Colossians 1:9-14 Paul's Prayer Part 2

https://www.facebook.com/ablossombiblechurch

Transcript

Colossians And The Real Threat

SPEAKER_00 0:36

All right, Colossians chapter one. Colossians chapter one. We're not moving very fast here, but we're not in a hurry, are we? Um, Book of Colossians, it's a letter from Paul and Timothy, don't forget Timothy, to a group of believers in the city of Colossae. And Paul hears that good things are happening there with the people. God's building them, God's uh saving people. And the response, of course, is as is often the response. There's there's false teaching that's going out. There's attack that the enemy is throwing out to trip people up. Um, some were coming into the church there in Colossae saying, you know, Jesus is great and all, but what you need is some more Jewish traditions. You need to become more Jewish to become more Christian. And in that, they were adding to salvation. It wasn't just Jesus, it was Jesus and traditions. It was Jesus and Greek philosophy. You guys need some secret knowledge. Buy my book, you know, come to my conference, they would say, and then you'll be more. And in Paul, this disturbed Paul because he knew that Jesus plus anything else, uh, it takes away the power of our salvation, that it's by grace we're saved through faith and not of works. It's a gift of God. And so Paul takes this very seriously, and he wants the people to understand you have everything you need in Jesus. And he's gonna go on for the rest of the book and point them to that supremacy of Jesus in their life. Well, Paul took it very seriously. And what does Paul want to do? I think Paul wants to send a letter, which he did. Uh, Paul wants to send Timothy, which he maybe did too, right? He wants to send Epaphras back. And uh Paul would probably want to go there himself and take care of the people, but uh time and space being what it was, uh sending a letter is gonna take months. Sending a person is gonna take months. And so Paul turns to the most effective thing that he had prayer. And that's what we've been looking at last week and this week, the idea of prayer. He says in verse uh nine, that's where we start. For this reason, we also, me and Timothy, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might according to his glorious power, for all patience and long-suffering with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He's delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us to the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. And so here, Paul goes right to prayer. And something we talked about last week prayer does stuff. For whatever reason, God's ordained prayer, talking to him, casting our cares on him, is the main way that he's gonna work in our lives. He changes people's hearts, he opens spiritual eyes, he does things that through our arguing and such, we can't do. And now we see he actually gets down and does it. And I think we talked about it last week that that is one of the biggest things of prayer. It's not how to do it or what it does, but it's the fact that we actually do it. We actually get down or stand up and we pray, we talk to God, we we trust our heart and the things in our heart to God. And Paul here gives an example. He goes right to it, and and he goes into it in verse 9. He says, Since the first

Jesus Plus Anything Breaks Grace

SPEAKER_00 5:05

day we heard of it, God's work in your life, we don't cease to pray for you. Um, he did it all the time. He actually uh stopped and did it. Now, Peter, a verse I love to go back to in 1 Peter 5, 7, he says, you really cast our cares on him because he cares for us. And it's this idea uh what Paul's talking about here of just doing it over and over again to keep casting our cares on him. A gravity of life just kind of keeps our problems rolling back on us in prayer. We continue to just cast it on God and push it back to him. Um, we see here, notice verse 9, he says, we don't cease to pray for you and to ask. Uh Paul says, I'm not stopping this prayer. Now, the word here is we don't cease, but it actually is tied to the word in the Greek for prayer and asking. They're both done in this idea of we don't stop. You pray and you keep on praying. Or as Jesus says, you ask and you keep on asking, you seek and you keep on seeking, you knock and you keep on knocking. We can't grow weary in our prayers, we have to keep it up. Now, that's important here. Paul says, I'm just praying for you guys all the time. Every time I think of you, I lift you up in prayer. But notice what he prays for, and this is good, right? Because sometimes we don't know what to pray. Jesus gives an example of prayer. He says, Pray like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. The kingdom comes, in King James in my mind. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us a day our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. You know, and it goes on. And Jesus here gives us an idea of the kinds of things we can pray for. Well, this is good for us too. Paul here uh writes down his prayer. And if you needed something to pray for for your friends and for your family, these are some meaty things that you can pray for. Let's notice here what he prays for. Uh, he prays that they would be filled with the knowledge of his will. Notice there in verse 10 why that he may walk worthy of the Lord. And all these other things explain that. But this is basically what Paul is praying for his friends. God help them to know what to do in life, that they would please you with everything that they have. That's the goal, that we would please God in the things that would come out of our life. And so Paul is really lifting up his friends. Notice, he says, I'm praying for this in verse 9, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. It might be good to know what God wants us to do in life, wouldn't it? We're always looking for that. What does God want me to do with my time? What does God want me to do with the situations in my life? Um sometimes it's hard to know, but we talked about this a few weeks ago. God's will is spelled out in the Bible. If you want to know what God has for you in a situation, read the Bible, understand what he's like, understand God's heart of love, understand the kinds of things he likes. Justice, love, all these things. You cannot go wrong. He desires for everyone to be saved. Slam dunk, right? You can pray for people to be saved. And Paul here says, I know there are people coming into the church saying, Oh, if you just had this secret knowledge, if you just understood what I understand, uh, Paul says, I want you to have a knowledge of God's will, that you be filled with the knowledge of his will. Now, before we leave, that word filled is interesting. It's like being filled with the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? Does it mean to have more of God's Spirit? I don't think so, because God's Spirit is God. You either have God's Spirit or you don't. You either have God's knowledge or you don't. But that word filled is kind of the same idea. It's really letting God's knowledge have more of your life. We can

Why Persistent Prayer Matters

SPEAKER_00 9:55

know the right thing to do, but does it live in our life? That's kind of what he's saying. I want you to know what God says about life, but I want you to have that knowledge working in your life. Now, check it out. He says, I want you to be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom. Now, wisdom is a little deeper idea than knowledge, isn't it? You can know something, but wisdom is what to do with that knowledge. It's been said that knowledge is knowing that that cap with the black stripe down its back is a skunk. Wisdom is run away, don't pick it up, right? It's known what to do with the information. And in life, we really want wisdom. We really need wisdom. We need to know what to do in a situation. Um, I learn a lot of things through reading online knowledge. But I tell you, I learn even more by doing, by making mistakes. I've learned a lot of costly lessons, and that's where wisdom comes in. Knowing how to apply the knowledge that we have. Um now, as you read the Bible, you get to know. Now, listen, as you read the Bible, you get to know what God is like. As you read the life of the gospels or of Jesus, you get to see what Jesus is like, how he acts, how he loves people in all situations, how he loves sinners. That's a rough one. But then to really apply that to our life, how do you want me to live, God? You want me to live like Jesus in in knowing him. And that's really what we'll see. Knowing Jesus is living uh like him, having the heart of Jesus. But check it out before we move on. There's one step further. He says, I want you to have knowledge, I want you to have wisdom, and I want you to have spiritual understanding. Spiritual understanding is one step deeper. You might say, um, that's where I shine naturally. I have spiritual insight into things. None of us, none of us default on spiritual thinking. Understand that the Bible says we're all fleshly by nature. If you want to know what your instinct is in life, it's always the flesh, it's always selfishness, it's always self. But God wants us to look at things spiritually, um, to have uh a spiritual enlightenment on the world around you. Because sometimes the logical thing is not the right thing. God would have you to do something else. Spiritual discernment. Um, we want to make spiritual discernment, I mean spiritual decisions, and we need to have a spiritual awakening. Now, Paul here is going against those that would come in and say, Oh, if you want to be really spiritual, you need this information. We've said that, right? And Paul says, Man, what you have is the actual spirit of God to lead you in life, to make spiritual decisions. Man, look at what you have. And Paul here prays for it for these people. Now, notice what it leads to in verse 10: having knowledge, having wisdom, having spiritual understanding. Verse 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him. Walking worthy of the Lord. Uh, walking is a metaphor, right? It's life. Life is like a walk. And sometimes I like that. You know, given the right weather and circumstances, a walk can be enjoyable, you know. Um, but but that's life with God, right? Uh, Noah walked with God. Man named Enoch walked with God. And you picture that in life. It's me and God walking through life. Um, but he here says, I really want you to walk worthy of the Lord. Um, worthy there is in a way that lines up with God's character. Uh, that's important. It's in a way that lines up with the way you've been saved. Walking worthy of the way you've been saved. If we've been, now

Knowledge Wisdom And Spiritual Discernment

SPEAKER_00 15:10

listen, come back. If we've been loved and forgiven and saved by God's good grace on the cross, we can't live with a grudge in life. We've been forgiven. We can't live in harshness because God has been so tender with us. We can't live selfishly because God has given us so much. So, all those things, if we have been saved, we have to live in a way that makes sense with that. Uh, Jesus tells a parable in Matthew 18. It's worth going to look at a parable of a man who owned the king a debt. You know this one, right? A man who owned the king a debt. And we'll just say it was millions of dollars. It was more than he can afford to pay. And the king said, Hey buddy, it's time to pay up. I want you to pay up. And he says, Well, I can't right now, but I will. And it says there that the king had compassion on him and he forgave him. Amazing. He didn't say, Yeah, I'll give you the time you need, you pay me back. He said, You can't pay me back. I'm gonna forgive you. Now, check it out. That's an amazing story. God forgives us. But then Jesus goes on to say, but what if that man went out and he found another servant, one of his fellow servants? Now, listen, he found one of his fellow servants and he grabbed him by the net. The guy owed him a few bucks, a hundred bucks, let's just say, a thousand bucks. And he grabbed him by the net. He said, You pay me what you owe me. The guy said, Give me some time, I'll pay it. He said, No way, I'm throwing you in jail. You are not getting out of this one. Now, listen, word got back to the king in Jesus' parable. This man has not been forgiving when you forgive him so much, and the king was furious. And the idea there is, look, we have been forgiven everything. It doesn't make sense for us to turn around and not have the same kind of forgiveness for other people. And I look at that and my heart kind of hurts because I struggle with forgiveness. And here the idea is if we're gonna walk worthy of the way that God has loved us, we have to have that same kind of love for other people. And this is where Paul wants them to live. This is where God wants us to live in a way that makes sense with the way God has treated us. Think about that in your own life. Does your life line up with the way that you've been saved? The way that you've been loved, the patience that God's shown you and He's shown me. Do we have that same kind of patience? Well, look, I'd fall short. But this is what Paul is getting at. I want you to live not just in a way that knows it all, but in a way that is worthy of the Lord. Now look at this: fully pleasing him, fruitful in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God. Um, a life that bears fruit. We talked about this when we talked about God's will. God's will is for our life to bear fruit. What's the fruit? Oh, you could say a lot of things, fruit of good works, that's amazing. But the fruit of love, I think, is key because the fruit of the Spirit is love. We talked about it. God wants our life to bear this wonderful, amazing fruit of love. It should be amazing to us. It's not natural for us to love like this in our life. It doesn't come naturally. Um, I remember I had a friend who told me, you know, I struggle with things, but the one thing I don't struggle with is loving people. I just love people. And I said, really? Wow, that's amazing because I don't all the time, honestly. He's like, Oh, I just I've never I've never had anyone I didn't like. The next week I remember uh you can't say I was happy, but I shouldn't say I was happy about this, but I saw him blowing up at somebody there behind the stage at Calvary Chapel. And I was like, What about this whole loving people thing? Well, you know, and you look at it and you go, Well, I get it. When I get out on the road, there's not too many people that I love like that, you know. Uh, it's a gift of the spirit to love people who aren't lovable, and we need that too in our life. This kind of fruit thing should be amazing to us when we see it in our life, especially the people that we have a hard time with, especially the people that there's some bitterness in our hearts towards, to actually love and want God's best for them. That's something that only God can do. And Paul here says, This is what I want. I want you to know the truth. I want

Walking Worthy Through Forgiveness And Love

SPEAKER_00 20:40

you to know how to apply the truth, I want spiritual discernment in your life of what God wants you to do, but that it would walk, you would walk worthy, that you have life that measures up to the way that God has loved us, fruitful in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of God. And here Paul comes back around to this word, knowledge, right? And you know, there again, the false teaching that was coming in would be known as Gnosticism, knowism, right? Is what that is basically in the Greek, the word to know. And here he says, I want you to just grow in your knowledge. Now, this word knowledge is even more, it's an above kind of knowledge, it's a super knowledge, a knowledge of God that's just outrageously amazing. And and Paul says, I want you to have that. That's what I want. Um God to work in your life. Um, he also prays, verse 11 uh that they would be strengthened with might according to his glorious power. Let's turn since. Turning it to the easy in this case to the book of Ephesians. Um just a couple books back. Ephesians um chapter three. Ephesians chapter three. Paul wrote this about the same time there from prison. In Ephesians chapter 3, verse 14. He prays for them there, the people in Ephesus, and it's real similar. It says this Ephesians 3, 14, for this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the whom the whole family in heaven is saying, that he would branch you, yeah. That's real similar, listen, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in your hearts and face, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints. What is the width, the length, the depth, and height, four dimensions there in the three-dimensional world, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. So Paul he prays here for the people in the same kind of way. In verse 16, there he says, even grant you. I want God to grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man. Um God he says, I just want guys to be spiritually strong. Uh, according, Noah, notice there, according to his power back in Colossians, uh, he wanted to be strengthened uh according to his glorious power. Now that's pretty sweet to understand. When we see what Paul wants God to exert in their life, it's this power according to God's power. It's different, right? Because Paul's wanting them to be encouraged and strengthened and all these things. And I could do a pretty okay job of encouraging you. I mean, right now, I'll get out the pom-poms, I'll say, let's go, guys, we're going into the week, go fight, win. Yeah. And you'd be like, Yes, we're doing it. I could play a song, I could play a song that would just get you all excited to go out. And I could do my very best to have a little pep rally here today. All right, guys, you ready after me? Let's do it. One, two, three, do it, you know. And you'd be like, that's sweet. But what if God, according to God's power, wanted to work in your hearts and in your life? What's God's power like? Is it a pep alley? No. Let's go back to Genesis chapter one, and you just stand there, right? And everything is there's nothing, right? It's before creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and he spoke and he said, Let there be light. We're watching it, let there be light, whatever that looks like. And the earth was created, and then he goes in this kind of symphony of like creation there, of the dry ground and the water, and then the sea creatures, and then all these things, and then man. He forms man out of the dust of the ground and breathes into him and becomes a living being. And he does that with the entire universe, right? I don't know what he has out there, but you know, it's the entire universe. God just creates it. And you look at God, if you could look at God, and he still hasn't broke a sweat. You know what I mean? He's not really tired, uh, he's just powerful. And we look at that and go, according to God's glorious power, to be strengthened according to all that God has, the ability to take nothing and build something. Now, if God, if nothing is impossible for God, then to be strengthened according to the power of God means that there's nothing that he can't work in our life. There's no amount of resentment that he can't take away in our life, right? Uh, there's no amount of weakness that he can't overcome in our boldness, right? Uh, in our ability to push through things. Uh, God wants to give us these things according to his great power. Um now, Paul is gonna go on from this point, and Paul gets excited uh as he talks about what God has done for them. He gets excited, and we'll hit it next week, too. But he goes on to talk about the things that Jesus has done for us, who Jesus is, and and he begins to just worship. Uh, let's just notice as we look at this power that God wants to work in our life. Um,

Strength According To God’s Power

SPEAKER_00 27:10

notice, um, well, let's jump over to uh verse 15. There's lots of good stuff before that, but verse 15, we'll look at it next week. That Jesus, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. Now look at this. For by him all things were created that are in heaven, that are on earth. Visible. Okay, I see. Yeah, invisible. What? Invisible, whether thrones or dominions, principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him. He's before all things, and in him all things consist. So we see this kind of played out. This is God's power, this is the power of Jesus, right? All things are made through him, whether it's visible or invisible. Spiritual world, all these things, they're made through Jesus. Notice, though, also, verse 16, the end. They're created through him and for him. He's before all things, and in him all things consist. That's a great, we'll look at it more next week, but in Jesus, all things consist. The best we can understand with that is that all things hold together in him. You guys know your science, right? I don't know my science, but I know a little bit of science. And if you really start to look at the way atoms work and how things work in the universe, everything's made of atoms. And the nature of atoms, positive and negative, is that they really should just blow apart. But it doesn't make sense that they hold together, positive, negative, to take the magnets, right? And they by nature kind of push apart. Well, for some reason, they're held together, and that's this idea here that Jesus, all things consist, all things hold together in Him. Can you picture that power that Jesus seems to have over everything that we see? That if it wasn't for God's power in our life, everything would just one big nuclear explosion, I guess, is what it would be, right? It would just, everything would blow apart. And there on the cross, Jesus died for the sins of the world. I can't quite imagine what that's all about. That God in the flesh died on the cross and yet never stops holding all things together. That's some pretty amazing power. And Paul here says, This is the way I want you to be strengthened. Not what you think you need, but what God knows you need. Power to get things done, power to love when you don't feel like loving, forgive when you don't forget, to get through the things that you just want to give up on, right? Paul prays that they would know that. And then he encourages them. There's more that we could say here, but but he says, I want this for you for all patience and long suffering. Uh, patience is the idea to keep going when you want to give up, to keep going under pressure, right? We all understand that in our lives. There's a lot of times where we just want to give up and go with the flow. And Paul here says, I want you to have strength to keep going with all patience and long suffering. Long suffering is in our terminology, would be the idea of being long fused, right? We understand short fuse there at uh 4th of July, right? To give one of those fireworks that's like a tiny fuse, and you're like, I'm doing it, and you light it, and you're like, oh, you know, there's no counting, you just and and and that's of course the way we can be sometimes. I can be very short-fused. Paul here says, I want you to be long-suffering. That would take a miracle, wouldn't it? That would take an act of God. To be able to go through life when life was difficult. But notice this, and and we'll finish here. I can be pretty frustrating if I looked at my life from patience and long-suffering and the way I love people. Doesn't come naturally, and I don't do very well with it. But he turns our attention towards this: what God has done for us, how God has forgiven us. Let's read it and soak it up. He has delivered us. Uh or let's back up to verse 12. We give thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of his inheritance. He's qualified us. I mean,

Patience Gratitude And Gospel Confidence

SPEAKER_00 31:55

qualify, he qualifies us in Christ, he's delivered us from the power of darkness, conveyed us to the kingdom of his love. We have redemption through his blood, forgiveness of sins. And we're reminded of that here. Look, I want you to be better. I want you to bear fruit in your life, and God wants to do that amazing thing. But we're gonna mess up, we're gonna struggle, we're not always gonna do the right thing. And yet it all comes back to don't forgive. Here's what God's done for you. He's forgiving you. Not because you're a nice person, not because you got it together. He forgives you because of what Jesus did on the cross. He redeems us, he buys us back from hell, right? Even when we didn't deserve it. In case we ever forget, this is not based on our performance. The amazing thing is that God will work fruit in our life. It doesn't make any sense that he would do that. But he bears with us as we grow in this life. And Paul knows that, and he encourages these people with that. Keep your eyes on Jesus. God, uh, we need grace. Each one of us. God, you've called each one of us to difficult things in our life, to forgive people that we don't want to forgive, to love people that we don't feel like loving. And yet, somehow you want to work your heart into us. You want to make us more like you through life. God, it takes some endurance and we burn out quick. But God, we want to work endurance so that our lives could be full of joy and just thankfulness in all you do in us and all you do through us. All be to your glory. God, help us to understand these things not just in our head, but uh in our spirits that we've been encouraged uh to live the life that you put in front of us, even this week. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.