Goals of the Church - Colossians 2:1-5

2:51Today, we're going to continue that section in chapter 2, verses 1 through 5. Look at verse 1. Chapter 2, Colossians 2, verse 1. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face. I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face. So Paul takes this idea that he is the toiler, the struggler for the church, and he applies it to the Colossian church, right, and the Laodicea church. He applies it to their church and says, I want you to know I am struggling for you. I'm really toiling hard for you. How great a struggle. And many think this is maybe, you know, how we would use the word, an emotional struggle. You know, when we say, I'm really struggling with something. Usually that means we're sad about it or we're frustrated. It could be that.

3:58At the end of the book, he uses the word struggle to talk about prayer. So maybe he's saying he's praying for them. He's struggling for them in prayer. But I think it's probably a combination and all of the above idea of his struggle. Those things plus the fact that he's actually fighting for doctrine. That's what we looked at last time. He is fighting for the fact that Gentiles can be brought in. It's not Jews only who can believe in the gospel, but it's Gentiles as well. And Paul is fighting for that. He's defending that truth. He's being persecuted for it, right? The Jews didn't like to hear that, the unconverted Jews, and they were the ones who set up his imprisonment so that he's being moved all over the empire and now is currently in Rome as he's writing this letter. Okay, so he is toiling and struggling. And last time we saw that his main goal is the maturity of the church. He wants the church to grow into perfection. He wants the Christians in the church to be mature.

5:00He mentions in verse 1, the Laodiceans. I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face. Laodicea was a city right near Colossi, so 11 miles away. So, you know, we can say something like, we're from Bryan College Station. I think they could say the same thing, right? I'm from Laodicea, Colossi, Herapolis. It was like three cities all clumped together. And so the churches were kind of friends. Look over at the end of Colossians, chapter 4. Colossians chapter 4, verse 12.

5:47Epaphras, who is one of you, you guys remember Epaphras? Epaphras is the one who had brought the gospel to the Colossian church and now is reporting back to Paul. So Epaphras, who is one of you, is A servant of Christ Jesus greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Herapolis. Luke, the beloved physician, greets you, as does Demas. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And when this letter has been read among you, that's the letter we're reading right now, the letter to the Colossians, when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans, and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. Okay, so these churches were close to each other. It'd be like if we had a sister church in college station, and Paul is writing to both of us, and he's saying, okay, after you read your letters, swap and read each other's letters so that you can be informed. And so he's expecting them to be friends. He's expecting them to be united. They're sharing Epaphras, right, the servant of the Lord. So turn back to Colossians chapter 2.

7:12So the main point that he's getting at, chapter 2, verse 1. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged. That's his goal. That's why he's struggling. These churches in Laodicea and elsewhere hadn't seen Paul face to face. He wasn't there to teach them in their infancy as they're just becoming a church. And so he sees this as a problem, and he's struggling to overcome it. And what he wants is for them to be strengthened. That word encouraged is a little bit stronger than our word for comfort or encouraged. It means strength. He wants them to be strengthened, to have strong hearts. So the question for us today is: what does this strength look like?

8:10What is it that Paul is desperate to see in their church? What would be the marks of this Christian strength? What are the goals of a church? Well, Paul is going to tell us what Christian maturity looks like, what strength in a church looks like. And he mentions four goals. Four goals. I don't think he's trying to give a comprehensive list of every goal a church should have, but he does mention four things that he's eager to see in their church. Four things that would mark strength, that would mark maturity. And these four goals, as we go through, are going to be love, knowledge, order, and faith. Love, knowledge, order, and faith. Let's pray before we start. Father, As we approach this text, I pray that you'd give us humility to truly evaluate and see if we as individuals and as a church body are excelling in these goals.

9:21I pray, Lord, that you would give us a heart like Paul that is getting excited about the same things that you would get excited about in a church. I pray, Lord, that you wouldn't let us get distracted or let us pay attention to all the wrong things in church life. But I pray instead, Lord, that you keep us focused on what matters, keep us focused on what pleases you. We're grateful, Lord, that Christ went through the scorn and the ridicule all the way through the cross to die for our sins and to claim a people for himself. And we pray, Lord, that as that people, as the body of Christ, I pray, Lord, that we would work hard at these things. In Jesus' name, amen.

10:11Colossians 2, verse 2. Praying for all who have not seen me face to face, verse 2, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and a knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in the body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order in the firmness of your faith in Christ. So, the first goal that we see is love.

10:55Paul is greatly suffering. He's going through toil because he wants to see the church at Colossi have love for one another. He says in verse 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love. Being knit together in love. The word for knit together in this letter and in Ephesians seems to be this idea of just being so closely bound up together. It looked down at verse 18 in the same chapter, Colossians 2:18. He says, And let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by a sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together, that's our word, through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. And so the word picture, you can turn back to verse 2. The word picture is like bones and ligaments and joints.

12:00Tied together so close, right? They're knit together. And that's what we, as the body of Christ, are to look like. We're to be knit together in love. Agape love, that loyal affection that we're to have for one another. You know, when I think of this kind of love, one of my favorite examples in all of Scripture, and I think about it often, is David and Jonathan. You guys remember David and Jonathan? David, before he's king, when Saul is still king, and Saul is Jonathan's dad, remember, it says in Samuel 18, 1, 1 Samuel 18, 1, it says, as soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And so Jonathan would go on to keep his covenant with David. He would even risk his life for David in front of his own dad. His heart was knit to David, and he loved him as his own soul. And as the body of Christ, I think Paul is calling us to that same kind of love, that same kind of close, deep affection for one another, being knit together. We are supposed to be meeting together and fostering deep, brotherly affection for one another. And so what does that mean for you?

13:22You know, are you doing that? Am I doing that? I think it certainly means a time commitment, right? We need to be with one another. I just finished a book called True Community, a tiny little book by Jerry Bridges. And he makes a big point, as obvious as it seems, but it's very practical that if we're going to have true fellowship with one another, we need to commit to spending the time with one another, right? We need to spend the time to get to know one another. And for our closest friends in the church, we need to commit to spending a lot of time so that our hearts can truly be knit together to them.

14:02Bridges calls, Jerry Bridges, the guy who wrote the book, calls those people bosom friends, your closest friends in the church. Spend time with them so that we can form some deep knit together relationships. We should be praying for one another and encouraging one another, even the men in the church, right? Maybe especially the men in the church. You know, sometimes for a tough, strong man, it's hard to hear that we are supposed to be knit together in love with the other people in the church. But if that's you, remember that there's probably never been a manlier man than David and Jonathan, right? If you remember the stories of their battles and things like that. But also remember that it's your duty. This is what Paul was desperate to see in the Colossian church. This is what he's struggling for, to see hearts that are knit together. So we need to work on this. I think. That this is a strength at Emmanuel, right? I think many of us, from the very beginning when we first visited Emmanuel Baptist Church, many of us would say the thing that stuck out to us was the fact that everybody loves everybody, right? And when we're greeted, we felt that love.

15:18So let's keep growing in this and working towards more love. Work on being knit together. The second goal we see is knowledge. Knowledge. And out of the four that we're going to look at today, knowledge is the one that Paul spends the most time on. This is the one he's really emphasizing. In other letters, he'll emphasize different things, right? In the letters to the Corinthians, they're having trouble with being puffed up and arrogant. And so in the letter to the Corinthians, he's emphasizing love instead of knowledge. And he even says, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. But in this letter to the Colossians, Paul is emphasizing knowledge. This is their weapon. This is one of the marks of Christian strength and maturity. So look at verse 2. That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this. In order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding. He's wanting these Colossians to be really equipped with knowledge, right? That's a lot. All the riches of full assurance of understanding. And he's piling up a lot of the words. I can't remember the last time I said this, but I say it often: that Liliana, the three-year-old that we have right now, she says all the time, I want a lot, a lot, a lot of something, right? That's how she talks. I want a lot, a lot of ice cream. Or I want to play and play and play. And that's what Paul is doing here, right?

17:14He's saying all the riches of full understanding, right? He's saying a lot, a lot, a lot of knowledge. That's what he wants these Christians to have about Christ. A lot, a lot, a lot of knowledge and understanding. And specifically, he wants them to have it about a mystery. To reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and a knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. We saw this word mystery last time we studied Colossians. If you remember, Paul uses the word mystery to talk about a truth that wasn't revealed for a while. Maybe something was prophesied, something was foretold, but it wasn't foretold how it was going to come about. Or who it was going to come about through. Last time we saw that the mystery probably was, he was talking about the Gentiles, that the gospel was going to go out to the Gentiles. This time he says the mystery is Christ himself. Christ is that answer to the mystery of all of these prophecies. He is the one in whom hidden things were revealed. So Paul wants the Christians in Colossi to know as much as they can about Christ. This former mystery that the Old Testament prophets looked forward to. Now he wants the Christians to know as much as they can, to study hard to know about Christ. Why? Look at verse 3. In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That's speaking about Christ. In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Do you want wisdom? Then we need to learn about Jesus Christ, right? All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are there. And we'll learn this summer that Paul's, what he's writing against are these false teachers. And these false teachers in Colossi are claiming to have hidden knowledge. They're claiming to have things that have been revealed to them, maybe in visions that they are adding on top of Christianity. And Paul is saying, no, no, no.

19:30You don't need that hidden knowledge. Everything hidden was revealed in Jesus Christ. If you learn about Jesus Christ, then there are no other treasures of wisdom and knowledge that you need to be saved. They're all hidden in him. So look at verse 4. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. And we'll see later on in the letter what those plausible arguments are. But he's saying, I'm telling you this, that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ so that no one else can trick you and pretend like they're not and pretend like they have some other hidden knowledge that you need. So if we follow this logic backwards, Paul says in verse 4 that he doesn't want them to be deluded, right? He doesn't want them to be tricked. So then in verse 3, they should remember that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ, which means in verse 2, they should work hard to reach the riches of full understanding of this mystery, Christ. And so as they study the Old Testament and the New Testament and they're learning all they can about Christ, they're stopping themselves from being deluded, into being tricked into thinking there's some kind of hidden code or something like that in the scriptures or extra visions they need.

20:59They just need to see. To fully understand Christ as much has been revealed in Scripture. And so their responsibility is the same for us, right? We can turn to the Scriptures just like them and see what has been revealed about Christ and have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Learn as much as you can about Jesus Christ. Some of us are more prone to this than others, right? Some people in our congregation, even they latch on to school. They love it. It's like they never stop going to school, right? And they can't get enough.

21:36Often those people are sometimes the ones who are tempted to be puffed up with knowledge, right? But there are others in the church that are more resistant to this. They're content, and maybe this is you, you're content to know very little about Christ. You're content to not study the scriptures and just understand that you're saved and not want to learn past that. But Paul is saying that he is yearning and struggling for something more than that in the Colossian church. He doesn't want them to stop at just knowing a little bit about Christ, right? He's yearning and struggling so that they can know a lot, a lot, a lot about Christ, right? So that they can know. These treasures that he mentions are real treasures, and they should be valuable to us. And so we should work hard to study. And grow in knowledge.

22:33Okay, look at verse 5. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order in the firmness of your faith in Christ. Paul is wanting them to grow in love and grow in knowledge because it's like he's right there alongside them, right? He's rooting for them from a distance, and he's with them in spirit. Today, it's a little easier for us to be with somebody when we're not with them, right? Maybe we could send an email or call them on the phone or even be with them face to face, right? But I think it's the same kind of thing that Paul is saying there: he's with them, right? He's with them in spirit. He is praying for them. He's fighting for them, defending doctrine. He is hearing the reports from Epaphras and being encouraged by them. He is writing letters back. He's really being involved, right? And I think that's what he's trying to say, that even though he's not with them face to face, he's still struggling on their behalf. He's with them in spirit.

23:45And we've had good friends like this, right? Good teachers like this, friends who, though they might be days away, they're eager to hear what's happening in your life. They're praying for you. They're cheering you on from a distance. I think this is the kind of love that Paul is showing them. Colossian church. And he'll mention two more things that he's eager to see. He's already said he's struggling so that he could see love in their church and that they would grow in knowledge. But he's also eager to see their good order and the firmness of their faith. For though I am absent in the body, verse 5, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order in the firmness of your faith in Christ.

24:33Rejoicing to see. So these seem to be goals that Paul is saying the Colossian church has already started to show. He's rejoicing that he's able to see these things, good order and firmness of faith. Both of these words have kind of a military idea, is what they're normally used for, order and firmness. You know, they kind of have a military color. The first one, order, can refer to the structure, even in a military, of a group of people, right? They're being orderly, they're being structured. And Paul uses it here and elsewhere to talk about behavior, orderly behavior, especially in the church. So when people visit the church, it shouldn't be chaos, right? If people walk down the door right now, we should not have people running everywhere in the halls. We should have a structured service, right? That's orderly. And even when Christians go home, they should. Strive for that same kind of order in their home. Not that kids can't be crazy at home. But home should be orderly. They should be loving. And there should be good behavior. The only other time he uses this word order is in 1 Corinthians 14. You guys can turn there.

25:46It's at the end of 1 Corinthians 14. A pretty familiar passage. If you remember, to the Corinthian church, they're almost the opposite of the Colossian church. And the Corinthian church had been given some special spiritual gifts, but they're using it to puff themselves up. And they're using it to allow their church services to be more chaotic and things like that. And Paul is trying to teach them about love. He's trying to teach them about how to have a church service and keep things orderly. So look at 1 Corinthians 14, verse 26. What then, brothers, when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation, let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three in each in turn. And let someone interpret. So you see what he's doing? He's saying, wait your turn, right? Don't all speak at once, only a few during the service.

26:54But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in the church and speak to himself. To God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the other weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. Look at verse 33. For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. And then look at verse 39 near the end. So, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy and do not forbid speaking in tongues, but all things should be done decently and in order. That's our only other time of this word. You can turn back to Colossians 2. And so he's saying, even when this church has these special spiritual gifts, they are to use them in a way that's orderly and structured. This is a goal of the church, right? They shouldn't be chaotic.

27:50Instead, everything should be done in order. In verse 5, for though I am absent in body, yet I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order in the firmness of your faith in Christ. That's our last goal, the firmness of your faith in Christ. He literally says he wants to see the firmness of their in-Christ faith, of their in Christ faith. And later on in this chapter, he's going to repeat that idea over and over and over. Be in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. And we'll see what that means. But this faith has to do with their firm resolve to trust God.

28:30Over false teachers. They should be studying true doctrine and be resolved to trust in that instead of trusting in these false teachers who are peddling these false ideas about visions and festivals and foods. This word for firmness, the firmness of your faith, has to do with kind of a steady strength. They're to be unmoved against these darts and arrows of unbelief, these attacks on true doctrine. They're supposed to be steady. And this is really related to the second point we saw, right? Knowledge. This is related to that, right? Because if they are going to have this steadfastness and faith, that they're going to be firm to believe these things, they have to know what they're believing, right? They have to study and have knowledge. He's emphasizing knowledge again.

29:24And for us, I think this shows up in trials. If we're thinking about when are we challenged to be firm in the faith? When are we challenged to be steady? I think the main one is in trials. We can come to church and we can learn about the doctrine of God's goodness, how God is so good all the time, right? How he causes rain on the wicked and the righteous, and he's good to all men. But then when a tragedy happens, that's when we're forced to stop and repeat. To ourselves, God is good, right? Even in this, God is good. God is good, God is good. That's the kind of steady faith that I think he's talking about. Or another time when we need to do this is when we sin, maybe even when we sin badly. And we've heard the promises in Scripture of how God covers all of our sin in grace when we turn to Him. And yet, when we sin, we're tempted to start to think things like, No, He won't pay for that. That's too bad, right? I'm doomed, or something like that. And that's when we need to stop and say, No, He said it. God is good.

30:42He'll forgive even me. And for the Colossians, this attack wasn't necessarily a trial. It wasn't necessarily sin. It was an attack on the gospel. They had heard the doctrine of the gospel, but now these teachers were coming and saying, No, you need to add this festival. You need to stop eating this food. We know about this because we saw it in a vision. So you need to add this to Christianity. And I think that at that point, Paul was challenging them to stop and say, No, God is good, right? I know the gospel, and repeat that idea to themselves. I think that's the idea of being firm in faith, unmoved, as your doctrines are challenged. So these are the things that would really. Get Paul going about a church. These are the things that would really excite him. If he looked at our church today and he was evaluating us, some of the things he would look for are affection for one another, a drive to study about Christ, good, dignified, and orderly behavior, and a resolve to trust in God.

31:55There are certainly other goals for a church, right? And we could look elsewhere in Scripture and find other goals, but the ones we have here today should always be included. And I think this is enough for us to think about this week, right? And even work on this week, are these goals? Maybe this week you could scrap together an extra hour out of your schedule just to spend time with another believer, to work hard at knitting your hearts together in love, spend time over coffee, read the Word, enjoy each other's company. Or maybe with that extra hour, you could read an extra chapter of Scripture and seek to grow in knowledge about Jesus Christ, right? Maybe even do it in a study Bible and be eager to learn more about Jesus Christ. We can be thankful that our church is orderly and try and copy that in our own conduct. We can bolster our faith and make it more steady by meditating on God's promises. Let's not be distracted from the church's goals. Let's not let ourselves become Complacent. I just finished a tragic book called The Johnston Flood. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of that, but it was in 1889 in Pennsylvania. There's this town called named Johnston, and it had started to grow in the Industrial Revolution, and the city was growing, but above the city, there was a lake.

33:26So they were seated at the bottom, kind of in a valley, and there was this mountain, and at the top, they had built a dam, and on top of the mountain, there was a lake. And everyone in the city knew about this lake, and they were all a little bit scared of it, right? Because they're living with their families in this valley, and they're a little bit scared about the lake. They're a little bit scared about the dam. They know it's not really built properly. And so they kind of thought about it often, but they had become so complacent that they even let themselves start to joke about it. Like they would greet each other in the streets and say, today's the day the dam's going to break, right? And they would just joke about how it was so scary, right? And they had grown so complacent. Well, sure enough, in 1889, there was a big snow, and that melted and filled the lake. And then there was a big storm, and it filled the lake even more. And the dam broke and it like wiped away the city. 2,000 people passed away. And the tragedy shook America. And a lot of people started pointing fingers. And they said, you know, well, the engineers who built the dam are to be blamed, but there weren't really engineers. It was just kind of a hodgepodge dam. Or they said, the rich men who owned the lake, the fishing club up there, they're to be blamed. But one guy in the city whose family died, he said, no, we can't point fingers, right? The fault is our own. It was the citizens. We knew it was going to break. We joked about it every day. We were scared about it every day. And yet we never took the time to shore up the dam and fix the problem. We just waited and waited and waited until it happened.

35:09Well, I don't think that we should be like that as a church, right? I don't think we should lose sight of our goals and let things kind of crumble away. I think we constantly need to keep our focus on what Paul is saying is so important for a church to have. What Paul is struggling and toiling and working with all of his might so that a church could have these things. I think we should look at those things and keep them in our minds.

35:36We want to focus on loving our brothers. We want to learn more about Christ. We want to be orderly and have a firm faith. And I think that if we're doing well in these things, if we look at ourselves individually and say we're doing well in these, then we need to come alongside our brothers and sisters and struggle on their behalf so that the church as a whole is doing that as well. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you worked so much through the Apostle Paul.

36:15We thank you that you gave him a heart that was desperate to struggle and toil for the sake of your body. And as we get a sneak peek into what he was so passionate about, what he was desperate to see in a church, I pray, Lord, that you would cause our church to focus on those things, to not lose sight of these same goals. I pray, Lord, that you would make us a body that would please Paul if we were in his day, but more importantly, that we would please you by the way we love each other and grow in knowledge together.

36:58I pray, Lord, that you'd help us work hard at this. In Jesus' name, amen. Before you're dismissed, we have one membership announcement. Matt? Well, it is my privilege to bring forward Michelle Gallney. There she is. Come on forward. I think I about gave her a heart attack this morning. I asked her if she had prepared a speech. But she said the only thing that she was. thing I'd like to say is that I'm happy to be with you all. So we're happy to have you here with us. She's gone through the membership process and we're elders. There we go. Delighted as elders to bring her forward. So if all the members would stand and affirm by saying amen and then the rest of you all can stand and come greet her with the right hand of fellowship.

37:55Thank you. Y'all are dismissed.