Colossians 1:19-29 - His Mission Our Mission
Welcome to Tabernacle Talk, a Bible Study Podcast hosted by Pastor Bryon Self, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Essex, Maryland. We hope that this podcast will help you to know Christ, grow in His word, and show His love to others.
This is a legacy episode of Tabernacle Talk.
These are episodes that are taken from the past five years of my life and different times that I've hosted different podcasts like Bible Babbles with my friend, Carlos Farias, or Strength for the Day that I hosted with my friend Pastor Dennis Fountain of Moses Lake Baptist Church in Moses Lake, Washington.
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/strength-for-the-day-a-devotional-bible-podcast/id1547987576
And hope that these episodes will be an encouragement to you. Right now, I'm on a Tabernacle Talk specific sabbatical, but we've uploaded some of these audio episodes to hopefully help you as you are seeking to walk with the Lord.
We'll be resuming some regular Tabernacle Talk episodes in February or March, so please be on the lookout for those. Let's dive right in.
Well, welcome back to Strength for the Day. And we are here.
Live and in color.
Yeah, live and in. We have colored lights behind us. That means it's professional and microphones, which we've always had.
But anyway, let's see. How's your week been?
It has been a good week. It has been first half, real light. Got to enjoy the week that we're recording.
This is 4th of July. And I was to tell people that.
I know.
But but you asked me how my week was. And none of my kids woke up to fireworks, which was great because there were tons of fireworks going off in the street behind us. And yeah, got to enjoy that.
Last half of the week's been kind of crazy. Prepping for this coming Sunday, which is an outreach Sunday, like a lot of Sundays that we have. Yeah, almost every Sunday.
Yep. This week's not an outreach Sunday. Keep your friends home.
We don't want them. But yeah, I've been prepping for that. And then for our growth groups that we've been diving back into after a break for-
Yeah, three weeks off.
Yeah, but I say a break because we had Teen Camp, which was awesome.
Yeah, we did a break. Not a break. We did VBS.
Amazing. Kids Accepted Christ. Awesome time.
Not a break. Fourth of July week. I think it was a break.
Yeah, it was more of a break.
I'm glad your kids didn't wake up to fireworks.
Yeah, me too.
Hannah and I woke up. I don't know for those of you that are watching and listening, I don't remember if there was a year like this year. I felt like fireworks started June 27th, June 28th and they didn't end literally last night.
And what are we at? The 7th or 8th of July?
Too late.
Right now. And there's still fireworks. Last night we laid them down and Hannah went, did I just hear a firework?
I was like, don't they know that America is not free anymore?
No, don't celebrate that any longer than it's supposed to.
In bondage, no more fireworks.
Anyway, well, we are getting back to our study.
We're in the Book of Colossians and for those watching, you will get to see us as we talk through this. For those just listening, I hope that it's a help to you as well, even though you don't get to see Bryon's beautiful face.
So, let's see, this is recording number four or five.
Yeah, this is four of season number two.
So, Bryon, why don't you give us an update as to where we are in our study of Colossians, kind of a quick recap, and then tell us where we're going today. Yeah.
So we've been going through the Book of Colossians, written by Paul and also helped out by Timotheus, also gets writing credits there at the very beginning.
Are you going to call him Timotheus from here on out?
I'm going to call him Timotheus.
So do you call him Timotheus as well?
Timotheus. My brother-in-law's name is Timothy. Timothy, I don't know.
Timotheus. It could be any.
If it's Timotheus, it's got to be Timothe.
Timotheus.
Okay, Timotheus.
Anyways, very unhelpful to the process. We got Paul and Timothy that have written this letter to the Colossians. They've heard wonderful things about the Colossians.
They've also heard that they've been struggling with some different isms. That have been trying to make their way into the church. And so Paul writes basically to kind of help the Colossians get rooted in Christ.
And so he starts off saying, hey, we've heard wonderful things about you guys. Every time we think about you, we are thanking the Lord for you. We have a couple of prayer requests for you.
That you grow in the knowledge of God, that you would grow and walk worthy of the location, the job that God has called you to, and that you would give thanks to God for everything that he's done for you.
And he is writing it from a jail cell.
And he is writing it from a jail cell. That's mind-blowing to me.
It is.
Because he's just in this great, super casual environment, so he's telling them, oh yeah, here's all these. No, he's spending his time in jail, and this isn't a nice cushy jail. This is a good time.
And he's like, hey, I'm praying for you.
Yes. Not, hey, would you pray for me? That's what I would do.
Yeah, it's funny.
We'll see once we get to chapter four. At no point is he like, hey, pray for my release.
Which we know he wanted, because he does say pray for me in passages, but it's just mine. It's just anyway, we already talked about it.
We already talked about it. It's amazing.
And so then after he says, here's my prayer requests for you, then he goes into, all right, several of these isms that you guys are dealing with, all have to center around who Jesus is, what his place in the world, in God's great plans and schemes,
it all kind of centers around Jesus. And so let me tell you who Jesus is. And so he goes through that whole section and outlines just that wonderful list of traits and attributes about Jesus that we learned about last week.
Yeah, great passage.
And then this week, we are coming in and we're starting at verse 19. So kind of the tail end of that poem.
And in verse 19, it starts off with, Please the Father that in him should all fullness dwell, and having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him I say, whether they be things in heaven or things
on earth. So he goes here and he says, It was God's pleasure, it was God's plan that Jesus would come and reconcile everything to himself.
Now, right now, we enjoy one particular aspect of this that we're going to talk about in a moment, which is our reconciliation to God and to each other in a whole new relationship.
But I think I would be remiss to not mention that when Jesus started at the cross, will one day come to complete fulfillment and the heavens and the earth will be made new.
And so we will no longer have to deal with a earth that is sin-cursed, that has thorns, that has death. Yeah. We have the promise of God's word.
Well, the word reconciliation to be brought back to health, right?
To be brought back to newness. And that's not only us and God, but it's all of creation will be reconciled, made right with what it was supposed to be. It's a great thought.
Yeah.
Really looking forward to that. But I want to mention one thing here before we kind of dive into verse 21 will kind of be our starting point today.
But because Jesus had all things reconciled to Jesus is reconciling all things, he mentions here, having made peace through the blood of his cross. There's no reconciliation possible other than Christ finished work on the cross.
To reject Christ's all-sufficient merit is to reject the best that God has to offer, which is God himself. So you get peace, you get reconciliation through Jesus, you don't get it through anything else.
You can't do it through giving up enough creature comforts, and things like asceticism would say, you can't get reconciliation through worshiping a bunch of gods or nature itself, like polytheism or pantheism.
You can't reconcile to God through your good works or your sacrifices or attending services. Like legalism would say, instead, reconciliation only happens through Jesus. Yeah.
Well, and for our listener and those watching, it's a good reminder, like, oh, those are all the isms that the Church of Colossi was dealing with.
And that's what Paul is writing about. Like, hey, I want to remind you while you have the attacks from the religious groups and sections of belief, like, here's the verse. Here's, and he didn't, you know, here's a book chapter and verse to do it.
But here's the thought from Jesus, from God that would combat that ism. Yeah. And so it's good for us to remember as we read through the book of Colossians, and really any passage, as you read through it, context matters, right?
So we've got to remember why is he writing this? And Paul is writing to defend the faith and to help the believer, again, be rooted in what you have in Christ. So, all right, let's jump into verse, what, 21?
21.
And go all the way through verse 29.
Let's read it. Okay. And then let's do our thoughts.
Why don't you do that?
Great. And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight.
If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, settled and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul, have been made a minister.
I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for
you, to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is
Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end, I also labor, striving according to his working which worketh in me mightily.
This is such a good passage. I hate the fact that we have to bite off such a big chunk, or else we'll be in Colossians for a year. Let me just ask you, Bryon, real quick.
What are a few thoughts that just stand out to you and maybe jump off the page at you, right? Just kind of a casual reading.
Okay. I'm gonna say two things. Number one, from verses 21 through 23, the fact that God didn't allow our natural enmity and depravity against him to stop him from loving us.
That we were his enemies, we were alienated, and yet he loved us, and he sent Jesus, and now instead of enemies and condemned, we are befriended and adopted and loved and made part of his family and part of his body.
Well, and he digs in, like, you're holy. Yeah. You're unblameable.
And like all of these benefits that come by way of Jesus and by way of salvation that are freely given to us. Yep. It's a miracle.
Yeah.
What else?
Yeah, I love that.
And then in verses 24 through 26, I think it's so cool. Paul talks about, he's now a minister. He is a servant of the gospel and of Jesus.
And he talks about through his suffering, being in a jail cell, having been beaten and shipwrecked and all the things we would know about him.
He says, Jesus, though he once suffered for sin and purchased salvation for everyone, now through what he says his body, the church, through the individual believers that are suffering for the sake of the gospel, like Paul did, like he once made
other believers suffer before he was saved. And now he says, Jesus is still, in a sense, continuing to suffer and to bring salvation to people. That Paul, even though he was in a jail cell, was, I say cell, he was in jail.
He was still able to send letters with the gospel. He was able to lead people to Christ. We would know about Onesimus that we will hear about later.
That Jesus was still being able to work and see the gospel come to fruition through the suffering of his body. And that means that the sufferings and the hard times that we go through are not meaningless.
They are not vain.
They're not empty. And they're not even inherently God's judgment on you. When you go through a hard time, it's not that God left out some punishments on Jesus on the cross.
And he has some left over for you.
I want to press pause on that. Because I think that a lot of Christians, we, I was talking with a friend just recently, what we do often is we ask God when we go through suffering, what are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?
And we, unfortunately, we just gravitate to this mindset of like, what did I do wrong to deserve this? When in reality, yeah, there are some things that are judgment. I mean, you can't get past that.
You rob a bank, you're gonna end up in jail.
There's natural repercussions of sin.
Sometimes there's judgment from God because of sin. But I think most of the suffering of a Christian, and I'm not talking about, you know...
Self-inflicted.
Well, even when I talk about most of the suffering of a Christian, you know, we have a, our car doesn't start, and we're like, oh, I'm suffering for Jesus. I'm not talking about that stuff.
I mean, like, the things that Paul was going through and the deep trials of life, I would venture to say that most of it is not a result of some bad decision. Most of it is just God saying, watch me work. Like, it's part of life.
Life happens. Suffering is a part of life. And so I love that you're bringing out that thought because I think that all too often we condemn God in our suffering rather than saying like Paul did, okay, how can you show through me in this suffering?
So go back to what you're saying. I don't want to cut off your thought there.
No, totally. And I think your dad was a great example of this, that even when he had cancer, he allowed Jesus to suffer through him.
And so as a result, doctors and nurses and cancer patients were able to hear the gospel and many people get saved because like Paul, who said, hey, if I suffer, like just like when Jesus suffers, God works.
When I suffer, I'm going to let Jesus suffer through me and I'm going to continue to allow God to work.
Yeah, yeah, he is. My dad's a great example of that. I looked in for a lot of that, but I think I've said this before.
We counted up from his notes after he died, 14 people that trusted Christ because of specifically in the hospitals. Yeah. Not talking about people that got saved at churches and stuff like that.
But I totally agree with that. Allowing that suffering to exalt Jesus in my life and people to see him through it. So, well, let me ask you this.
Any thoughts on that that you want to say?
How close are we to the end?
Well, we probably have like four minutes left. Okay.
I have something at the minute 15 mark.
Great. Now, I'm going to have to keep track of time. Well, then let's do this.
All right. So, strength of the day. We want to ask the question.
We got the passage. We know what Paul is writing about. We know who he's writing to.
Maybe, what's our take aways? So, I'll give a couple that I have from this passage and what I think they can do for us, and then we'll give you that minute. All right?
So, number one, I would say this to everyone. You know, do you realize what Paul is doing? In really the whole first chapter, as Paul writes about prayers and all that stuff, Paul really digs in to what Jesus did.
He digs in to the word is reconciliation. Like, what does it mean to be made right with God? And I asked a question, I just came across it in my notes from 2018 when I went through the series.
The question I asked was, in your Christian life, have you set down your shovel and stop digging? Do you know what we do as a Christian is all too often we think we get it. I know I do this.
I think I get it. My wife and I were talking just recently. As a Christian, sometimes we lose the excitement and we lose, I can't even think of the word, but we lose the wonder of what Jesus did for us.
We set down the shovel. We quit digging into reconciliation. I think what a great challenge maybe for this week, like strength of the day, what are these, dropping on Mondays?
And this is going to give you something for the coming week. Hey, dig into what Jesus did for you. Like don't just know I'm saved because of Jesus.
Like dig into it. What does it mean to be reconciled? Look up these words that I made holy and unblameable.
All of the, what do these words mean? Because the depth of it will shape our perspective from it. And here's what I mean by that.
Paul dug in, and this is the second thought. First thought is let's dig in to what we have in Christ, the reconciliation. But because of Paul digging into it, verse 23, he says, because of all of this, I'm a servant.
I'm a minister. And what is he talking about? Well, because of what Jesus has done for me, it's simple, I want to use my life for him.
And then he talks about one of the best ways we can do that is by sharing Christ with others.
And so really, the two challenges I would give us today as we talk about strength for the day or strength for the week, asking God, like, God, help me to dig into what you've done for me and then help it to impact how I use you and speak you into the
lives of others. Help it to impact how I suffer. Help it to impact my conversation. Help it to impact all of my relationships because you've given unto me the Ministry of Reconciliation.
We'll see that later on. But, man, I have it. So God helped me to give it to others.
So I think there's a couple of great challenges for us there. What do you got right there? What's that minute 15 mark you wanted?
Okay.
So Jesus in verses 21-23, He saved us, He reconciled us in the body of His flesh through death. He says this particular phrase, To present you. He has, He died, He reconciled you in order to present you holy, blameless, above reproach in His sight.
And so that was Jesus' mark is these people that were enemies, they are now reconciled, and then I'm going to have them basically adopt my nature.
I'm going to have my spirit that they would be daily conformed through sanctification into the image of Christ. And so then that's what Jesus came for.
You could read about that June 23, 24, that Christ's goal is to present us blameless and holy and unreprievable before His sight with exceeding joy.
So then Paul says his mission in verses 28 and 29 says, we preach Christ warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
And Jesus' mission of reconciliation and presentation of holy believers ought to be our mission as well. Make disciples, join them with the family of God, and teach them our model, our goal, who is Jesus.
And so I think the takeaway for us today is what's one step that we can make this week to make Jesus' mission our mission. Who can we tell about the gospel? Who can we encourage to join the family of God at our churches?
You know, Jesus didn't want any orphan Christians out there. He wanted them to be a part of the family. So who can you, what Christian can you encourage this week to join with the rest of the family?
And what believer can you encourage to be more like Jesus this week? Maybe that's at, if you're here at MLBC at a growth group, that you encourage someone to be with you.
They'd get some spiritual encouragement and nourishment kind of halfway through the week. Maybe it might be that you read through the Bible with a friend on the Bible app, or you meet someone for coffee.
And we talked a few weeks ago in growth groups about being real with one another and being vulnerable and saying, hey, here's an area of my life I want to grow in. I want to be more like Jesus. And what's something that I can pray for you for?
What's something I can help you be accountable in? How can we encourage one another to making Jesus' mission of reconciling, making enemies not enemies, and seeing people saved and then seeing them grow in their walk with the Lord.
Yeah, that's good. Well, we'll wrap up for the day. But I would say this, all of that, how we approach others with Christ, really only flows in a healthy way when we realize what he's done for us.
So start the week remembering, maybe start the day remembering what Jesus has done for you, and then allowing his mission to become our mission based upon that knowledge. So, well, that's strength of the day. What?
I've got one cool thing.
One more?
One more. Okay, go for it.
Our Spotify listeners might already know. So our podcast hosting service is with Spotify.
And so if you are a Spotify premium user, we have exclusive episodes of Strength for the Day that are just the regular episodes, but you also get to listen to a song that goes along with that particular strength.
So last week was God of the Ages is linked to it. So if you listen on Spotify, you can do that. I might be able to throw it in at some point, somehow into our YouTube playlist as well.
So other people can listen to it too. All right. Hope you enjoyed Strength for the Day.
We'll see you next week as we begin Chapter 2.
It'll be a great time.
See you then.
