We honor you and glorify you.
We pray, Father, that the truth of your
word would be communicated in such a way
that it would make a lasting impact on
us.
Father, we're not just here for more information.
Some of us have heard thousands of messages
or preached thousands of messages.
We want your truth and the anointed power
and life of your spirit and hearts that
are ready to receive.
Speak to us, O God.
Our ears and hearts are open.
Help us to be doers of your word
and not hearers only.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians,
the first chapter.
I think I'm going to switch to the
other mic, OK?
Also, I just look back thinking that I
would drink some water and realize that the
only water up here looks more like anointing
oil.
So if there's any water in the house,
that would be great.
Colossians, the first chapter.
Sometimes God brings things up in your heart
and mind that you're totally familiar with, that
you can quote the Scriptures on in your
sleep practically.
And yet, he brings them to you with
a certain force in reality because he wants
you to take hold of these things because
he's ready to breathe life into a certain
truth in his word.
I was praying before the meeting, and I
was thinking about how, according to the word,
we're to love the word of God, and
according to the word, we're to love God
with all of our heart and soul, and
according to the word, we're to love our
neighbors, ourself, and according to the word, we're
to love the lost, and on and on.
How do you actually do this?
And how do you actually love what's good
and hate what's evil?
How do you actually walk in the reality
of these things?
How can you be everything that God is
calling you to be and do everything that
God is calling you to do?
Most of us, the answer is to try
even harder, to work at it even more,
and certainly, we are called to work together
with God.
But there's a certain truth I believe the
Holy Spirit wants us to take hold of
tonight, so we're gonna be looking at a
good amount of Scripture.
But starting in Colossians, the first chapter, Paul's
writing in verse 24, it's an extraordinary chapter.
If you're not well familiar with it, read
it through later tonight through the whole chapter.
But he says in verse 24, now I
rejoice in what was suffered for you and
fill up in my flesh what is still
lacking in regard to Messiah's afflictions for the
sake of his body, which is the church.
I become its servant by the commission God
gave me to present to you the word
of God in its fullness, the mystery that
has been kept hidden for ages and generations,
but is now disclosed to the saints.
Before we read further, I want you to
realize these are big words.
This is a big thing.
Something that has been hidden from all the
previous generations.
Something new, something distinct.
A new insight, a new opening up of
the word, a new revelation, and it's big.
And now he's reiterating it.
He's making it known.
He speaks of the mystery that has been
kept hidden for ages and generations, but is
now disclosed to the saints.
To them, God has chosen to make known
among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this
mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope
of glory.
We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with
all wisdom, so that we may present everyone
perfect in Christ.
To this end, I labor, struggling with all
his energy, which so powerfully works in me.
Thanks, man.
Thanks, appreciate that.
Give me one second, please.
For those of you who are desperately thirsty,
this is a picture of American waste.
This is a picture of America and the
rest of the world.
Then I have two bottles up here and
you have none.
All right, we're gonna try again, see if
we got the sound working a little better
here.
Colossians 1, there's no question that Paul is
a hard worker for Jesus.
There's no question that he sacrificed.
There's no question that he pushed himself to
the limit.
And here in this very chapter, he plainly
speaks about it.
And he speaks about here in the end
of this chapter, struggling, but he speaks of
struggling with all of the energy of Jesus,
which so powerfully works in him.
So he's speaking of laboring and working, but
then he speaks of God's energy, God's power
working within him.
And then says the great mystery, the great
revelation, the incredible thing is this revelation of
Jesus the Messiah in us.
What's he talking about?
What does it actually mean?
What makes us different from every different religious
group in the entire world?
What makes us different?
Is it just that we have the true
message, that we have the truth and no
one else has the truth?
Or is there something different in our experience
of God?
Is it just abstract theory?
One believes this, one believes this.
We believe the right things.
Or is there something more?
I want you to understand the something more
tonight.
If you can take hold of this, this
is a key, a foundational key to living
a victorious, overcoming, fruit-bearing, effective, joy-filled
life that brings blessing and light wherever it
goes.
It's a key to really living a transformed
life that transforms the lives of others.
And it's simple and it's foundational.
But it's one of the key revelations in
the new covenant.
I want to show you something going back
into the Old Testament.
Look with me in Jeremiah, the 31st chapter.
I know this is familiar ground for some,
but I want to look at the Scriptures.
Jeremiah chapter 31, beginning in verse 31.
"'The time is coming,' declares the Lord, "'when
I will make a new covenant "'with the
house of Israel and with the house of
Judah.
"'It will not be like the covenant "'I
made with their forefathers "'when I took them
by the hand to lead them out of
Egypt, "'because they broke my covenant, "'though I
was a husband to them,' declares the Lord."
There was nothing wrong with the covenant.
There was something wrong with the people.
There was nothing faulty in the laws of
God.
The laws of God are perfect.
His statutes are pure.
Everything in the law was good.
Everything reflected divine nature.
There was nothing faulty in the law itself.
There's nothing faulty in the 10 commandments and
the rest of the covenant that God gave.
The problem is the weakness of human nature.
The problem is God gives a command.
We affirm this is a good command.
We agree with it.
We want to do it.
We want to live by it.
And we fall short time and time and
time again.
The problem is the people, not the covenant.
So God says, I'm going to make a
new covenant.
Verse 33, "'This is the covenant I'll make
with the house of Israel "'after that time,'
declares the Lord.
"'I will put my law in their hearts
and their minds "'and write it on their
hearts.
"'I will be their God and they will
be my people.
"'No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
"'a man his brother, saying, "'Know the Lord
because they will all know me "'from the
least of them to the greatest,' declares the
Lord.
"'For I'll forgive their wickedness "'and will remember
their sins no more.'" And this is the
age that we're in, the age of the
new covenant, seeing the realization of this whole
passage.
What does God say?
He said, I'm going to put my laws
on the inside of you.
I'm going to write it in your hearts
so that these things will become automatic to
you.
In other words, your very nature itself will
be transformed and changed.
To say that the law is written in
your heart does not mean that you break
it freely because it's not on the outside
anymore.
It means it's natural to keep it.
If the law is in your heart and
you're driving down the street, talk about natural
law, earthly law for a minute.
If you're in a zone that's a 40
-mile-an-hour zone and you go driving
at 90 miles an hour and the policeman
pulls you over and says, didn't you see
the signs?
You say, I don't need to look at
the signs.
The law is written in my heart.
Now, if the law is written in your
heart, then you keep the speed limit.
It's an automatic thing.
Instead of being on the outside of you,
it's on the inside.
Look at Ezekiel chapter 36.
Ezekiel 36.
Look at what God promises there in terms
of new covenant reality.
And this ultimately will be fulfilled in front
of our eyes as God brings the Jewish
people back from around the world, not holy,
still in their sin according to this.
And then in the land, as we see
now, sprinkles clean water on them.
That's when the change will come.
Verse 24, for I'll take you out of
the nations.
I'll gather you from all the countries and
will bring you back into your own land.
I will sprinkle clean water on you and
you'll be clean.
I'll cleanse you from all your impurities, from
all your idols.
I will give you a new heart and
put a new spirit in you.
I will remove from you your heart of
stone and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put my spirit in you
and move you to follow my decrees and
be careful to keep my laws.
Verse 29, I will save you from all
your uncleanness.
God himself says he is going to do
it.
What we have experienced is going to be
experienced by Jewish people in a massive way
at the end of the age.
And a lot of you can relate to
this.
When you got saved, something supernatural happened.
How many of you had some kind of
bondage, some kind of addiction, some kind of
habit, some kind of lifestyle that enslaved you
before you were saved?
Raise your hand.
How many of you tried to get free
from that and were never successful at breaking
free in a lasting way before you were
saved?
For those listening on tape, a good half
or more of the hands went up to
the first question and over half of those
went up for the second question.
How many of you, when you got saved,
found a supernatural power to break free from
that?
Wonderfully so.
In fact, how many of you found that
your desires had changed?
Hands going up all over the place.
That you no longer wanted to do the
thing.
It used to be your life.
This used to be what you lived for,
what you dreamed about.
Everything was caught up in this.
You were addicted to it.
You lived for it.
You were enslaved by it.
It was everything to you.
And then you come to meet Jesus and
something happens and you're changed.
And the things that you used to love
to do, for some, I know there was
a battle, but for so many, you just
got free.
The thing broke off of you.
You didn't desire it anymore.
You didn't want it anymore.
You wanted God.
You wanted to read the word.
People that knew you thought, what in the
world happened to you?
Instead of using profanity and living a wicked
life and doing all these lewd and lustful
things, you know, you're sitting there at lunch,
reading the Bible.
They're like, what?
Did something happen to you, man?
Are you sick in the head?
I mean, it seems too far.
They praise the Lord.
I was born again.
It's like, this is trouble, man.
Call the doctor.
Because it seems so out there.
But something actually happened.
I remember hearing one of the simplest of
stories when I was first saved.
But there was a guy that had been
a real foul sinner with a foul mouth
that got wonderfully saved, but his co-workers
didn't believe it until one day he was
at work and doing construction work and he
hit his thumb with a hammer, smashed his
thumb and yelled, hallelujah.
And they thought, this is real.
This is real.
This is God.
Something happened to this man.
When they just saw the thing that shot
out of his heart, it was not profanity
or anger, but hallelujah, crying out to God
and praising God.
Something actually happened.
I wonder though, does it stop?
I wonder, is that just the euphoria of
the moment, the amazing honeymoon time when, wow,
Jesus is everything to me and he's all
I care about.
All I want to do is live for
him.
And then real life sets in and it's
a battle.
It's hard to pray.
Who wants to fast in the Bible?
Sometimes seems boring and I don't have a
burden for the loss.
I want to have a burden for the
loss, but I don't.
And I want to be holy, but I
like my sin.
Is that the way it is?
And you just have to try and strive
and fight and battle?
Maybe it's somewhere in between.
I mean, how does this thing actually work?
And what's so big about this revelation of
Christ in you, the hope of glory?
I mean, what's Paul actually talking about?
I don't pretend to open up all of
it tonight.
All of what Paul was seeing and speaking
of, but there's some fundamental things I believe
God wants us to take hold of.
I had read the story of John Lake,
John G.
Lake used as an apostle to South Africa
about 100 years ago, somewhere around 1907 to
1912, five extraordinary years there.
Truth that remains to this day.
Extraordinary ministry of healing and miracles.
And he was one that would sit with
religious leaders from other religions and talk openly
and find out what powers there were in
different religious expressions.
And even visited seances to expose them and
even saw the power of witch doctors and
exposed the power.
I mean, he was really out there in
spiritual things and totally lifting up Jesus.
And it so happened that where he was
in South Africa, that workers had come in
from different nations.
And because of that, there were Hindus, there
were people of other religious backgrounds.
There was a Jewish community.
And he thought, why don't we gather all
of these leaders together?
In fact, the Jewish leader, the rabbi, one
day became the chief rabbi.