Now, will you kindly turn in the scriptures
to Colossians chapter 1, and I would like
to read verses 3 to 8, words which
are going to form the basis of our
meditation this morning.
Mr. MacLeod took us through the initial words,
last Lord's Day morning, and we come now
to the beginning of the unburdening of the
message of this wonderful letter of Paul to
the Colossian Christians.
I'm going to read verses 3 to 8
in the New International Version.
We always thank God, the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,
because we have heard of your faith in
Christ Jesus and of the love you have
for all the saints.
The faith and love that spring from the
hope that is stored up for you in
heaven and that you have already heard about
in the word of truth, the gospel that
has come to you all over the world.
This gospel is producing fruit and growing, just
as it has been doing among you since
the day you heard it and understood God's
grace in all its truth.
You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow
servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ
and on our behalf, and who also told
us of your love in the Spirit.
Now, as we've indicated, Mr. MacLeod dealt with
the greeting and the salutation, which is in
itself a very precious nugget.
There in verses 1 and 2.
And this morning we come to this note
of praise and thanksgiving.
May the Lord enable us in our hearts
to continue to praise him as we have
sought to do in our hymns this morning
and as the apostle here expresses his gladness
because of what God had done in his
power and by his grace in this ancient
scene of Colossae.
Now, the first thing I would like you
to notice is the great news that gladdened
the hearts of these two prisoners.
You will remember, as we have indicated previously,
that Paul and Timothy were prisoners when they
received the news that occasioned the writing of
this epistle.
True, they may have been in a kind
of hired house, or, at any rate, they
must have had some measure of liberty to
entertain friends there and were allowed to write.
But the fact is, nevertheless, they were in
prison.
Probably Paul's hands as well as his feet
were in chains.
It is, therefore, something that takes us by
surprise that they should begin writing this letter
with such joy, with a note of gratitude
to God.
We always thank God.
These are the very first words.
We always thank God.
Now, the question is, what is it that
occasions such gratitude from such people in such
circumstances?
Is it that someone has brought news that
the accusations leveled against them, the accusations that
have brought them into prison, have been dropped?
No, it's not that.
Is it that their enemies have died?
No, indeed, it isn't that.
In fact, it has nothing whatsoever to do
with themselves.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with their
state, their condition in prison, nor even their
prospects before the law.
They've heard the good news that the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ was preached in
Colossae, over a hundred miles away, much more
than that, among a people that Paul had
never seen in the flesh, and that there
the same gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ
had resulted in many men and women coming
to know God in his Son and by
his Spirit, with the result that a little
church was planted there, and they are showing
evidence of being a genuinely redeemed and regenerate
people of God.
Now, that's what made them rejoice.
My friend, can I pose the question, would
that make you rejoice?
What are the things that make you glad?
What are the things that make you sing?
What are the things that make us truly
grateful before God?
It's a most revealing question, if you're honest
with yourself.
What I want to get from myself and
perhaps from you this morning is this, the
acknowledgement that either we are or we are
not on the same spiritual wavelength as these
two men, who were less concerned with their
own physical and material well-being than they
were with this one thing, the spread of
the gospel.
And if men and women are coming to
Christ in Colossae, distant Colossae, though they've never
seen them in the flesh, they're glad, and
not only are they glad, they must there
and then in prison, not once, not twice,
but whenever they think of them, they must
praise and bless God, because His gospel got
there and served these distant folk in Colossae.
Now then, we're going to deal at some
length this morning with the cause of their
rejoicing, because Paul doesn't leave it at that.
It isn't just that a mission or a
campaign or whatever you'd like to call it,
has been taking place in Colossae.
It isn't just that people have been urged
to come to Christ or Christ, or even
that they've professed to come to Christ.
What is really making Paul and Timothy glad
is this.
There is evidence that those who have responded
to the gospel are genuine.
And he mentions three features of the genuine
Christian faith, of the genuine Christian experience.
And I would like you to look at
them, because they come up over and over
again in the Apostle Paul and indeed in
other writers in the New Testament.
There's a triad here.
First of all, Paul and Timothy rejoiced on
account of the emergence of faith in the
Colossians, because we have heard of your faith
in Christ Jesus.
Now this is not everything, but it is
something.
It doesn't comprise everything that took place in
Colossae, but it is the first thing.
We rejoice this, Paul, because we've heard of
your faith in Christ Jesus.
You see, faith is basic to everything else.
Without faith, says the writer of the epistle
to the Hebrews, we cannot please God.
Now you take that seriously, and it's stunning,
but it's true.
Without faith, there is nothing whatsoever that you
and I can do to please God.
Faith is a necessary ingredient in the attitude
of the soul toward Him, and in the
absence of faith, anything we may say, anything
we may sing, anything we may preach, anything
we may do, it comes to naught.
Without this necessary thread of faith running through
other things, they are equal to nothing.
Therefore, Paul and Timothy rejoiced, because they saw
the basis of a genuine discipleship, because here
there was genuine faith.
Now you may ask me rightly, why are
you stressing that?
We don't see anything very much to indicate
that the faith is genuine.
Well, now, true, it is hidden there.
But I want you to believe me that
it is there.
Paul uses rather an unusual preposition, translated in
English, in faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Generally in the New Testament, when the New
Testament writers speak of faith in Christ, they
use one or other of two prepositions.
One of them, ice with the accusative.
And it means something like this.
It means motion towards someone or something with
a view to resting upon that object.
Just as I were to move forward to
this rostrum and mean to put my weight
on it.
Okay.
So faith in Christ is a coming into
the presence of Christ with a view to
resting upon Him.
The other preposition is actually just this.
It's faith upon Christ.
It is just resting upon Him.
Standing on the promises of Christ my Lord.
Resting on Christ and His work and His
promises.
Resting on Him.
Just as you're sitting on those pews and
I'm standing here.
You're resting on something.
I hope you're very comfortable.
I hope you're putting your weight on what's
under you this morning.
Now that's exactly what faith is generally spoken
of in the New Testament.
But Paul uses a different preposition here.
And this can only be used of a
genuine, a deeply genuine faith.
It is faith in Christ.
It means, you see, that they've not only
moved up and come face to face with
Christ and are resting upon Him, but their
faith has penetrated into Him.
They're in living, vital communion with Him.
Faith has gone into Christ.
They're in Him now.
Not outside of Him, coming near, but in
Christ.
They're men and women who have been born
again.
They are like branches in the vine.
Or if you like to change the metaphor,
they're like fish in the sea.
They're living in Christ as in their element.
They're in Christ.
And if you want to use another metaphor,
which for some reason or other, one or
two of the commentators have used, it's like
an anchor being cast into the bed of
the ocean.
And it's not just got down there on
the surface.
It's got, it's got right into the rocks,
amid the rocks.
And it's there, holding.
Has your faith taken you into Christ?
Are you in Christ?
What is your element today?
Where do you live?
Oh, you live in Toronto.
Or you may be visitors here.
You come from some other place.
Your address is elsewhere.
Listen, my friend, where are you living spiritually?
Are you a man or a woman in
Christ?
Faith, genuine faith, real faith, is the faith
that has brought me into Christ.
One commentator has a beautiful word here, and
I think I ought to read it to
you.
He's referring to the tendency, the point that
he was writing, the tendency among some theologians
particularly, to stress the value of love in
opposition to faith.
And this is his comment.
Let us not fall into the specious fallacy
which would discredit faith in favor of love.
With the almost inevitable result of discrediting a
distinct, revealed, and infinitely needed ground and warrant
of faith in favor of a religion of
subjectivity and mere emotion.
Faith, in the realities of the soul, is
as needful to love as the fulcrum to
the lever, or the wick to the flame.
Love indeed is greater than love from one
glorious point of view, because faith is for
the sake of love rather than love for
the sake of faith.
But whoever discredited the foundations of the temple
in favor of the gate beautiful, or thought
that the gate beautiful could ever get beyond
its need of the foundation.
In the architect's thought, the foundation was for
the gate, not the gate for the foundation.
What's he saying?
He's saying this.
Faith and love are essential, we shall come
to love in a moment.
But faith is the foundation of all.
And faith that not just brings me toward
Christ and onto Christ, but into Christ.
Brothers and sisters, are we quite sure before
God this morning that our faith has brought
us into Christ?
That we live and move and have our
being in the risen, reigning Christ of God.
This is life.
But now, that was one element.
The cause of Paul's rejoicing along with Timothy
was there, that they have made a profession
of faith.
And the indications are that that faith is
real, because it's brought them into Christ, and
that means they're new creatures.
But now, let's move on.
Paul and Timothy rejoiced also because faith was
accompanied by love.
And of the love which you have for
all the saints.
When one's faith has cast anchor into Christ
and settled in him, it becomes a veritable
channel, along which the believer finds the emotions
of his Lord trickling into his heart.
I hope we all know this.
You know, Paul hasn't gone long into the
epistle to the Romans when he says exactly
the same thing, only in different words.
He talks about being justified by faith, having
peace with God, and then access into his
presence in Romans 5.
And then he says this, The love of
God is shed abroad in our hearts by
the Holy Spirit.
My friend, have you drawn near enough to
God in Christ to have the dews of
the Hermon of the heavenlies drop and distill
upon your soul that you're saturated with the
grace of the throne?
Has love come into your heart?
Has the flood come in?
Do you know anything about it?
And you say, how do I know anything
about it?
Is it that it gives me a tremendous
kick and a sense of emotional release or
excitement?
Well, not basically.
If it's come into you, it'll get out
through you.
That's how you know the love of God.
And your love toward all the saints.
How do I know that the love of
God has come into me?
In this way.
When it comes into a man, it flows
out through him.
And it flows out through him in this
sense.
First and foremost, towards the saints of God.
Saints are those who are separated to be
the Lord Jesus Christ's property.
Now, this is the point.
The stress is made here by Paul that
the Colossians showed love towards all the saints.
The fact that you love some of the
saints doesn't really prove anything.
Not a thing.
You see, you may love somebody just because
they're your type.
Maybe purely natural love.
Oh, they were with you in school.
You wear the same old school tie.
You speak the same language.
They're the same color skin.
And that still means an awful lot to
some people.
Far more than it should.
And they're of the same social class.
And they drive the same car, you know.
Oh, we have a special love for them.
My friend, it doesn't mean a thing.
The love of which the Apostle Paul speaks
here is love toward all the saints.
Which means this.
Not because they belong to my class.
Not because their skin is as pale as
mine.
But because they're related to Jesus Christ.
They may be black.
They may be white.
They may be rich.
They may be poor.
They may be cultured.
They may be illiterate.
They may be in Africa.
They may be in Norway.
They may be anywhere.
But if they're related as the dedicated ones
of Jesus Christ, I love them.
Now that's the love that comes from Christ
through His people.
Oh, blessed love this.
And you see, this proves genuine regeneration.
When you don't look at a man's face
or his suit of clothes or anything else.
But you look at a man and see
there a man or a woman who belongs
to Christ.
Because of that, my love flows out.
The love of Christ has flown in and
it flows out through me.
First of all, to all the saints.
Now, of course, sooner or later it's going
to overflow those banks.
And it's not going to be confined even
to the saints.
Because God loves people who are yet not
saints.
And in a pagan city like Corinth, God
would say to the Apostle Paul, Oh, Paul,
you can't see it, but I have many
people in this city yet.
And I want you to love them and
I want you to serve them and I
want you to go after them.
So that the love of God in our
hearts flows out first to the saints and
then to all the objects of His mercy.
You wonder that Paul sang in prison?
And then there's tonight.
My word, you people this morning are listening
so well.
And finally, the clock is going quicker than
usual.
Paul and Timothy further rejoiced because faith and
love were accompanied by hope.
For the hope laid up for you in
heaven.
Now, hope is sometimes a subjective phenomenon.
Dwelling within the soul of the believer, we
say that we have hope.
Or you may express it like this, I'm
hopeful.
In the Christian sense, in the biblical sense.
Here it seems to be different.
It seems to be in the objective.
Our hope is laid up in heaven.
Not hope in the heart now, but hope
in heaven.
What do you mean?
What does that mean?
Well, probably it's the same kind of thing
as Jesus had in mind when he said,
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
where moths and rust are corrupt and where
thieves break through and steal, but rather lay
up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
Now, if you want to comment on that,
I would give you the words of the
Apostle Peter, who says that every Christian is
born again unto a lively hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to
an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, unfading in the heavens,
kept for you and you are here kept
for it.
That's what Peter says.
In other words, I believe that what Paul
is referring to here, ultimately, is Jesus Christ
as their hope.
You have faith which is in Christ, you
have love which is toward all the saints
of Christ, and this proves that you have
hope laid up for you in heaven.
In other words, Christ is your hope.
All that is in Christ is yours.
You may hope for Him and for all
that is in Him to become yours.
Remember how Paul begins the epistle to the
Ephesians in chapter 1 and verse 3 where
he says that the Christian is blessed with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in
Christ Jesus.
Now, just get that.
It's really a mouthful, isn't it?
Every conceivable spiritual grace that you can ever
need, it's been given you.
Given you, yeah?
It's been given you in the heavenly places.
It's there in heaven.
How is it in the heavenly places?
It's in Christ.
You look down the aisle as far as
you can see with your prophetic eye and
you can envisage the needs of tomorrow and
the day after and the day after and
the day after that and the weeks ahead
and the months and the years and as
best you can think of your emerging needs.
I know we can't go far, but just
imagine them.
Listen, my friend.
Every grace that you and I can conceivably
need has been given to us and it
is all in the Christ who is on
the throne.
Everything's there.
Our hope is laid up for us in
heaven.
Christ is our hope.
As our anchor is cast within the veil,
that hope is not going to let us
down, for he is reigning forever and ever
and is unfailingly loyal to save those who
come to him.
Now, it's no wonder that Paul and Timothy
were rejoicing.
They felt so sure that these people in
Colossae were genuine Christians.
You can almost hear them cross-examining the
messenger and say, yes, they believed, but did
they really believe?
They have love.
Who do they love?
Is it genuine love?
Does it manifest the new nature in them?
Is it the work of the Spirit in
them?
Or is it just natural affection?
Or is it just some emotional swish?
Sensing the reality of it, the great apostle
is gladdened.
And whenever he thinks of them, he says,
with Timothy, he can only do so giving
thanks to God.
We always thank God, the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you.
Now, that brings me to the second thing,
the good news that transformed the Colossians.
What was it?
All over the world, says Paul, this gospel
is producing fruit and growing, just as it
has been doing among you since the day
you heard it and understood God's grace in
all its truth.
Now, it is quite obvious that Paul penned
these lines.
When he penned these lines, he had in
mind the Colossian heresy.
You remember how in introducing this epistle, we
referred to a heresy that was incipient in
the situation.
It wasn't fully developed yet, but it was
emerging.
And Paul is unquestionably thinking of that, though
he's not saying too much about it.
He's such a cautious, such a wise teacher.
He is expounding the glories of the gospel,
but he's making references.
If you're wise enough and if you're thoughtful,
you will see the references, but they're veiled.
The contrast between the heresy on the one
hand and what it offers, and what the
gospel of the grace of God does for
men.
Now, let's look at this.
We have, first of all, then, the identity
of the life-transforming message.
What was it that made all this difference
in Colossae?
Well, Paul puts it like this.
It was the word they had heard beforehand.
Now, this is important.
Which you have already heard about in the
word of truth.
You may wonder, what is there significant about
that?
Well, again, Paul is using a word here.
There is, as part of it, the ordinary,
the normal word for hearing, but he puts
a preposition before it, which means, heard beforehand.
And that means, you see, that Paul is
thinking of other things that they've heard since.
And he's wanting to stress the fact that
the gospel that has produced this character and
this change of life in the Colossians, they'd
heard before they heard these recent innovations that
were brought by the heretics.
The gospel that they heard was a gospel
that produced faith, a gospel that produced love,
and a gospel that provided for them a
hope laid up in heaven that no man
could take away from them, because the hope
is there in heaven already.
This latter notion, or philosophy, or teaching, that
has recently come into Colossae, however, was not
a doctrine that was capable of producing anything
like faith and love and hope of that
order.
Pagan philosophy, Oriental mysticism, or Judaistic legalism can
be mixed together in any proportion you like,
but they simply cannot produce faith and hope
and love of this order.
But the word you heard beforehand, says Paul,
before ever these heretics came on the scene,
the word you heard before, that's the word
that gave you this rich experience of God's
grace.
You see what he's doing?
He's already beginning to put his arm around
young Epaphras, the evangelist who taught them the
gospel, and who has come to prison to
visit Paul.
The word you heard beforehand, who did you
hear it from?
Epaphras.
Whom the heretics were despising as not having
the kind of sophisticated knowledge that they apparently
had.
Aha, says Paul.
But the word you heard beforehand from Epaphras
was a word that brought you to faith
and brought you to love and gave you
the hope that is laid up for you
in heaven.
Now, what's come in recently can never do
that kind of thing.
Moreover, Paul identifies the life-transforming message as
the word of truth.
And the emphasis there is, of course, upon
the word truth.
The word of truth.
That was a distinguishing feature in the message
as declared by Epaphras and accepted by the
Colossians.
But what is truth?
Well, we are in the middle of it,
aren't we?
What is truth?
That question was asked long ago.
Will you dare, will you allow me this
morning, not to try and apologize for what
I'm going to say, but try and put
it in a nutshell, which is a very
difficult thing to do, but I'm going to
quote someone I know not who.
Faith is not an idea.
Faith is not even, I'm sorry, truth is
not an idea.
Truth is not even a fact.
Truth is correspondence between the reality and what
describes it.
Truth is the correspondence between reality and the
way it's represented.
Now, what is Paul saying?
Paul is saying there are spiritual realities behind
the gospel that you heard.
What are they?
God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son, and whosoever believeth in
him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
The Son of God took our humanity to
his deity in the virgin's womb and was
born as a man and became obedient as
a servant, even to death, even to the
death of the cross.
He died for our sins on the cross.
He rose again, and as if that were
not enough, he ascended up on high and
he led captivity captive, and he is seated
at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty, from whence one day he will return
to be the judge of the quick and
the dead.
Having arrived in the Father's presence, he with
the Father sent forth the Holy Spirit to
take his place among his disciples.
Now, these are the realities.
Behind the message of the gospel, behind the
declaration of those things and of the possibility
of sins forgiven and peace with God, there
lie these great verities.
The gospel is not just a little story
spun together.
The gospel is not a myth.
The gospel is not just sweet talk.
The gospel is truth in this sense.
The message of the gospel has behind it
these massive realities of God's intervention in Christ
for the redemption of men and women.
Now, see Paul is again thinking of the
heretics and the heresy.
You remember one of their issues was this.
They said God is very, very high.
That was a truth.
Every heretic will have some truth to say.
God is high.
God is glorious.
God is too far away for us to
get near him.
That was true.
Heretics will tell you that sometimes.
God has come down to earth.
He's come near to us.
Heretics will even allow for that sometimes.
But they usually say God comes near to
us, to you, through us.
These heretics conceded that God had come down.
But how could the eternal God come right
down and take flesh when flesh is evil
according to them, not according to the Bible?
How could it come into a human body
when this human body is necessarily sinful?
Now, in order to answer that question, you
remember, they spun a whole chain of cobwebs,
as one commentator speaks of it.
And they said, well, there is God up
there in the highest, and then there is
some being, an eon of God, an emanation
from God.
He stands next to him.
And then there is another emanation of God
next to him, and another next to him.
And you have thousands upon thousands of these
emanations of deity, and at long last you
have Jesus Christ at the end of the
chain.
He came down to the very place where
we are, and he represents God.
But between him and God there are these
myriads of chains, of eons.
Says Paul, that's just a figment of the
weird imagination.
There's no substance behind the words.
There's no truth.
There's no correspondence to reality.
There are no realities behind the words.
They're but notions.
And that's the difference between philosophy and theology,
properly so called.
Behind biblical theology there are the realities, the
substantive things of God, who God is and
what God has done.
But behind heresy there is nothing but the
weird notions of a man or a woman,
or both together.
Says Paul, behind the gospel lies truth.
And so you see, even though this is
not something that is very acceptable, in our
age any more than any other age, Christians
believe that when they accept the gospel, they
accept truth.
Let me quote R.C. Lucas in his
recent book on this fullness and freedom, on
this epistle, writes, The bold claim to possess
and preach the truth must always be a
scandal to men and women in any age,
not least our own.
But we have to insist, says he, that
the merits of the gospel cannot be compared
with other forms of religious teaching.
For while they are relative, by that he
means this, that is truth for you, but
not for me.
You see, you meet people like that.
They tell you, that's truth for you, but
it's not truth for me.
Well, that's relative truth.
It's not truth at all.
But Christianity, on the other hand, is absolute
truth and universal.
That means it is true for all.
God so loved the world.
God sent forth his son.
That is true for all.
God's son died.
That has happened.
It is true.
He is risen.
It is true.
He's ascended on high.
It is true.
He sent forth the Holy Spirit.
It is true.
The Spirit has given us the Word.
It is true.
The Spirit and the Word has given us
the Church.
It is true.
We're not dealing with figments of the imagination.
Behind everything there is truth.
And we are of all men most foolish
if we pretend with the one hand to
believe the gospel and then suggest to people
that we don't have the truth.
Our gospel is the truth.
Because Jesus Christ is truth incarnate and the
only source of infallible knowledge.
The last thing I can say this morning
is this.
Paul also identifies the transforming message as the
gospel which has come to you.
That is, to the Colossians.
The word which the Colossians had heard from
Epaphras was not merely truth and therefore reliable.
It was good news.
It was gospel and therefore desirable.
Later on Paul speaks of it as a
message of grace.
Now these two thoughts belong to one another.
The transforming message spoke of a freely offered
salvation already complete in itself and available to
the most unworthy without charge.
That's good news.
And it still is.
Here were tidings of a full salvation that
was able to save to the uttermost whilst
at the same time it was free for
anyone to receive it.
It came gratis.
This stands out in sharp contrast with a
kind of Jewish legalism and salvation by works
concept now being preached in Colossae as Paul
was in prison.
And this good news came to the Colossians.
Notice that.
Every word here is important.
Oh brothers and sisters, let us read the
scriptures carefully.
The gospel came to Colossians.
Colossae didn't come for the gospel.
The gospel always comes to us before we
come to it.
The grace of God always seeks us before
we seek for it.
The gospel came to Colossae.
How did the gospel come to Colossae?
It got into Epaphras' heart when Paul was
preaching in Ephesus.
And having got into Epaphras' heart, Epaphras by
the grace of God was sent back home
and he took the gospel with him.
The grace of God came to you.
Then you came to Christ.
Then Paul proceeds to stress the validity of
the claim that the message that had reached
the Colossians was divine in origin and unique
in character.
He goes on and he adds to it.
Let me just mention these as I close.
First of all, he refers to the universality
of its application.
This is truth, he says.
This is the gospel of God.
This is not a human philosophy.
One thing that proves that is this.
This is a gospel that performs its appointed
ministry everywhere.
All over the world the gospel is bearing
fruit.
You know, we've really lost the significance of
this.
May the Lord help us to recapture it.
This message bore fruit in the lives of
those who had received it in Colossae.
The kind of fruit we noted in verses
3 to 5 centering in faith, love and
hope.
Yes, yes.
But whereas the nature of the fruit it
bore and still bears is unique, what Paul
now stresses is that it does the same
thing anywhere and everywhere.
This is not a plant that can only
thrive in certain climatic conditions.
This grace which brings forth fruit brings forth
fruit everywhere, whether in the equator or in
the poles.
Its potency is as wide as humanity.
It is neither confined to an age group
nor an era in history nor to a
class in society.
It is boundless.
It is universal in its potentiality.
You remember our Lord's claim.
And I, he said, if I be lifted
up from the earth will draw all men
unto me.
Now that did not mean, as it may
appear to mean, that he would draw people
without exception.
Because if you just read the context, go
back to chapter 5 of John, you will
find that Jesus has already said to some
people, you will not come to me that
you may have life.
So it doesn't mean everybody without exception.
And he will tell some of the children
of Abram according to the flesh that there
will be those who will come from the
east and from the west and they will
sit down with Abram in the kingdom of
God but the children of the kingdom will
be cast out.
They'll be outside.
So this is not universalism that everybody will
be saved.
It doesn't say that.
Well, if it is not everybody without exception,
what then is it?
Well, it is everybody without distinction.
I will draw all men unto me.
Now you say, what warrant have you got
for saying that?
Well, I'll give you my warrant and here
it is.
It's explained most beautifully in the book of
Revelation as, for example, in chapter 5 and
verse 9.
Here we are in the new Jerusalem.
Here we are before the throne of God.
And they sung a new song saying, Thou
art worthy to take the book and to
open the seals thereof for thou wast slain
and hast redeemed us to God by thy
blood out of every kindred and tongue and
people and nation.
Every kindred and tongue and people and nation
without exception.
Jesus Christ did not set out apparently to
bring every man and every woman out of
darkness into his kingdom.
The church is an ecclesia.
It is calling men out of the world
to be his own.
It is calling a bride to be his
own.
And when at last we shall come to
that vantage point from whence John was speaking
these words, we shall find that there hasn't
been a kingdom, there hasn't been a nation,
there hasn't been a people speaking any language,
but that out from among them the Lamb
who is in the midst of the throne
has gathered his elect, has saved and redeemed
and washed in his blood those who were
guilty, black and white, rich and poor, north
and south, east and west.
They will come without exception.
This gospel, my friends, is effective everywhere to
perform what God in Christ means it to
perform.
Everywhere, says Paul.
It is bearing fruit everywhere.
And the vitality is extensive.
It is producing fruit and growing.
And it is with this I must close.
A gospel doesn't lose its potency upon its
first impact.
In fact, it grows.
It spreads.
If you receive this gospel of truth which
is your salvation, if you receive Jesus Christ,
then the seed that you receive at that
moment will begin to spread through your own
life.
It will touch your head, touch your heart,
touch your conscience, touch your will.
It will affect your body, your way of
living, privately, publicly, in business, wherever you are,
wherever you go.
You see, it will permeate.
It will cover the whole length and breadth
of your life.
Nothing will be left untouched by it.
There's no more privacy when this gospel has
found root in your soul.
Not only that, but let it come into
any district.
When the gospel comes into any home, sooner
or later other people are going to feel
the impact of it.
Father and mother, brother and sister, neighbors next
door, people we work with and so forth.
The gospel spreads.
This is the message.
This is the history of the church.
Dr. Hendrickson refers to this marvelous phenomenon and
quotes Justin Martyr, writing about the middle of
the second century.
And Justin Martyr puts this on record, writing
to the pagans of his day.
He says, There is no people, Greek or
barbarian, or any other race, but by whatever
appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however
ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell
in tents or wander about in covered wagons,
among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered
in the name of the crucified Jesus to
the Father and the Creator of all.
He has gathered men out of every kindred
and tribe and people and nation already, says
Justin Martyr.
Tertullian, half a century later, says this.
We, he says, are but of yesterday, but
yet we already fill your cities, your islands,
your camps, your palaces, even your senate and
your forum.
Christians were in the senate in Rome.
And then this last sentence, but most significant.
We've only left you your temples.
We don't come into your temples.
We are separated to be the Lord's.
We belong to Jesus Christ.
We don't come to your temples.
You can keep them.
But we invade every other place in society
and we capture the hearts and men for
our Lord.
That's the gospel.
You say, is it going on still?
Oh, brothers and sisters, it is.
It thrills my heart every time I come
to the fact that every week for a
number of years, two, three, four years, maybe
longer, at least 1,000 churches are founded
on the continent of Africa alone.
No, I didn't make a mistake.
I'm quoting.
1,000 little churches at least are founded
on the last continent of Africa alone.
The potency of the gospel.
This is not a flower that thrives in
a hothouse.
This is a seed that will grow anywhere
in Caesar's household and in your home and
in your stony heart.
Accept it.
And as you begin to experience the faith
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord and
the love shed abroad in your hearts by
the Spirit towards all the redeemed and you
begin to come alive to your inheritance, your
hope in heaven laid up, may the Lord
enable you to be faithful as a disciple
and a witness to his grace.
Let us pray.
Oh, Lord, with humble, grateful hearts we bow
before you.
What we desire to do is to worship.
We're not always sure how to do it
when we have been meditating on a passage
like this.
The marvels of it, the wonders of it,
they just creep over our souls and overwhelm
us.
Oh, God, you are too great for us.
And yet we thank you that you cause
something of the ocean of your love and
mercy and of the great abyss of knowledge
concerning yourself that is revealed.
You allow it to make an impact upon
us and to fill our little minds which
are but cups at the best.
We pray, oh, Lord, that you will enable
us sincerely to take it in, honestly to
accept what we receive and loyally to serve
the Christ, our Savior.
To that end, go with us throughout this
day and let not the seed that has
been sown be taken away by the birds
of the air.
Rather, may the seed of your word be
watered by the Spirit that we as a
congregation and those who visit us from time
to time may become the fertile field wherein
you bring forth eternal food to your everlasting
praise.
Amen.