of God. And so what this means practically, I guess, is that the more we understand the grace of God in Christ, the more our lives will be transformed into His image.

So when we see the selflessness of Christ, we will naturally become more selfless. When we see the radical forgiveness of Christ, we will become more forgiving towards others. When we see the generosity of God towards us, we naturally become generous towards others. When we see the sacrifice of Christ, the more we will more naturally lay down our lives for the cause of the gospel. You know, I guess a really good illustration of this point is probably you might have heard it before, but has anyone seen the movie, read the book, been to the play Les Miserables?

Les Miserables? I can't really say it. So I'll just say Les Mis. That's easier. But this is a, I saw, I got gypped because I went to see it at the movies and nobody told me that the whole movie was singing.

So that was a little disappointing for me, but it was still alright. I was the kid, you know, when you watch the Disney movies when you're younger and you fast forward through the songs, but that's just me. You know, this story, Les Mis, it begins with Jean Valjean who is released after nineteen years on the chain gang. He's been locked up. And when he gets out of prison, he's on the streets.

He has no place to go. And then one night, he ends up at this church, and the bishop of the church, he takes him in and he gives him a meal, he gives him a place to stay, and just a place to sleep for the night. But see, in the middle of the night, Valjean, he steals some silver from the church, some really expensive silver. He gets up, he takes it, and he flees. But it's not too long down the road, and the police, they catch Valjean, and they bring him back to the church, and they say to this bishop, they say, we caught him.

He's got your silver. Is this your silver? Has this man stolen this from you? And the police are expecting the bishop to say, yes. He stole our silver.

Give it back. And Valjean is gonna be thrown back into the chain gang. But you see the bishop, he says, no. I gave that silver to him. He didn't steal it.

I gave it to him as a gift. And then, not only does he let Valjean off, he says, oh, Jean Valjean, you forgot something. He goes and he gets the most expensive piece of silver that the church owns. He says, Valjean, you forgot this. I gave this to you.

Here you go, my friend. Take that with you. Friends, Valjean deserved judgment and condemnation, and he received grace. Not just grace, but an over the top abundant gift of grace. And do you know what this does to Valjean?

It completely transforms him. He resolves to be a man from then on marked by that same grace that he received. He resolves to extend that grace to others. He is a changed man, and his life begins to reflect the grace that he has received. And you see, friends, this is what happens when we move from just being religious to grasping the immense grace that God has lavished upon us by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to absorb our penalty, to absorb our wrath, and to give us a free gift of righteousness, a free gift of pardon, and a free gift of eternal life.

And so our lives as Christians should be absolutely turned upside down by grace. Now one of my friends, he said this to me once, and I thought it was quite profound. He said, the best sign that we've encountered God's grace is not that we become more strict, but that we become more gracious. And this is what Paul is saying to us this morning. He's saying don't start with yourself.

Start with Christ. Start with what God has done, and then that will lead you to walk in the manner worthy of the Lord, to bear fruit in every good work. And this is what he says again in verse 11. Look at what he says. This is awesome.

Verse 11: "May you be strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy." Again, where do we get the power to know God? Where do we get the power to live a life that points to Christ? His might.

It doesn't say your might. It doesn't say live according to your might. It says live according to His might. Again, the power that we need to live a transformed life is not ours. It's God's.

And if we're sitting here this morning and we have a relationship with God and we know Christ, it's not because of how awesome we are. It's because of how good and gracious God is. And He lavished His grace, undeserving, upon us. And we're strengthened by His might, not our own. So the question that I think we need to be asking ourselves this morning is are we availing ourselves of God's strength?

Are our lives marked by reliance on God's strength? His might? Because you know that phrase in the Greek, may you be strengthened, it's actually in the present tense, which means every day continually. May you continually be strengthened.

And you know what that means? It means every day and in every circumstance, just like with Timmy in Beijing, which was just an amazing story to hear, every day, God's might, God's strength, God's power is available to us. There is no addiction God's power cannot break. There is no sin that God's power cannot defeat. There is no task we are called to that God cannot fulfil.

There is no fruit we are called to bear that God cannot produce. There is no rebellious child that God cannot restore. There is no broken marriage that God's power cannot heal. There's no physical disease that God cannot heal. Friends, God's strength, His might is available to us.

And the question that I know I need to ask myself, and I think we need to ask ourselves is are we availing ourselves of it? Are we living in a place of reliance on our strength or God's strength? And you know what the great thing about this is? God is able and God does change our situations and our circumstances. But even when He doesn't, even when He doesn't, He still provides us with the strength to endure them because He is sufficient.

Look at the rest of verse 10. It says this: "for all endurance and patience with joy." We're strengthened for all endurance and patience with joy. Now the reason I wanna point this out is because there's a danger, I think, if we just say, God can change the circumstances. God can do it, and I believe He can.

But it's a different question to ask, I think, if God will. Because, you know, let's be honest. A lot of the time, God doesn't change our circumstances. God doesn't change our situations. You know?

Sometimes we stay sick. Sometimes we don't overcome addiction. Sometimes we lose a loved one. Sometimes there might be no progress in a situation that we're praying about. And it's not that God's power is not sufficient.

It's not that God does not care. I think what Paul is saying to us here is that it's God's way of seeing if He is enough for us, if He is sufficient for us. You know, God in His infinite wisdom and in His infinite goodness He knows that sometimes deliverance in the midst of a hard situation is not the best thing for us. But maybe learning to trust God in the midst of that situation is. Now I've heard a saying mostly from our Pentecostal brothers and sisters, and it's quite cool.

It says, if God hasn't opened a door for you yet, then praise Him in the hallway. And that's kinda cool because if God doesn't open a door, if God doesn't deliver us out of that situation or circumstance where then we're in, then He is still sufficient for us even in the hallway. He is still enough. We can still say, blessed be the name of the Lord. We can still say, God is good.

Because God's will for us is not that we never get sick or that we never have trouble in this life. God's will for us is that we would know Him and love Him. And that might be in a season of pain and trial, or it might be in a season of plenty and abundance. But the point is, it's God's strength that enables us to endure. It's God's strength that enables us to lead transformed lives, whether the door opens or whether we stay in the hallway.

Because God is good. God is wise. And He knows. He is trustworthy. And the reason I believe that we can endure is because God is good and because what Paul says in the next verse is because our hope is not in this earth. We have a future inheritance.

Our hope is in what God has waiting for us. Look at verse 12: "We can endure with all patience and joy giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light." Paul's saying, we can have the strength to endure in this life as we look to our future inheritance. And, you know, Paul's using language here that is normally reserved for, or that has normally been reserved for Israel under the old covenant: inheritance and saints and light, all of these, quite big Old Testament terms.

And what he's doing is he's now applying them to us, to those who are in Christ in the new covenant. He said because of Christ, we now inherit the promises of God. And Paul says, give thanks to the Father for this inheritance. Praise Him. Why?

Because look at that verse again. It's the Father who qualifies us to receive it. "Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you." We don't qualify ourselves to receive this inheritance. Again, Paul is driving home the fact that it is Christ that qualifies you.

He is what qualifies you to share in this inheritance. Now, think about it this way. Imagine that you showed up for the one hundred metre sprint trials for the Olympics. And you got there, you went to the registration table and you said, alright, I'm here to run in a one hundred metres. I wanna go to the Olympics and be in the finals.

And they say, yep. Alright. What's your name? And you say, Adam Shoemaker. They look and they say, oh, yeah.

You've qualified faster, sir. You go, what? I've been done. What do you mean? How can I have been qualified?

I haven't run. And they said, well, Usain Bolt showed up earlier and he ran for you. He's forfeiting his spot and he ran in the race for you. He qualified you. You're like, ah, awesome.

This is cool. Then you go to the Olympics and you get there and you go to the registration table again and you say, well, I'm in the one hundred metre final. I'd like to run. And they said, oh, no, sir. You're already registered.

Usain Bolt is gonna run in the final for you. And then Usain Bolt runs the final. He wins the one hundred metres and you win the gold medal. You haven't done anything, but Usain Bolt has qualified you. He has earned you the gold medal.

Friends, what Paul is saying here is that Christ has qualified us. And this is far better than Usain Bolt qualifying us for the Olympics. This is the Son of God coming down into human history, dying in our place for our sin, and He has qualified us before the Father. We're standing on the dais with a gold medal around our neck because of nothing that we have done but because of Christ. And this is the amazing truth that Paul is telling us here.

You've been qualified by Christ. But not only that, it gets even better. Look at verse 13: "Not only has He qualified us, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." We've been delivered.

We've been transferred. And again, Paul is using language from the Old Testament here: deliverance and redemption. It comes from the story of the Exodus where the Israelites were delivered from Egypt and from their slave masters. And what Paul is saying to us is that just as God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt, just as He delivered His people from slavery in Egypt, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness. He has delivered us from the penalty of our sin.

And this is an amazing truth. The Bible's pretty clear that there are two spiritual realms and that all of mankind is in one or the other. There are those who know Christ and are in the kingdom of God, and there are those who don't know Christ. And what the Bible says is their eyes have been blinded and they're in the realm, the kingdom of darkness. And they're spiritually dead, eyes blind.

And this is why when Nicodemus comes to Jesus and he says, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus says, you must be born again. And this is why when Jesus came, it says, He came as a light. He came as a light to expose the darkness, to shine into the darkness, to unblind blind eyes. I don't know if that's a word, but to reveal, to open blind eyes.

And so what Paul is saying is that if you're in Christ, you have been delivered from darkness. You have been transferred into the kingdom of God. And I wanna just, as I land, I just wanna illustrate it this way with my very attractive Tupperware containers. That's weird, isn't it? You get a guest preacher and he brings Tupperware containers.

But I just, I think this is a helpful way for people who are maybe more visual. I did this at youth once, and I know it was helpful for them because their attention span is thirty seconds, so you gotta do object lessons and things like that. But let's imagine that that's you. You're looking pretty good today. That's you.

The Bible would say that when we are born, that we are born in sin. That all of mankind, we are part of this race that has rebelled against God, that we have bent away our minds, our hearts, our volition. It's all bent away from God. We don't seek God. There is no one that seeks God.

None are righteous, not even one. The Bible says that we are all born in sin. And I mean, I could give you examples and try to prove that. I don't think I have to. I mean, look around at the world we live in.

There's evidence of it everywhere that we are separated from God. So the Bible says that we are born in sin, which means that we are a part of the kingdom of darkness. Our eyes have been blinded. We are blinded by the god of this age. Second Corinthians says, we can't see the glory of God.

We're in the kingdom of darkness. I'll lift that up so people can see. But see, what the Bible teaches us is that, like I said before, Christ comes as a light. He comes as a light into the darkness to expose the darkness. He opens, like I said, blind eyes.

He is the revelation of the glory of God. And then Christ, the Son of God, He goes to the cross, and He dies in our place for our sins, is buried, rises again, and conquers Satan, sin and death. And so for all that trust in Him, their wrath towards their sin is absorbed and removed. All those who trust in Christ have their sin washed away by His blood. And what the Bible says is that in that moment, when we place our trust in Christ, is that we are, in a sense, we are in Christ.

We have union with Christ. We become one with Christ. We're given the Holy Spirit to live and to indwell, and we are in Christ. And what that means, what Paul is saying here, is that we are delivered from sin. We are delivered from the domain of darkness.

And then not only that, but we are transferred. If we're in Christ, we are transferred into the kingdom of God. Paul is saying to us this morning, friends, that is where you are. You have been qualified. You have been delivered.

You have been transferred. Friends, this does not remain. You're in there, and who's gonna break you out of there? You're in Christ. You've been transferred into the kingdom of God.

And so what I think Paul is saying to us this morning is that, yes, walk the line, bear fruit, walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. But he's not saying, walk in a manner worthy of the Lord so that you can get in there. He's saying, friends, Christ has brought you in there, so now you can walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. He's not saying bear fruit so that you can get in there. He's saying, Christ has brought you in there, so now you can bear fruit.

He's not saying increase in the knowledge of God so you can get in there. He's saying Christ has brought you in there, so now you can increase in the knowledge of God. The good news of Christianity, friends, is not walk the line so that you can be transferred into the kingdom of God. Radical, life changing message of Christianity, of the gospel, is that Christ has walked the line for you. You are delivered.

You are transferred. You are qualified. You have redemption. You have the forgiveness of sins. So now we can know God.

We can walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. We can bear fruit. And even as we stumble about like children, God will pick us up and say, keep walking, son. Keep walking, my daughter. Because you are right now and forever a child of God, present right now in My kingdom.

Friends, this is a life changing truth. When you wrap your mind around the fact that right now you are a child of God, that right now you've been transferred, this will change the way that you walk, that you live, and all the glory, all the praise, all the honour goes to Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. And this is the message of Colossians over and over again, that Christ is enough. That Jesus plus nothing equals everything.