Christ Preeminent (Part Ten): Strengthened Through Struggle

Transcript

JRNT 32
09/03/2023
Christ Preeminent (Part Ten): Strengthened through Struggle
Colossians 2:1-4
Jesse Randolph

I'm going to begin our time this morning by reading a few words from R. A. Torrey who is a late-1800s/early-1900s pastor and evangelist. He writes: Prayer, if it be real prayer, the kind of prayer that avails much with God, oftentimes is harder work than any other kind of effort; it takes more out of one than any other kind of effort. When Mr. Alexander, (that was Torrey’s assistant, by the way), and I went to Liverpool for our second series of meetings there, Rev. Musgrave Brown, vicar of one of the leading Church of England parishes in the city, was chairman of our committee. His health gave out the very first week of the meetings and he was ordered to Switzerland by his doctor.

So, to give us midway a bit of color and context here, Torrey and Alexander were touring England and conducting some sort of evangelistic revival meeting which was in vogue in these days. And this Rev. Brown who was otherwise planning to be there in Liverpool for these evangelistic revival meetings suddenly became ill and was now unable to attend. Torrey picks up the story with these words.

He says, “Soon after reaching Switzerland, he, (meaning Rev. Brown), wrote me saying, “I hoped to be of so much help in these meetings and anticipated so much from them, but here I am, way off here in Switzerland, ordered here by my doctor, and now all I can do is pray.” Then he added, “But after all, that is the greatest thing anyone can do, is it not?” Then he added, “And real prayer takes more out of one than anything else, does it not?”

Torrey then resumes his narrator's voice again with some more words. He says, “Yes, it often does. Real praying is a costly exercise but it pays far more than it costs. It is not easy work but it is the most profitable of all work. We can accomplish more by time and strength put into prayer than we can by putting the same amount of time and strength into anything else.”

So R. A. Torrey's account here of Rev. Brown, a minister of the Gospel who was shelved, so to speak, with sickness, is really fascinating on so many levels because in it we encounter a man who realized early on that it wasn't about him. If he couldn't attend that meeting at Liverpool, the meeting was going to go on and the Lord was going to do what He was going to do even without the Reverend's presence. We encounter a man in Rev. Brown whom God had placed exactly where He needed him there in Switzerland on that sickbed for such a time as this. And we encounter a man that realized that he could be used mightily of the Lord from a distance as he prayed for the very evangelistic meeting he had hoped to attend but now couldn't.

I bring up this story about Rev. Brown not simply to share an interesting figure and otherwise obscure figure from church history, rather I bring the account up here because there is, I believe, an interesting parallel between what Rev. Brown was experiencing as he prayed from Switzerland for what was going on there in Liverpool, England and what the Apostle Paul was experiencing in our text for today as he prayed from Rome for events happening at Colossae.

Turn with me in your Bibles, please, if you would, to Colossians 2. We've devoted nine sermons by my count to Colossians 1, and we're finally ready to turn the page to Colossians 2, where we're going to be doing our best this morning to cover the first four verses of this chapter. I know your bulletin says five, I know the announcement said five. I should know myself well enough by now to know that that was not going to happen-to get through five verses. But we'll do four here this morning. Colossians 2:1-4. God's Word reads, “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument.”

See, like Rev. Brown many centuries later, the human author of these words, the Apostle Paul was physically distanced from those to whom he was ministering. And like Rev. Brown all those years later, the Apostle Paul realized that one of the greatest ways he could be used of the Lord and used by the Lord for the benefit of these dear Christians that he found himself separated from, was to pray for them. That's what we see right here in Colossians 2:1 where it says he struggled in prayer on their behalf. And as we are about to see, struggle he did. Paul truly struggled on behalf of the Colossian church, a church which, as we've already seen, was in its infancy. A church which was young and impressionable, a church that was in its infancy, a bit wobbly on its knees and whose simple faith in Jesus was now coming under direct attack. He struggled so that they would be able, ultimately, and ready to push back against the false teachers who were already in their midst. He struggled so that they would be strong, strong in their faith.

Now as we come to our text this morning we're going to highlight six different aspects of Paul's struggle for the spiritual strength of the saints at Colossae. I'll rattle them off really quickly here and don't worry, we'll go through these slowly one by one. First, he struggled for the sake of relative strangers. Second, he struggled for the sake of encouraged hearts. Third, he struggled for the sake of loving fellowship. Fourth, he struggled for the sake of confident assurance. Fifth, he struggled for the sake of true knowledge. And sixth, he struggled for the sake of spiritual protection.

Let's get right into it, starting with the fact #1 that Paul struggled for the sake of relative strangers. Look again at verse 1 where he says, “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea and for all those who have not personally seen my face.” Now as we neared the end of our study last week and looked at the last couple of verses of Colossians 1, verses 28-29, in fact let's look there, he said, he ended with these words. “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power which mightily works within me.” And that word at the end of verse 29 there, striving, is closely connected grammatically to the first word here we encounter in Colossians 2:1, struggling. Struggling and striving here are synonyms. And at the end of chapter 1 Paul was describing his strivings through teaching and admonishment to present every believer there in Colossae mature in Christ. And as we know from other places in Scripture Paul went through various other struggles for the sake of his proclamation of the Gospel and his building up of believers in the faith all over the then-known world. That included his hardship in travels, that included his hostility from false teachers, and that included the harsh bodily punishment that he went through. But here at the beginning of Colossians 2:1 the strivings, the struggle that Paul is describing is of a different nature. He is referring here to a great inward struggle-a great inward conflict-that he went through in prayer on behalf of these believers. From the time he had first heard from Epaphras about what was happening here in Colossae he had prayed for this church. He had deep concerns over the dangerous doctrines that were being promoted by these false teachers who had now infiltrated this body of believers. Paul was genuinely worried about the spiritual welfare of these early believers. And so he prayed for them, he struggled for them-to use his word here-in prayer. It wasn't just Paul, though, who was praying for the Colossian believers, it was Epaphras as well who was a native of Colossae and who was, as we have seen already, imprisoned right there with Paul in Rome.

In fact turn over with me to Colossians 4, toward the end of this letter. We're going to see that Epaphras like Paul was regularly in prayer for this church. Colossians 4:12, says, “Epaphras, who is one of your number, a bond slave of Jesus Christ, sends you his greetings, always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers, that you may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God.” So note that there are these two men, Paul and Epaphras, in their state of incarceration and what they don't do is simply throw up their hands and say, well we're not there in Colossae anymore. It's out of our hands. I guess that church is on its own now. They're going to need to figure this one out on their own. We'll just let go and we'll let God. That's not what happens here. No, not at all. What happens instead is these men get to work by getting on their knees and praying. Laboring, struggling and doing so on behalf of people, at least in Paul's case, that he had never met.

This in one sense is a very simple and very straightforward passage here in Colossians 2:1, but at the same time there is actually so much richness to what Paul is saying here and I don't us want to miss out on any of it. So I'm going to point out just a few features here of what I see happening here in verse 1 so we don't gloss over any of the richness that is here. First, I want you to note the intensity of the prayers that Paul was praying on behalf of those who were receiving this letter. He says here, verse 1, “I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf.” Legitimate ways to translate that would be something like “I want you to know what a great fight I am fighting on your behalf, what anxiety I feel for you, what great agony I am going through on your behalf.” These weren't bow your head and bless the Jell-o salad kind of prayers that Paul was praying for the Colossian believers. These weren't half-hearted prayers. These weren't distracted prayers. No, what Paul is describing here are concentrated and consecrated night and day type of prayers. So consumed was he with presenting every man, as he says in Colossians 1:28, “complete in Christ,” that he was willing to labor for them as he interceded for them. See, Paul's willingness to work hard and to toil for the good and the welfare of the people that were entrusted to his care, it was really a fundamental strand of his spiritual DNA. We saw some of that last week when we went through the previous section of the letter and we see it in various other places that he writes, how willing he was to be expended and spent as he struggled for the sake of those whom he loved. For instance we know that Paul struggled for the advance of the Gospel. Philippians 1:29-30 says, “For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for His sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me.” Or Philippians 1:12 he says, “Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances,” he's talking about imprisonment there, “have turned out for the greater progress of the Gospel.” So he struggled for the advance of the Gospel.

He also struggled to simply minister to the various churches he was writing to. Like in II Corinthians 11:28 he says, “Apart from such external things,” those external things, by the way, are the beatings and the stonings and the scourgings he experienced. He says “there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.” We also know that Paul struggled in his advance of the cause of Christ in the face of many opponents and adversaries. I Thessalonians 2:2 says, “But after we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, as you know, we had the boldness in our God to speak to you the gospel of God amidst much opposition.” And then last week as we saw in Colossians 1:28 Paul struggled in admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom so that they might be presented complete in Christ. The point is Paul struggled in many ways doing many things and in mighty ways to fulfill his ministry.

As we see in our text for today we see that Paul's God-given work ethic also directly impacted the way he prayed. Indeed, he worked hard at it. One of the ways he was willing to be spent for souls was by praying for those souls-praying for the salvation of lost souls and praying for the spiritual growth and strength of those who had turned to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. In fact, earlier in this very letter to the Colossians Paul has already expressed how hard he worked at praying for them. Look back at Colossians 1:9, where we see how willing he was to pray without ceasing for these believers. Colossians 1:9. It says, “For this reason also since the day we heard of it we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” Did you catch that? He says, “we have not ceased to pray for you.” Paul clearly saw prayer as really hard work. And it is, isn't it? Anybody want to give and yes and amen to that statement? Prayer is hard work. Like every other aspect of life in Christ, prayer takes effort, prayer takes discipline. For some of us that means a prayer list or a prayer email to keep us on track. For some of us it means a prayer journal or a prayer calendar or a prayer app to keep us on track. For some of us it means fighting through the drooping eyelids and cluttered thoughts to keep us on track. Prayer ultimately, as any spiritual discipline, is empowered by the Holy Spirit, but at the same time it does take work. Sometimes the words come easier, sometimes it feels more like a task, but we are called to keep after it, to pray without ceasing. See, we weren't promised another day in Margaritaville when we came to Jesus Christ in saving faith. We weren't promised it would be a walk in the park to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Rather, much of what we do as Christians takes effort and it takes discipline. Reading the Word, studying the Word, praying, serving in the local church, practicing the one anothers, overlooking offenses-all of it takes work. And Paul here, as he does elsewhere in his writings, was willing to put in the work for the sake of those whom he loved and cared for in Christ. And here what he is doing, is he is modeling for generations of believers after him the hard work that we all ought to be willing to put in for the sake of others, specifically in prayer.

So, that's just one observation here about verse 1 how great a struggle he was willing to struggle in, in prayer. Here is a second truth I want you to note, which is who Paul was praying for. There are really three groups who are described here. The first concern that Paul had was for the Colossians themselves. The letter was addressed to them, we know- Colossians 1:2, “To the saints and faithful brethren who are at Colossae.” And here in Colossians 2:1 when he says, “How great a struggle I have on your behalf.” “Your,” meaning “you Colossians.” But note that Paul's concern expanded beyond Colossae. He also mentions those who are at Laodicea, which was a neighboring city about ten or eleven miles west of Colossae, and apparently the same doctrinal errors that were creeping into the church at Colossae were making their way to Laodicea. And that's actually why if you take a peek over at Colossians 4:16 you'll see that he is asking that this letter, the Colossian letter, be read in Laodicea as well. It says, “When this letter is read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans.” Same error, the same remedy, this letter for that error. But then here in Colossians 2:1 Paul goes even more wide angle when at the end of verse 1 he says, “and for all those who have not personally seen my face.” In other words Paul here had concern not only over the heretical teaching reaching Colossae and Laodicea, he was concerned about this teaching reaching out and fanning out more broadly to others in the vicinity of those two towns. And he was concerned primarily with all those people in that region that were now facing this threat to their faith. He hadn't been to these cities, he hadn't been to these churches. He says right there they had not personally seen his face, yet he was praying for them, persistently, doggedly praying for them. He knew from Epaphras that false teachers were in their midst-he knew from Epaphras that wolves had penetrated the sheepfold and he knew that there were these false teachers who were using enticing words and smooth speech in an effort to mislead them. So now he is struggling for them, struggling for them in prayer. They were a part of the universal church of Jesus Christ so he had automatic kinship with them and he cared for them and he loved them and had a deep concern for their welfare, leading to prayer.

So no matter where you are in your prayer life, bringing it over to 2023, Lincoln, Nebraska. No matter where you are in your prayer life, no matter if you consider yourself a 4.0 prayer student or if you consider yourself an average “C” student in the school of prayer, Paul's words here, whenever we read a text about prayer, whenever you hear a sermon about prayer, we know there is always going to be some measure of conviction right away. Not only because they remind us, words like these, of how universal and ubiquitous the privilege of prayer is. Right? We can pray night and day, we can pray when we are healthy or sick, we can pray in public or private, we can, I Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.” We're able to do it, but words like these and examples like these of Paul remind us of how far short we fall in this area of our lives. We know this from experience. We know it because we are unwilling to wake up 15 minutes early to devote some consecrated time to the Lord in prayer. Some of us know this because we know of how dedicated our thought life is to things other than the Lord which blocks out our motivation to pray. We know this, some of us, because of how distracted-if not consumed-we've become with these little computers that we hold in our hands. And when we realize this, as some of you are realizing right now, there are some of us who don't struggle in prayer, rather we struggle with prayer. For those, prayer is not so much a joy as it is a task. It's not so much a privilege as it is a burden. It's not so much you get to do, but something you have to do. It's not something that is ever present in your life, it's rather something that is completely absent from your life. And if that is describing you, please don't walk out of here like people tend to do after sermons mentioning prayer and say, “Okay I'm convicted, I'm going to forget about this by this afternoon. On to the next thing.” No. Learn from the example of Paul here. See what he is doing here. Seek to emulate his example, this godly example of a man who struggled in prayer, and seek to incorporate that into your life.

We've seen the intensity of Paul's prayer for the believers here in this region, we've seen the breadth and the scope of his prayers in that they went not just to Colossae but to Laodicea and to others. Here is a third observation about verse 1 here, and this is another one I don't want us to miss, which is that Paul wanted those at Colossae and those at Laodicea and those in the surrounding region to know that he was struggling for them in prayer. He says in verse 1, “I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf.” Now some might read that and wrongly think that old Pharasaical Paul is coming out here and that he is doing exactly what Jesus commanded believers not to do in Matthew 6:5, in praying so as to be seen by men. Paul is doing nothing of the sort here in verse 1. He's not letting these believers know that he is praying for them to be seen or to boast or to grandstand, rather he is letting them know this to encourage them, which actually brings us to our second point, our second heading for this morning, that Paul struggled for the sake of encouraged hearts. He struggled for the sake of encouraged hearts.

Look at the first few words of verse 2 where he says, “that their hearts may be encouraged.” Now those words that I just read are really a continuation of the previous verse, verse 1. See, you have these two dependent clauses here in verse 1. I'm going to geek out with you just for a second here. There are these two dependent clauses. One is “and for those who are at Laodicea,” and the other is “and for all those who have not personally seen my face.” Now if we were just to kind of shove those two dependent clauses out of the way for just a second, we would see that what Paul said in verse 1 about struggling on behalf of them, links right to what he says in verse 2, “that their hearts may be encouraged.” What Paul is saying here is I want you to know what a great struggle I am having so that your hearts may be encouraged. And the Colossians needed encouragement, they needed heart-level encouragement. Now, in Paul's way of thinking here in Colossians, as in the rest of Scripture, the heart symbolized more than just feelings or the emotions of a person. Don't think red heart emoji when you see that word heart here, okay? Rather the heart in these times represented the entirety of the inner man, of which the mind and how we think was considered to be a vital part. The heart was not the part of one's body that fluttered when somebody that you were attracted to walked by. Rather, the heart was what made a person think and process intellectually. People thought according to their heart, that's how the authors of Scripture laid it out. Genesis 6:5 says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Our Lord Jesus in Matthew 15:19 says, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts.” Or Luke 9:47, Luke says, “But Jesus, knowing what they were thinking in their heart, took a child and stood him by His side.”

So the burden of Paul's prayer for the Colossians here was that their hearts, the very place from which their thoughts originated would be encouraged. And that word there, encouraged, does not refer to like a token “atta boy,” or a soft pat on the head or the backside of the baseball player who struck out and walks back to the dugout. It's not that kind of encouragement. No, the word encouraged means literally to be called aside and the term pictures one person standing beside another person to console them when they are sorrowful, or to build them up and to strengthen them when they are weak, or to strengthen them really when they are perplexed or in danger of being led astray, like holding onto them so they don't go off in another direction. And it's really that last one, holding them close to you to strengthen them, a perplexed person, that Paul is using the term here-that's the sense here. When Paul is saying he is struggling for them in prayer so that their hearts may be encouraged, he is praying that they will have the strength that they need to withstand the crosswinds of false teaching that could otherwise blow them away. He is praying that they would have the inner fortitude that would give them the ability to rest confidently in what they know to be true about Christ and their identity in them. He is praying that they would stand firm and not be led astray. There is theological battle brewing-it was on the horizon-and the Colossians needed to be girded up and equipped and encouraged in heart to withstand what was coming their way. This was no time to grow faint of heart or weary or to compromise. Rather, these believers in Colossae needed the Spirit's help to stay strong, to remember their identity in Christ, to remember their sufficiency in Christ. And it was to that end here that Paul prayed for them, that they would be encouraged and strengthened in their hearts.

So we've seen that Paul, #1, was struggling for the sake of relative strangers. We've seen, #2, that he was struggling for the sake of encouraged hearts. Third, we're going to see that Paul now struggled for the sake of loving fellowship. That's what we see next here in verse 2 where after it says “that their hearts may be encouraged,” it says, “having been knit together in love.” Followers of Jesus Christ are knit together, they are part of one body-one singular body-the church. They are joined together as brothers and sisters in Christ. We were each born into one natural family, you have your last name and I have mine, but we are then born again into an everlasting spiritual family. And those words, “knit together,” come from a single Greek word that means literally to join together or to unite together. The definition should make us think of a couple passages, I won't turn you there for the sake of time, which speak to us as being joined to one another as believers with Christ being our head. One of those is Colossians 2:19, you're free to flip over there, just a page over, which says, “holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments grows with a growth which is from God.” The other one is Ephesians 4:15-16 which says “we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” So, as Christians we are joined the way that joints and ligaments are joined together. We are fitted and held together, we are part of one another in that we are part of this one spiritual organism known as the church. But note that we are not a bunch of randomly assorted bones and joints and ligaments which have just sort of been thoughtlessly thrown together. We are not a spiritually lifeless skeleton. No, instead we've been brought together and joined together and knit together in love. Love is the lifeblood of our kinship in Christ. Followers of Jesus Christ are knit together in love. It was love, remember, that brought us together, a love which was demonstrated by God the Father when He set His love upon each one of us before the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1:4-5, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will.” We have also been recipients, are recipients of a love that was demonstrated when God the Son died for us. Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And it's that love that we as Christians, having been the recipients of such great love, are called to demonstrate toward one another. John 13:34, our Lord says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Even as I have loved you, you are to love one another.” Or I John 3:16 says, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

So love, the kind of love that is in view here is not some emotionally charged love, it's not a love that just takes a person wherever the wind blows or wherever the Hallmark card author dictates. Rather, the love that is in view here is rooted in a commitment to what Christ did for us and a recognition of what Christ did for us, and in turn, performing now, these self-sacrificing actions which routinely put others ahead of ourselves. The love that is in view, in other words, is agape love-sacrificial love-which is an identifying mark of those who are truly children of God. So Paul's audience here at Colossae had been knit together in love. And all of us here this morning, if we have believed upon the name of Jesus Christ for salvation, likewise have been knit together in love. And these are simple truths. I get it. These are basic truths. These are foundational truths. So why am I belaboring this point? Well, I'm doing it, not just to keep the clock going and keep you past lunch. I'm emphasizing this to bring up the point that error, whenever it creeps into a church as it was here at Colossae-error divides. Error breaks up unity in love. Error detracts from the unity that a body of believers is supposed to have. As attention is now suddenly diverted away from the simple truths we know about our identity in Christ and the love that we are to show others who have also been purchased by Christ, instead now the focus is shifted to whatever strain of false teaching is now plaguing the church. So now the focus is not how to love Christ and love one another, rather the focus is on who is wrong and who is right and who is for us and who is against us and who is going to stay and who needs to go. So while error divides and falsehood is divisive and breaks up the unity that bodies of believers like us are called to have, love in contrast is this unifying force in the life of a body of believers-in the life of a church. In fact, flip over with me to Colossians 3 where we'll see this very principal laid out beautifully by Paul. Look at Colossians 3:12. He says, “So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.” Those two verses, by the way, could be and should be charter verses for any church in how it should operate. But then he takes it up a notch in verse 14, Colossians 3:14, he says, “Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.”

So while error brings division, love centered on the reality of one's identity in Christ brings unity, which is why Paul here as he prays for the Colossians, is praying that they would remember, back to Colossians 2:1, that they have been knit together in love. And that having this truth brought to remembrance they would now stand unified against that false teaching that was now coming into their church. He knew what a distraction false teaching could become and what it maybe already was becoming. He knew how quickly unity in this church could be lost and how quickly genuine loving concern and fellowship with other believers could be watered down. And so as we see here in verse 2 of chapter 2, he was praying against that. Praying against those sorts of developments, praying that their hearts would be encouraged knowing that they had been knit together in love.

All right, we've seen that Paul struggled for the sake of relative strangers. We see that he struggled for the sake of encouraged hearts. We see he struggled for the sake of loving fellowship, that's what we just looked at. Next we're going to see Paul struggled for the sake of confident assurance. That's our fourth major heading for today. He struggled for the sake of confident assurance. Look at the next part of verse 2 where the text reads, “And attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding.” So Paul was struggling in his prayers for the Colossians here that they would be rich, that they would be wealthy, that they would attain, it says, all the wealth. But the wealth he prayed for, for them, wasn't financial wealth, it wasn't material wealth. He wasn't a closeted name it and claim it kind of guy. No, he was praying that they would have a wealth, it says, of assurance. That they would attain “to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding.” Now I understand that there are Christians and non-Christians alike who struggle with this whole notion of assurance. Some will question whether a Christian can be assured of anything because no one has seen God, John 4:24, and how can we be sure that this whole Christian thing isn't just made up rules and morality to keep man relatively moral in a depraved culture. Some will question whether Christians can, and not only Christians, can be assured of anything, but whether anybody can be assured of anything; because they'll say truth is relative-truth isn't fixed. And certainty, which is a synonym for assurance, is impossible when there is no certain or true truth to point to. And then some will challenge the whole notion of Christians being assured by attempting to insinuate that it's actually prideful to say that you have assurance. And that the humble way, they'll say, that the Christ-like way, is not to be assured of anything-to not be confident of anything-but instead to be open minded about anything, which includes the possibility that what you believe could be false.

Well, what better way to address any of those types of qualms that others have with assurance than to go to what God says on the subject and what His Word has to say on the topic. Because what we're going to find is that God's Word does not promote doubt or lack of assurance as some sort of noble virtue. In fact the opposite is true, and I'm going to have us look at three different passages here which not only speak to believers having assurance of various things, but actually full assurance, it will say. The first is Hebrews 10. Come with me over to Hebrews 10, where we're going to see there is full assurance of faith, a faith which rests in the blood and the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Look at Hebrews 10:19. It says, “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart,” and look at these words, “in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” So there is full assurance of faith for the believer. Now go back with me to Hebrews 6, where we're going to see that the believer, the follower of Christ, not only has full assurance of faith but they have full assurance of hope, meaning with the Spirit's help they will press on and one day fully inherit their eternal prize. Look at Hebrews 6:11. It says, “And we desire that each one of you shows the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” So there is full assurance of hope. Full assurance of faith, full assurance of hope. And then we get back to our text, Colossians 2:2, and we see that the believer has full assurance, it says, of understanding. So the Christian has full assurance of faith, full assurance of hope, full assurance of understanding. That's God's perspective on the type of assurance that the Christian can have.

Now, in context here the Colossians had been instructed in the truth. They had been instructed in the truth about Christ and the Gospel. And they had heard, Colossians 1:5, “the word of truth, the gospel.” And then Colossians 1:6, they had not only heard this truth of the gospel, but they “understood,” it says, “the grace of God in truth.” And that truth was now bearing fruit in them and increasing. So going back to the earliest days of Epaphras sharing these truths with these believers in Colossae, they had been given the truth, they had this correct understanding of the truth. What was needed now, though, in the face of this false teaching and these false teachers who were now in their midst, was this full understanding-to use Paul's terminology-that their understanding of those basic truths was in fact true or was sure belief. So long as there was any degree of uncertainty on their part about any of the basic gospel truths that had been delivered to them by Epaphras all those years prior or the deep Christological truths that Paul has worked through with them in Colossians 1—He is before all things, in Him all things hold together, all things have been created through Him and for Him—if they loosen their grip on any of those truths or loosen their certainty on the reality of any of those truths, what would happen is they would find themselves vulnerable to being swayed by any convincing order who might say differently. Or as it said in Ephesians 4:14, they would find themselves “tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming.” When the Christians at Colossae arrived at this place that Paul was praying for them, that they would get to this place of full assurance of understanding, of not merely remembering a time where they had intellectually affirmed the most basic elements of simple gospel truth, but now having this confident resolve that what they believed was truly true, they would be in possession of a great treasure. They would have the full wealth of conviction that understanding brings what Paul here calls “the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding.”

All that sounds kind of abstract and I get it, which is what I'm going to try to do now is take this phrase, “full assurance of understanding,”and try to explain it through a hypothetical scenario. So this scenario that I'm going to paint for you would involve the typical path of, let's call it the modern-day evangelical. Let's have a case study together. I'm not sure if there is anybody by this name here, but if your name is Henry just know I'm not talking about you, okay? So let's paint a picture of a scenario involving a guy named Henry. Henry is a freshman liberal arts major at UNL. He's unchurched-grew up without any church background, raised in a home where the Gospel wasn't communicated, biblical truth wasn't in any way unfurled or even a thought. He comes here to Lincoln for college and on day one of one of his first days of class in the fall semester he becomes friends with a couple of classmates who call themselves Christians. In their encounters with Henry these friends tell Henry about the fact that he is one of God's precious children and He loves Henry so much and wants a relationship with him. His friends mention something to Henry about the Gospel or the cross, at least, and they mention some hazy facts about the resurrection and they tell him that if he would just believe in Jesus and ask Jesus into his heart, he would live forever with them in heaven. It all sounds like a great deal to Henry. I mean, who would pass up that deal? He certainly isn't. So he takes it. He takes the deal, he takes the offer, he lets one of these new friends from UNL lead him in one of those repeat-after-me-type sinner's prayers and then Henry spends most of the fall semester sort of hanging out with these friends, even attends a few on-campus Bible studies with a youth pastor or a college pastor from one of the more seeker-sensitive churches in town. But nothing about Henry's life really ever changes-not in his thought life, not in the company he is keeping, not in the activities he's partaking in out in the open, not behind closed doors. He is very much the same Henry as before.

Fast forward now to the spring semester, spring semester of 2024. Henry now finds himself in new classes with new faces and new people and in one of his classes he sits right next to an attractive young woman. And this attractive young woman, after talking with Henry for a bit, tells Henry that she's a Roman Catholic. Well, after a few conversations with this young woman Henry finds out that she is actually quite devout. She is not one of those Christmas and Easter type Catholics, she is a regular mass attending Catholic and she is convinced, she tells Henry, that through her own education that the Roman Church is the one true church. Well, Henry finds himself torn. He remembers his friends from the first semester and what they said about Jesus and what they said about the cross and the resurrection. But now there is this cute Catholic girl who is telling him another story, that there is more to it than that. And he's finding himself really liking this girl. And the question he starts asking himself is not, should I date her. He doesn't have the discernment nor the training to know that that's not an option for a believer to date a non-believer. Instead the question he is finding himself asking is, is she right? Have I been wrong this whole time? And is the Roman Catholic faith the true faith and is the Roman Catholic Church the true church?

Bringing that scenario back now over to Paul's day as he writes the Colossian church, that's the type of situation these individual members of the Colossian church found themselves in. They had heard the truth, they had assented to the truth, they said they believed in the truth, but now those beliefs early on were under attack. And their beliefs weren't under attack, as in Henry's case, from some cute Catholic girl. They were under attack from a persuasive group of false teachers who had infiltrated their church. And so Paul is now praying for them. He is struggling in his prayer for them and his struggle for them is sourced in his great love for them. He is praying that they wouldn't back pedal in their indecision or be lukewarm or ill-informed in their convictions. Instead he is praying-and here we are back in these words again-that they would attain “to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding.” That they would, in other words, have such sure conviction that they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they, and not others, were in the truth. In fact, that's what Paul has already said back in Colossians 1:9 that he had been praying for them. Again Colossians 1:9, he is praying that they “would be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”

Okay, I think that's four. Two more to go. We've seen that Paul struggled for the sake of relative strangers. We've seen that Paul struggled for the sake of encouraged hearts. He struggled for the sake of loving fellowship. He struggled for the sake of confident assurance-that's what we just looked at. Now as we work through the rest of verse 2 and into verse 3 we're going to see he struggled for the sake of true knowledge. Take a look at the next part of our text. We pick it up mid-sentence here where it says, “resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Now, like I just said we are picking this up mid-sentence and that means there is a clear link between those words and the words we just went over. We just saw that Paul was struggling in prayer for these Colossians that they would attain “to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding,” and now in typical Paul fashion he is stacking word upon word and thought upon thought and expression upon expression as he says, “resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself.” Now the common denominator linking these passages and these concepts together is that Paul is desperately, through his struggle in prayer, trying to make sure that these believers in Colossae not only knew the right things, but they knew why they knew the right things and that they truly believed those things in the face of false teachers who were trying to get them to believe other things. And as we see here, where Paul wanted the Colossians to arrive was a true knowledge, a full knowledge, a complete knowledge of God's mystery. Which is what? The text tells us, “Christ Himself.”

Now we've seen already in our study in Colossians-in fact it came up a couple weeks ago when we looked at Colossians 1:25-27-that this idea of the mystery is not about an unsolvable puzzle or an unsolvable riddle, but instead it refers to something that was once concealed but is now revealed. In fact look at verse 25 again, he says, “of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” And you may recall as we interacted with that particular passage we saw that the aspect of the mystery that Paul was describing there was that the Gospel of God's grace had extended out to the Gentiles, so that now Jew and Gentile had access through the Jewish Messiah- Jesus of Nazareth-to God. Here at the end of Colossians 2:2, though, our passage this morning, where Paul is really getting ready to start teeing off on the Colossian heresy, he zeros in on another aspect of the mystery as he once again beats the false teachers at their own game by appropriating a word that they like to use-two words they like to use actually-wisdom and knowledge. The false teachers there, they liked to say that they were the ones who had true wisdom and true knowledge. They were the ones that were promoting philosophy and tradition. They were the ones who were promoting new rules and regulations regarding food and drink and Sabbath and such. They were the ones who were advocating for self-abasement and self-flagellation. They were the ones who were bringing in these ideas of seeing visions and worship of angels. We haven't even gotten to that part of the text yet later in Colossians 2, but Paul knows exactly where he is going with his argument here and he knows what he is going to say to the false teachers about all their false practices. And before he gets there he gives the Christians here that he is writing to such a simplified and streamlined response. He is saying, here they don't need all the wisdom and knowledge, so-called wisdom, so-called knowledge that the false teachers were peddling. They had already been given, as our text says, “a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” The false teachers said, “we have wisdom, we have knowledge, secret wisdom, transcendent knowledge available only to us as spiritual elite.” In sharp contrast here, Paul is saying that all the richness of truth necessary for salvation, sanctification, glorification, is found in Jesus Christ who is God Himself revealed.

We see this very concept laid out in more detail if you'll turn over with me to I Corinthians. We’ll look in chapter 1 here where we see this simple idea that Paul is giving us in Colossians in full color, expanded a bit in I Corinthians 1. Look at verse 20. Paul here says, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” So right there at the end of this magnificent text Christ is called “the wisdom of God.” And then just drop down to verse 30 of the same chapter. He says, “But by His doing”- the Father's doing- “you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

So bringing it back to Colossae these believers didn't need what the false teachers were peddling. They had knowledge, they understood the truth, they had wisdom already, they knew how to apply the truth, and it was all found through Christ. Going back to the Old Testament to have wisdom has always been prized as a treasure. Proverbs 8:11 says, “For wisdom is better than jewels; And all desirable things cannot compare with her.” And we know from Romans 11:33, fast forwarding to the New Testament, that the depths of God's knowledge and wisdom are ultimately unsearchable and unfathomable. “Oh, the depths of the riches of both the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!” But what Paul is saying here in Colossians 2:3, is that as unsearchable and unfathomable as they are, the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God who is the source of all true wisdom, that treasure is ultimately found in Christ. He is the center and the circumference of all wisdom. He is both the teacher and the lesson when it comes to wisdom. He is both the guide and the subject of study. No philosopher or psychologist or self-help book or taro card could live up to that billing.

One last thought on this idea that Paul is presenting here about all the wisdom and knowledge being found in Christ, verse 3, is that he says these treasures are hidden in Christ. You see that word there. And that word hidden has its own level of significance, because the word hidden does not mean beyond our reach, and it doesn't mean inaccessible. Rather, it means laid up or stored up. The picture here is of finding a vein of precious gems somewhere in a mine. And to sharpen the focus a bit there has already been a partial discovery of some of the gems in that mine, and once you dig a little bit deeper you see how deep that vein is and how many more gems there are to be unveiled and to be discovered. That's the sense here. The Colossian believers, though they already knew the essentials about Christ and the essentials about the Gospel-those were the gems at the top of the vein in the mine-there was and there is even more to be found. There was and there is even more to be discovered. A person is immediately placed into Christ, they are saved when they trust and believe on the name of Jesus Christ and trust in His death and His resurrection. But once saved, they continue on in their understanding of Christ and the riches of Christ as they grow, as they enjoy the treasures of the wisdom and the riches of knowledge that are found in Him. As we saw last week, they don't remain spiritual infants, they don't remain Peter Pan Christians. No, Christian sanctification is a Spirit empowered forward march. We, of course, rejoice at the fact that God saw fit to save undeserving rebels like us, but we never leave our thoughts parked there. We are called to advance in the Christian life, and we do so by saturating our minds with God's precious Word which is how we functionally are able to grow, II Peter 3:18, “in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” And we do so by applying the truths from God's Word that we find and mine out daily to our living. And as we do so we come to know and appreciate the depths and riches and the treasures that we have in Christ, which helps us ward off any false teaching, like the Colossians here, which may come our way.

All right, we've seen that Paul struggled for the sake of relative strangers, encouraged hearts, loving fellowship, confident assurance and true knowledge. Last we're going to see that Paul struggled for the sake of the Colossians' spiritual protection. We'll look real briefly at verse 4 where he says, “I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument.” So in verses 1-3 he has been expressing the struggle he is going through in prayer for all the Christians in this region and in doing so he is giving them the goals he wants them to reach—that they be encouraged in heart, knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from a full assurance of understanding. But now here in verse 4 what Paul is doing is saying “I say this.” That's literally his words here. I've said what I've said in verses 1-3 so that you won't be deluded-deluded by persuasive argument. See the reality is, and we're going to spend a lot more time looking at this in the weeks ahead, there were deceitful teachers in the Colossians' midst. There were teachers there who were majoring in persuasive argument, or as some translations have it, enticing words. And apparently these were very eloquent instructors who had abandoned the truth and were now trying to delude these Colossian believers. And that word delude means to reason falsely, to deceive, to cheat by false reckoning. It's a word about deceit through carefully chosen words. And Paul, of course, didn't want the Colossians to be deluded. He didn't want them deluded by any false rhetoric. We know that wasn't Paul's way. In I Corinthians 2:4 he said that “my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” We also know that he believed that those who were proclaiming the truth of the Gospel and those who were preaching God's Word should rely exclusively on the truth they were proclaiming and to do so with simplicity and sincerity. I Corinthians 1:17, he says, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.” The truth, in other words, is always its own strongest argument. Eloquence and persuasiveness can be great tools in the proclamation of truth. Paul is a model of that. But they can also serve as dangerous substitutes, masking sloppy exegesis and covering for serious error. As one commentator has noted, nothing is so dangerous as feeble reasoning allied to fast talking. Amen to that.

See, we're not here as the church of Jesus Christ to hear smooth oratory or rhetorical flair. That's not what we are here to do. We're here to hear from the living God through His Word. Meaning whatever comes flying out of my mouth on a Sunday morning or whatever comes out of the mouths of anybody who teaches here at our church any day of the week, better line up with the ultimate source of authority for all of us, which is God's timeless and precious Word. Paul had the same concern. He didn't want the Colossians to whom he was writing, as he says in verse 4, to be “deluded with persuasive arguments.”

I'm going to just close briefly here. When we see in our text here what the Apostle Paul went through and what he taught, we see that he was a man who was committed, a man who was committed to truth, a man who was committed to the eradication of error and of falsehood. And we see that he was a man who was committed to working hard-very hard-to make sure that the latter didn't swallow up the former in these churches that he loved. And as we've seen from our text today, Paul struggled. He struggled specifically in prayer. He struggled in prayer for people he hadn't even met face to face. He struggled that they would have the proper perspective and the proper equipping to face the battles that were coming their way as they stood firm for Jesus Christ. See, Paul's Christianity cost him something, it cost him his energy and his strength and his sleep. It cost him his time and his comforts and his freedom. And as we know, if we read at the end of II Timothy 4, it ultimately cost him his life. But no doubt, if we could interview the Apostle Paul today, he would say it was all worth it. All of it. The prayers, the letters, the sleepless nights, the imprisonments, the continual senses of burden he had for each of these churches, to see other believers presented complete in Christ. It was all worth it. There hasn't been a day in glory, I can guarantee you, over the past 2000 years where Paul has thought, “Man, if I look back on that situation at Colossae or Philippi or Ephesus, I really wish I had made it more about me. Or I really wish I had more Paul time. Or I wish I had taken more down time or a sabbatical or a mental health break.” No way. This man struggled in many ways so that other people could be strengthened in their faith.

So as we wrap up our time this morning, admittedly late, here is your “driving down 84th Street thought for you” for this afternoon. In what ways are you struggling or willing to struggle for the sake of your brothers and sisters in the Lord? In what ways are you stretching yourself? In what ways are you expending yourself? In what ways are you spending yourself for the cause of Jesus Christ? Both to see the Gospel go out to the unbeliever as we saw in the video this morning, but also to see followers of Christ, like yourself, presented complete in Him. Talk to me next week about how those 84th Street conversations went.

Let's pray. Lord, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for its timeless truths, thank You for its inherent power, thank You for the fact that we can read it, study it, work through it all these years later in a different part of the world and understand what You have timelessly and perfectly communicated to Your people. Thank You for the example of Paul, his energy, his prayerfulness, his tireless nature in seeing saints like us built up in the faith. God, I do pray that we would look to the example of Paul, realizing that we aren't and couldn't be apostles, but at the same time we see an example of faithfulness and diligence that we are called to follow and are called to track in our lives. So God, I do pray that as we praise You for the great example of faithfulness in Paul, that we would search our own hearts and have You search our hearts to see where we might be lacking and where we might be slacking and where we might need to be more motivated and committed in our walk with Christ. God, I do pray for a church that is prayerful, that is committed to struggling in prayer both for the lost and those who are in the faith, and that through it all that we would be found faithful and that You would be greatly honored and glorified. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.