is the word of the Lord. Good morning. I'm really glad to be here from Ottawa today. It's a wonderful opportunity to preach on such a joyful and hopeful occasion as this. The reason I'm preaching on this passage from Colossians 1, it may seem like a strange text for an installation, but Jim is planning a sermon series through the book of Colossians, and he asked me, hey, could you kind of kick it off and do the first one? And I was glad to do so. It was actually the first book that we preached through when we planted Resurrection Church about 10 years ago or so. But once upon a time, there was a church, a newly planted church full of people from all different walks of life. It was planted by a young man who was fairly new to ministry. It existed within a culture that didn't particularly like its message. The culture it was in was quite pluralistic. It was full of many different kinds of beliefs and religions and spiritualities. Tolerance, diversity was some of the most important virtues of that society. And the foundations of this young church were being threatened mainly by sort of the laughter and score and the social pressure from society. There were temptations to water down their beliefs, camouflage their doctrine, and in general just sort of not caused too many problems. This church was at a crossroads and they needed help. And so that's why the Apostle Paul wrote them a letter. Now it may not seem so, but I think this church at Colossae, and indeed now most evangelical churches in Canada, they share some similarities. Now you're not a new church like the Colossian one was, but there are internal issues. There always are in every church being worked out over how do we live together, how do we worship together. Just like the Colossians, you too face a culture and a country, a nation that's a little bit unsure about Christians, unsure about the message of Jesus Christ and his gospel. Likely there is indirect pressure, but real pressure to do compromise or to water down or to neglect parts of the gospel. And there are inward pressures from ourselves. We are constantly looking to other things to worship besides Christ. All of us, no matter whether we live in Ontario or Nova Scotia, we are wrestling with some mix of apathy and busyness and distractedness, all these sorts of things that siphon away our spiritual life and vitality. And in response to all these pressures, all these problems, all these different things in the ancient world and the modern, Paul writes, the only way to real spiritual life is to draw out and apply the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. See, the response to a semi-hostile culture is not really better messaging. It's to understand more deeply who Christ is and what he's done. The answer to a lack of vitality in your own walk with God, your own spiritual life, is not a different conference or a different kind of Bible study. It's a deeper connection with Jesus Christ. And what Paul is going to do in this letter, Jim, I'm just spoiling it for everyone, sorry, what Paul is going to do in the whole of this letter is he's going to hold up the gospel of Jesus Christ like a pair of spectacles and glasses. He says so that when you look at your past or when you look at your relationship, when you look at your spouse or your children or your boss or the church or ideas in the culture and so on, whenever we think about anything, we see it through a lens of Jesus. It's all colored by him. There isn't a part of our lives, our workday or whatever that has nothing to do with Jesus. It's all related. Colossians, probably more so than any letter by Paul, is going to insist on this Latin phrase, Corum Deo, which just means before the face of God. Every area of life is seen through that lens. It's all lived before the face of God. Now, if you've read Colossians before, I suspect some of you have. It's not as neatly divided as Paul's other letters. And some of his other letters, he's like, here's a big section of doctrine. And then there's like this transition and now here's a big section of application. That's not really the same as Colossians. In Colossians, Paul weaves back and forth. He skips from doctrine to application, sometimes within the same sentence. One commentator explains, all is doctrine, all is practice, and all is worship, because all is related to Christ. And he sort of presents Christ in this letter as the center around which all things orbit. Now, before we get into the text this morning, let me mention that if you've read Colossians or if you're one of the more scholarly sorts, you'll know there are a number of textual issues in Colossians, like significant questions about authorship and what about the city and this and that. Jim would love to sit down with you in the future and talk through all these issues. I fly out this afternoon, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on them. I'm just going to mainly deal with the text that's in front of us. And if you want to have coffee and chat about other stuff, Jim would love to do that with you in the future. I think this text though breaks down neatly into two parts. There's a greeting and then a Thanksgiving. And I think this opening greeting and Thanksgiving, Paul is just going to give us a preview for how this book works. It's not really a prologue that you can kind of skip past and get into the meat. It's like a it's like a summary. It's like a trailer for how this whole thing is going to operate. So the greeting and then the substance, let's deal with the greeting first. Look at verse one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father. Okay, what do we learn? We learn first the letter is from both Paul and Timothy. Timothy's likely the one kind of writing it down. It's a public letter written to a church in what is now sort of a modern day turkey, upcountry Asia minor. Paul calls himself an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. And when he does that, he's claiming authority. To be an apostle means to be a sent person. He doesn't stand for himself. He comes from someone else. In fact, in sort of the Jewish world, they had this phrase that went like this. The one sent by a man is as the man himself. The one sent by a man is as the man himself. So basically, if you are coming as an apostle for someone else, whomever is sending you, it is like they are standing in front of you. It's sort of like our power of attorney. Power of attorney, you'll give someone the right to make significant legal decisions on your behalf. So as Paul introduces himself, it's not just like, oh, here's my business card, you know, my LinkedIn profile, whatever he says, I'm here to speak for God himself. I'm here to speak the words of Jesus to this church, which of course is a very serious claim. He's saying this letter, it's not a human letter. In a very real sense, this is God speaking through the hand of a human to a church in this city in Turkey. But because it's given from God, it's universalized. The commands that are in it that we should take it very seriously. Timothy's mentioned as well, again, he's likely in the scribe. Actually, if you flip to the end of the book, if you have a paper copy, the very last book of Colossians, it seems that Paul is signing a greeting with his own hand to give it some, you know, stamp of authority. Likely if we had the original manuscript, we'd see the font style change. You know, Paul scrawls his own handwriting there at the end, probably next to Timothy's, you know, very neat handwriting. But the letter is from an apostle sent by God by the hand of Timothy and Paul to the saints, these faithful brothers and sisters in Christ at Colossae. Now look at how Paul describes the congregation. Three different words he uses to describe the congregation. He calls them saints and he calls them faithful, and he says that they are in Christ. And let me deal with each of these just briefly. To call someone a saint is to remind them of their status in the kingdom of God. Now there are some who teach, well, saint is like, it's an achieved position. Like if you're a super Christian or a super awesome Christian, then you get to be a saint. That's not how Colossians is using that word. To be a saint is a gift to say God, by his own mercy, by his own grace, he has brought these people into his kingdom. They have been fashioned, like carved and made into saints. To be called faithful means to remind them, oh, you have stood in the past. Things have happened likely in Colossae that we don't know about, likely maybe the reason the letter is being written. You have been faithful in the past. God has sustained you. Please continue. You need to continue standing in the present. They are facing challenges from within and without that you'll get to later in the letter. And of course, to call them in Christ means they belong to and they exist for Christ alone. They are under the lordship of him. Their status is in him, their identity. These are the fundamental truths about Colossae. They are also the fundamental truths about Bedford Presbyterian Church. If you are in Christ, they are true of you. That is who you are, a saint and faithful, and you belong to Christ. But this situates us. Paul, as far as we know, has never met these people. There are strangers to him. The church planter, Epaphras, mentioned in verse 7, he is the one who came and preached the gospel to them and it was likely him who wrote a letter to Paul saying, hey, here's what's going on, here's what's happening, which likely prompted this letter back. But this is the greeting, fairly quick. We're going to spend most of our time here on the Thanksgiving. Now, if you came to my church, you would know I like to pull things apart and have points and sub points and stuff like that. But the problem with pulling verses 3 to 8 apart is that if you read it in Greek, it's one sentence. It's one run-on sentence with clauses and sub clauses and commas and all that kind of stuff. Basically, in one breath, Paul's like, takes like a deep breath in and then just like breathes out this long run-on Thanksgiving. Isn't it interesting that Paul begins with Thanksgiving? There are problems in Colossae he's got to get to, but before he begins to teach, before he exhorts, before he challenges, he's like, hey, we got to stop and thank God. For people he's never met, the first thing on his mind is the goodness of God. He says in his prayers, he's always being thankful to God. Jim and Dean, I think it's helpful for you too to note that as a new pastor and his wife to begin with thankfulness for all that's come has come before you. Even though you barely know these folks, you know, that there's so much to be thankful for. Even when I planted a church, the church that I now pastor, God had been ministering to the people who came to our church long before they ever got to me. There was so much to give thankful for even though that I had just met them, you know, a week before. What a beautiful note to start with though, Thanksgiving. And all of the categories the Apostle Paul is going to bring up, he attributes it all back to God. God is the one who allowed the gospel to come to the Colossians. God is the one who enabled them to believe it. God is the one producing fruit of love and faith. And Paul is just sort of basking in all of it. Isn't this great? He says, you know, pointing all his praise and prayers back to the God who's given it. What exactly is he thankful for? Well, I do think though I said it's hard to divide, I mean, I am going to divide it. I think we can divide it into two major parts. He's thankful for the gospel and he's thankful for the fruits of the gospel. Now you may not notice, you're like, well, where was he thankful for the gospel? It's tucked away in the middle. The reference to the gospel is in that middle of that long Thanksgiving paragraph. If you look near the end of verse five in the beginning of verse six, right in the middle of his big run-on sentence. Now, why would Paul put it there? Well, Paul was a good Jewish boy, knows that in Jewish literature, in Jewish poetry, you put what is most important in the middle. See, in our culture, in our stories, well, you put the best part, the most exciting part at the end, we call it the climax. You watch a TV show, you know, like there's some DNA people solving a murder or whatever, you know, it's like what the 46 minute mark of that hour show, that's when we get to find out, you know, who did it. And then it's just kind of, they tie it up and wrap it up after that. But the whole climax at the end, best part at the end, most important thing at the end, that's a modern or at least a western idea. Jewish thinking is different. You read the Psalms, this happens over and over. The most important ideas are often in the middle. And the same is true of this prayer of thanksgiving. So look carefully at the structure. I'm gonna, I'll point it out to you so you can see it. Verse four references faith and love of Colossians. Verse five references the truth. Verse six references the gospel. And then he goes back to the truth, still in verse six. And then he goes back to faith and love, still in verse seven. So it has this structure where it sort of builds up and then builds back down. But at the heart of the prayer, at the middle of the prayer, is the gospel. Paul is most thankful for the gospel, which he sort of personifies in this piece of text. He talks about it as if it has a life of its own, which really means God is working through it. And the gospel has two significant features. According to Paul, he says it's true and it's spreading and it's growing. Let's talk about the truth of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ is simply, you're more sinful than you believed and thus under the judgment of God. Yet because something happened, the life, death, and resurrection and ascension of Jesus happened, you are now more loved and accepted and forgiven than you ever dreamed. And Paul is arguing here in Colossians, as indeed he does throughout the scriptures, the gospel is not just a good idea. It's not just a clever system that helps us to be better citizens. It's objectively true. And in Colossians society, just like it is as ours, is there a greater taboo than to talk about truth? Roman culture was full of many gods, multicultural. They had, they tolerated, they had official religious policy of tolerating, at least at the point we think Colossians was written. They didn't take kindly to religions that spoke about, well, this one God is true to the exclusion of all the others. In a few short years, emperors will come to power who will attempt to destroy the Christian faith because they worried about what it was doing to the empire. It's not much different for us. We don't have emperors. That's about one of the big differences, but by and large spirituality is no longer good. This guy Robert Wuthnau writes about this. Spirituality is no longer good because it meets absolute standards of truth, but because it helps me get along, which makes us the judge of its worth. If my spirituality helps me find a vacant parking place or be kind to a stranger, then I suppose it's on the right track. For many people in our world today, our society today, Christian or non-Christian, like truth is out of fashion. The idea that one religious way is true and another is false, that's somewhat morally objectionable. And sharing the good news of Jesus, as was prayed about earlier, it's no longer thought of as, well, this is an obvious implication of Christian belief. It's now viewed often as the imposition of personal preferences. Exclusive truth claims are morally objectionable. Now, the common position said, the common Canadian position is to say, well, all religions have part of the truth, or they all lead us to the same place. The problem with that statement is it's a religious statement itself. That kind of catch-all statement can only be made by a person who sees the whole system and sees the truth plainly. It's self-defeating. Or some claim, hey, well, just do whatever you want. All religions can be true. Perhaps they all lead us to the same place. But this morning, if it was not just me up here, but also a Muslim cleric or a Jewish rabbi or whatever, you would realize, well, you all believe very different things. We disagree on the nature of God, the nature of humanity, heaven, hell, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Something is true and something is false. And if you are examining the Christian truth, if you're here as a visitor or friend this morning, we invite you to look into its truthfulness because Paul says the gospel is true. It's not only true, it's bearing fruit and increasing. So again, Paul personifies it. He alludes to the divine force, God force behind it. He says, look at what God is doing through the gospel. If you look in verse five, it says, all over the whole world, the gospel is bearing fruit and increasing. Now, I don't think you can read that and think, well, the whole world has been evangelized or that the gospel has come to the Americas yet or whatever. But what he's saying is from Paul's Jewish perspective, he's like, the doors have been blown off. What once was restricted to Jews and the Jewish people only, it's now open to everyone, everywhere. It used to be confined and kind of walled in. Now it's available irrespective of racial lines or geographic lines. He's saying the good news of Jesus Christ is just exploding in every direction. The whole empire and beyond is hearing about the gospel. Paul's deeply thankful for it. And that's really the fulfillment of promises to the Jewish people, to Adam and Abraham and all the others, all the families of the earth, they would somehow be blessed, someday be blessed. It's all coming true. God is doing what he had always planned to do, the end for which he prepared the world. And he gives this organic image, a tree, like some of the trees mentioned in the prophets, it's bearing fruit and increasing. Now it's been a delight of our church to send out Jim to the ends of the earth, as it were, to participate in a gospel that is not just taking root and bearing fruit in my city or the place I was born, but also here. And also all around the world, you can go way further east than Halifax and find places where the gospel is bearing fruit and increasing. And Paul is just excited and thankful for the things that are erupting. The truth of Jesus's life is having effect everywhere. Which sort of brings us to, and I've touched on a little bit, the second thing Paul is thankful for is the fruit of the gospel. And here he's thankful for what the gospel is producing. What does he mean by fruit? He means the sort of the triumvirate, the trio of faith, hope, and love. Paul says, if you look in verse 4, he's heard of their faith in Christ Jesus, the love they have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for them in heaven. These same traits, as I mentioned, are echoed in verses 7 and 8. Let's look at, take a quick look at each. The gospel produces faith in Christ Jesus, and it does so after people hear the gospel and learn about it. And faith often emphasizes the intellectual side. It involves someone explaining the truths about Jesus so they can be comprehended by another person. And in the case of the Colossians, what had happened was Epaphras had come and had preached to them, explained the things of Christ to them, and they had believed it. You know, in the case of this church, Bedford has a wonderful history of men who've done the same. Don, Al, Bill, and now Jim following in their footsteps. That someone comes and takes time and is sort of set aside vocationally to preach the gospel. But it's not just the preaching of the gospel that happened. Paul says the Colossians received it, which means it's not a passive process or one-way street. I know I'm doing most of the talking here, but there is something that's happening on your side, just like it happened for the Colossians. The Colossians actively dealt with and wrestled with the claims of the gospel on their life. That is what faith is. And that faith did not come by itself. But again, if you look at verse four, the faith of the Colossians expresses itself in love for the saints. What the good news in Jesus does when you believe it and it gets hold of your heart is it begins to make you love unlikely people. See, as we understand that we used to hate God and we reviled God and we had rebelled against God and God sent his son anyways in love to die for us, that same kind of love, Paul says elsewhere, that same kind of love is now being poured into our hearts. The same kind of love with which God loved us is being poured into our hearts so it will overflow in all the people around us. And if God can love us with that kind of love, then of course we can go and love any kind of other person with that love. The gospel, believing the gospel, inevitably produces love for the saints and for neighbors, for all kinds of people. Further, he says the gospel produces hope. Paul says hope is the part of the basis for faith and love. In verse five, he says the hope is rooted, their faith is rooted in the hope that's laid up in heaven for them. Now about hope, we use that word hope lightly, for instance in Ottawa, we hope the sins have a good season. It's not going great on that end. Maybe you hope to get a raise at your job. You hope for good weather for your vacation. Hope to many of us means a mustering up of a subjective optimism about something you don't really control. That's not what Paul's talking about. He's saying you can have hope, you can have profound confidence in a God who has acted in history and will continue to act in history. You can have confidence in the future because God has promised and he is faithful. The hope of which Paul speaks, it's not surreal or ethereal. He says it's laid up in heaven, it's untouchable. And when you have that kind of hope, it makes one brave, it makes one bold. When you read through the book of Acts, you see people who aren't afraid. They don't fear anything because of the hope they have. They know because of the resurrection of Christ, their future is secure. And in the coming centuries, in the second, third, and fourth century after Paul wrote this letter, as plagues began to sweep the cities of Europe and Asia, you know who stayed? Well, the poor people stayed because they had to. They didn't know where to go. And the Christians stayed. And they established the first hospitals because they weren't afraid. They were people who'd understood what Paul writes here, that they had a future laid up in heaven. A Savior had gone before them and was preparing a place for them and their lives were an offering to him. They had hope and it made them brave in the face of suffering and death. That kind of hope is indestructible. Today we hope in RRSPs or stable government or oil prices or my kid, feeble hopes. There is a hope laid up for us in heaven, Paul says, it's untouchable. And these are the fruits of the gospel Paul has heard about and is thankful for. Let's give do a little bit of application here at the end. And I want to ask the question, why does Paul lead with thankfulness? Why not something else? Well, when you read the Psalms or sing the Psalms, you're told over and over to praise and to thank God. I kind of wonder, how many times do all the Psalms together tell us? I don't, I couldn't find the answer to it. Many, hundreds, thousands. The Psalms end with these five songs which just explode and praise to God. But have you ever wondered, have you ever crossed your mind? Why do we praise and thank God? Doesn't he already know? Like I'm not telling him anything new, obviously. Why does he need to hear it? The reason is this, because praise and thankfulness to God does not merely express our enjoyment of Him and our appreciation of Him. It actually completes it. It's actually part of the consummation, the completing of our love for God. It's not like we just need to give God more compliments. It's the objective reality that one cannot merely believe God is loving, wise, and great. That belief must sort of ooze out of us, come out of us in private and public ways, or else it stays as abstract knowledge. As we learn to praise and practice praise, learn to be thankful, practice thankfulness, that actually changes us. It actually teaches our hearts to love God. John Piper, the Baptist pastor said, our mouths instruct our hearts. Praise and thankfulness actually develops our love for the Lord. Now perhaps you're like, still not convinced. I'll give you one other reason why thankfulness is important. In Romans 1 18, which in sort of 30 verses tell the story of humanity, it summarizes humanity's rebellion against God in this way. Paul writes there again, for although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God, nor listen, nor gave thanks to Him. Our inability to be thankful to God, it's not just like bad manners like your kid who won't say thankful, you know, it's a symptom that we don't love or treasure God as we ought. It shows us we're trying to be spiritually self-sufficient, and that happens to all of us. It's the human condition. We take all the good things in our lives and imagine that we are responsible for them. Our healthy finances, well I was a very careful planner and saver. Our physical health, well I have a great discipline and diet. My kids are doing well, well I've, you know, I've been very diligent as a mother or father. And then we take all the bad things in life, and that is what we attribute to God. Jobs we lost out on, family members who passed away, failed marriages, inability to conceive. Well God had something to do with those of course. I think the temptation is there for all of us. We have ongoing deep problems with thankfulness. So what should we do? Well C.S. Lewis says a healthy practice is to take every pleasure and to make it into a channel of adoration, to cultivate a habit of in the middle of pleasures, or at times to think of how good it was for God to give us this. Or to consider what kind of God would create a world that has a pleasure such as this. He talks about letting your mind run up each sunbeam to the son who sent it. What an opportunity today to be thankful for God for all that He has done. Think about it. Think of all the pastors who have pastored here. So thankful for those men, those couples, those families. Think about all the people who've served this church. What a wonderful thing to be thankful for. It's hard to even number the amount of hours or time or energy that's gone into this place. Think about all the children who've been born in this church. Baptized in this church. Disciplined in the faith. Maybe have they all grown up and moved other places perhaps. But begin thankful for all those kids. What about to be thankful for all those who hoped and dreamed and built a physical building for us to worship in? Amazing. How good of God to give us that. Thankful for a new pastor and his wife coming from the far land of Ontario all the way here. To be thankful for other partners in the gospel. I know there's some from other denominations who've joined us today that we don't labor alone. I mean, we could go on. We could spend another 30 minutes doing this. There is just so much to be thankful for. But I would be remiss if I remind you that in the middle of the life of the church, what sort of breeds thankfulness is the gospel. It is a gospel that leads us to lives of faith, hope, and love, not the other way around. It is the gospel that helps us and teaches us to be thankful, for it tells us of what God has done for us. And so I pray the gospel of Jesus Christ will give all of you, Jim and Dina, but all of you spiritual strength you will need for the years ahead. May God have mercy on you. Let me pray for you.