Colossians 3:18-4:1 - How We Relate and Dr. Fountain

Welcome back to Strength of the Day.

And I am here with the one and only...

Bryon Self.

Pastor Dr. Dennis Fountain. And back in person.

Wait, did I tell you that I actually got called doctor?

That's amazing.

Did I?

So I was preaching at that church last week.

Yes.

The first morning that I was speaking, a guy prayed and said, I pray for Dr. Fountain as he comes before us today. And the guy I was standing with, which is Chris Luterman.

Yes.

Chris and I both just immediately just popped up and looked at each other, and he was like, you got a promotion.

You were given a gracious honorary doctorate by, what is it, like Crosspoint Baptist Academy or something?

Crosspoint Christian Academy.

There you go.

Honorary doctorate from a man that works there.

Beautiful.

So Dr. Dennis Fountain, welcome to the podcast.

I'm glad I could join you today.

Thank you. Taking time out of your very busy educational life to come educate us on the Book of Colossians. Sure.

Do you want to say anything about any of our prior weeks?

I want to say to all of our listeners and everyone watching, like that I'm sorry for all the sarcasm that Bryon brings to this, but it is humorous at times, and so we have to allow it to take place. So, Book of Colossians, we're in it.

We have been learning a lot. We don't need to go back and do a bunch of recap, but just recently, I think, getting into Chapter 3 about putting off the old man, putting on the new.

And so the last couple of times, the last couple of episodes, we talked really kind of in depth about a lot of those areas.

Specifically, last episode, talking about that list that was given and letting God's peace rule in our life and God's word dwell in our heart, and then really God's glory to be something that we continually focus on.

So, that was through Colossians 3 and verse 17. And today we pick up in chapter 3 and verse 18, down through really chapter 4 and verse 1. So, you want to read or you want me to?

Yeah, let's do it.

Wives, be submissive to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and don't be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

Fathers, do not exasperate your children so they won't become discouraged. Slaves, obey your human masters in everything. Don't work only while being watched in order to please men, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord.

Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically as something done for the Lord and not for men. Knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord, you serve the Lord Christ.

For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong he has done, and there is no favoritism. Masters, supply your slaves with what is right and fair, since you know that you too have a master in heaven.

Yep. It's a great, great passage. So I will say this and then throw it to you and let you say some things that I think for our listeners and really for us, when you look at the Book of Colossians, again, Paul is writing about what we have in Christ.

And I think when you get into chapter number three, he's writing about all of the changes that take place in our life internally, in our thoughts, in how we execute life and our actions.

And when you come to Colossians chapter three, verse 18, down through chapter four, verse number one, it's about all of, in my mind, it's all of the external relationships.

Like, hey, God has come into your life to change all of your external relationships, from your family to your work to whatever you do. He has changed it. And for the Christian, there is a ton of challenge there.

A lot of application, but before we get into it, what stands out to you from those verses?

Yeah, so in how the Roman culture in particular worked, you had a lot of hierarchies of the social order. So we don't have as much of that really at all in America. There's probably some ways in which that works.

But if you go to especially India, the caste system is in full-blown working there. And how it worked in Roman culture was you had all of your landholders had kind of one status. Those were your most important people.

And then below that, you had some of the people that would work for the landholders. And then you had some, maybe the women that belonged to the landholders and children were kind of at one level.

Then you had women that worked for basically just your regular everyday crop worker, farmer person, not a landholder. And then below that, then you had your slaves.

So, Paul has gone through and he has talked about, okay, here are all of your relationships with other Christians. Here's your relationship with other people.

And then he dives into, okay, you've got this caste system that's going on in Roman culture that you're living in. Here's how the gospel, here's how from the beginning of the chapter, the coming Messiah, the anointed one, the Lord, he's coming.

Here's how his rules should influence how you live in that social order. And he kind of turns everything upside down. So women at this point were basically property, could be sold.

However you would treat an animal that belonged to you, that was how you treated women. And to that he says, husbands love your wives.

And the specific action, the word agape, they often used of God's love for us, also used in the Book of 1 John of how people love their sin or how people love the world. It is a active love. It is a love that does.

And so he says, husbands, like you need to, if you will sacrifice, you need to do specific actions of love towards your wives. And he tells them, don't be bitter toward them.

And the pastor and I were talking right before this, and he mentioned some great thoughts, one of which was in essence, a lot of times as men, we can tend to bottle some things up and we can harbor resentment that will occasionally lash out in either

words or sometimes actions. And so Paul here is encouraging men, like, hey, love your wives genuinely, an act of love, not just, I want you to feel warm and fuzzy about them, but that warm and fuzzy feeling should should do something for your wives.

Paul would also tell us in kind of the parallel passage in Ephesians five, your love should result in you loving your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. You wouldn't give yourself for a donkey or whatever animal back in the day.

And so here he's elevating women to this place of, hey, these are people with with real import and worth. And he tells the wives in verse 18 wives be submissive to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.

And the word here is what would be used in the military of a person of lower rank would submit to their ranking officer.

And I think it's really important to note, I read this one quote, I think it was by Warren Wiersby, mentioned anyone that's been in the military would tell you that your submission or your being obedient to the mission of your superior officer is not

because of superior intelligence or worth, it's by rank of or by position of their rank. And for those that are wives, God is not saying, hey, you are less important, so you need to obey.

He's saying be submissive, have their mission be your mission, because of kind of how God has set the order of the home. Can you speak to that?

I'd say it's not about inferiority or superiority. It's not even about subjugation. It's about understanding the roles that God has us in for fulfillment.

So most, and I've preached at this at our church, so you can go online and find some of those messages. Actually, the message from Colossians, I speak heavily into that from the year 2018. But a lot of our culture...

Okay, so I don't want to get off topic. So we're talking about how Jesus, how Christ changes our relationships, and so it's gonna change our home. That's what we're looking at first.

So a lot of our culture says in the home, the husband and wife are completely equal, and that's the way it should be. And when children come, then the husband and wife are equally responsible and all of this.

Now, from a cultural standpoint, that's correct. Hannah and I have been married now almost 20 years. Like, she's an equal in the home.

But from a biblical standpoint, she knows that God's role is for me as the husband to lead. Ultimately, I'm gonna give an answer for that. Now, as a husband, I know that.

So here's where wisdom comes in. Wisdom says, so even though Hannah is supposed to submit to me, that a husband should seek the counsel of his wife. So there's not this superior-inferior relationship.

There's this recognition. It's just like a military term. What you just said.

On mission, like the general, the commander, like yeah, he gave us this order and I disagree with the order maybe, but because we're in the mission together, I see how that could help me or help us. And so it's not, we're doing two separate missions.

We're in this together. And it's not about one person being better than the other. And I think a lot of men take this verse out of context and run with it to be a jerk to their wives.

I think also a lot of women take this out of context to say, well, see, Luke, the Bible is saying that I'm less, no, no, no, no. Actually, the Bible elevates the role of women so much.

And you spoke very well to that a second ago talking about the slaves. I mean, the ground is level at the cross. We hear that all the time.

So I think it's just understanding within the marriage, like God has some roles, but it's all about fulfillment. It's about, like, I will be most fulfilled as a husband when I am loving my wife selflessly.

And I can say after almost 20 years, the times in our marriage that we were the healthiest is the times when I understood my spot in that. And I think Hannah would say the same. She's not here to speak for herself, so I won't speak for her.

But the times when, you know, our marriage is most fulfilled is when we're fulfilling the roles that God has for us.

And so that's where, you know, understanding and kind of getting back to the topic then, that the relationship with Jesus is supposed to change that. It changes our approach.

And then he continues, Paul does, here in Colossians, talking about fathers and parenting. Children obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers don't provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

Like, it's supposed to change how we parent, right? So Roman culture, right? Roman culture was just kind of like, children are property, you're smart off, I beat you up, like, I'll sell you.

There's no relationship. But in Christ, there is relationship. And we as parents, and I like that verse, not provoking your children, lest they become discouraged.

I think I have a list of things that fathers do to provoke their children to anger, to wrath, to frustration. The biggest one that stands out on my head is inconsistency. Any parent will provoke children to anger, frustration, by inconsistency.

And so Jesus brings consistency into our life. So I could just keep going, so why don't you jump in and do some thoughts?

Yeah, I just wanna highlight for that one family section before we go into some of the work relationships that Jesus did model in every way all of these things.

So the Wives Being Submissive, we can read in 1 Corinthians and in many other places how Jesus submitted to the will of the Father.

The other illustration I heard about was like with a football team, the quarterback is giving the direction, he is leading the team. That doesn't mean that he's more important or more skilled or more athletic or anything than the wide receiver.

But when he gives the order and says, okay, team, here's what we're going to do, the wide receiver can either say, I'm going to run my own route and not going to listen to what he's saying, or I can go together.

And so Jesus fulfilled the role of God the Son. And he listened to what the Father said and obeyed and submitted to him. Think even of his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Not my will, but thine. That there was that with husbands loving their wives. You can read over in Ephesians 5 again, with Christ loving the church.

And that was the example of how husbands are to love their wives. Children obeying their parents. That Jesus obeyed everything that the Father had him do.

Fathers not exasperating, not provoking their children. That Jesus did that with us. That he didn't discourage us from a relationship with them.

Instead, he brought us in, and he has, throughout all the circumstances of our life, loved us and brought us into that relationship. So I do think Jesus illustrates for these. If you want to know, okay, what does it look like to submit?

Look what Jesus did. If you want to know what it looks like to obey, look what Jesus did.

That's a really good thought.

And that will give us our marching orders. Then lastly, verses 22 through chapter four and verse one. We have, again, a very different kind of world than we have today.

And I want to specify a different world than slavery as we think about it in American times. A very different thing that was not based on race.

It was much more like, hey, your people get conquered by the Roman Empire, and now you're slaves for whatever amount of time. But you can buy your freedom. We can see that in some discussions with Paul and some other people.

He's like, hey, did you buy your freedom?

Cool.

I was born free. And talking through his Roman citizenship and all of that. I think as a slave, oh, sorry, sorry.

As an employee, I can see these verses that are very important. Don't work only while being watched. That as we go into our day-to-day work, we have a responsibility to serve as Jesus served.

I think of the verse in, I think it's Luke, son of man came not to minister. Or it came not, how is that?

Came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.

Thank you. And to give his life for ransom. There we go.

And so there's that lesson, an example from Christ that Jesus was the one washing others' feet. Jesus was the one healing others. I think even on the cross, what they threw in his face of, he has saved others, let him save himself.

That there's all that, even they said that with him and his family in Nazareth. And many people think that Joseph had passed because of the lack of mention of him later in the accounts where Nazareth tells him, you know, physician, heal yourself.

And Jesus, I think so well illustrated that he didn't do things for him. When he was tired, when he was hungry, when he was tempted, he wasn't looking out for his own good. He was looking out for others.

He was healing others. He was healing other storms, all of those things. And I think that should play into how we work.

Not in a sense of if you have a nine to five, you don't have to like literally give all of yourself and you're killing yourself, working, you know, endless overtime, all that kind of thing.

But I think it does mean that we need to have a heart that says, I'm going to work wholeheartedly because Jesus came and did that for me, for my eternal soul.

And so for those of us who have relatively pushy American jobs where we're not being whipped when we're doing that.

Yeah, we could start that here.

We could. We could. Please don't.

But I feel like that how Jesus' work ethic and how he serves so selflessly should influence. That's how I'm going to work in my day to day life.

Well, that's where just coming back to the main thought that Jesus is getting, that Paul is getting across is that our relationship with Jesus changes the family. It changes my approach to my work relationships. So there's servants, bond servants.

So employees, there's a message to the bosses, masters.

Yes.

So it changes how we approach it. The servant, the employee serve even when you're not being watched. The boss, don't be a jerk.

Pay them what they're due. Like if you say something, do it. But there's a key in these verses that I think is verse 24 and 25.

Well, 23 through 25. Whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of your inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ.

But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality. I think that part is the key.

So my approach to marriage as a husband, I should approach that relationship just like I would approach my relationship with the Lord. As a boss, I should approach that relationship just as I would approach it with the Lord.

If I was the boss of Jesus. If I was an employee working for Christ. If I was a parent, there's just so much application there.

Looking, what serve you do, do it heartily to the Lord, not to men. And so I think there's some good challenges. We're out of time today, but I'd say there's a good challenge basically for every listener, every watcher.

Whatever we do this week, maybe ask myself two questions. This is my thought. I'll give it to you and you can wrap up.

Number one, am I allowing my relationship with the Lord to change my other relationships? How does my family look? How am I doing as a father, a mother, a son, a daughter?

Like, how am I doing with that? Am I allowing it to affect my relationships with work? Would people be surprised to find out that I'm a Christian?

And then the idea that first thought would be, you know, how am I doing in these areas? Second challenge would just be, Lord, help me this week, no matter what I'm doing, to do it toward you.

Like even if I'm an athlete playing a sport, like I do it all for the glory of God. Even if I'm doing a podcast, we do it for the glory of God.

If I'm preaching a message on Sunday, singing a special, serving in hospitality, if I'm working in the nursery, like whatever I do, do it heartily, full hearted, completely giving toward the Lord.

So I would just encourage all of our listeners, all watchers, like this week, God help me to serve, help me to live out my Christian life completely toward you and for you, not pleasing others. So any other thoughts to wrap up?

Yeah, I just think that word heartily, enthusiastically, the Greek would be from the very soul. Should it influence how we interact with others this week? Am I interacting with my wife or my children or my boss enthusiastically from the soul?

Because, that's how Jesus treated me, is he went after me with everything of his, and so I ought to have that same love and purpose in my soul for my human relationships.

So, thanks so much for tuning in, and next week, we tune in to chapter four, and I think verses two through six, if I remember correctly, and know that it'll be very good.

And then we have maybe one or two episodes after that left in Colossians, so you gotta tune in and find out where we're going next.

And those last two episodes are awesome. There's a bunch of names in Colossians four that I just love it. I love this study.

All right, thank you for tuning in, and see you next week.

Have a great day.