Colossians Lesson 3
Colossians · JD McCulley · Feb 9, 2014
Colossians (2014), No. 06
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49264165976

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so you're probably wondering what's going on with handouts. We're all a little different that way and that's okay. I find that sometimes we don't get to cover everything in a class and especially one in this way and so what I wanted to do is just allow the freedom to talk about different things and have questions but also have just the ability to go back and connect the dots where we might not necessarily do that in class, and so that's what's being done here. You'll also notice that we're kind of backtracking in Colossians towards verses 9 and 10 in this lesson, and I'll finish up through 14 next week as the hope, and we'll just play that by ear. And so here's the situation. A lot of times when we get various types of questions, we end up going in different directions and different topics are covered. And so as I was preparing for today, I just felt the Lord would have me get solid back into the text and really hone in on exactly what's being said in the book of Colossians so that we can prepare ourselves moving forward into the person and the work of Christ, which is such a big topic and such a major theme of the book of Colossians. I wanted us to have that chance to really focus in on this introductory part of Colossians and make sure that in our minds we've connected the dots with the text itself.

So, with that in mind, you've got your questions ready for next week. So that means that you get to take a little bit of a break this week and you're ready for next. Does that make sense? You're ready.

So this week what I'd ask you to do is just open up your Bibles And let's look into the book of Colossians together. You can definitely feel free to ask any questions that you want to, and we can go about it that way as well. But what I'd like to do is just get us a running start back into the text, get our minds around the book of Colossians, what Paul was thinking and writing in that book. There's only one rule with handouts. You can't look ahead. No looking ahead. If you don't have your Bible open to the book of Colossians chapter 1 and 9, you can read along up here with us.

That will be fine too. But what we want to do is we want to get in Paul's mind and think about the Colossians. Think about yourself in relationship to the Colossians. and immerse ourselves in the text and let the Spirit just teach us from what we see here. And that's the goal.

So, in verse 9, 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 and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. For he rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

And so this particular chunk of verses, 11 through 14, are the ones that you've prepared for. And so what we're going to do is we're going to go back and we're going to find a sequence here in this set of verses, 9 through 14, that I think that we just didn't get a chance to look at last week and the week before. And so we want to start by, you know, what is typical, kind of the way that I think is, what are the major chunks of this book? How does the book of Colossians break down, and where are we in the study of it so far?

So we've got that salutation that we've covered, and there's two prayers in chapter one. verse 1 through 14. And the first prayer is the prayer of thanksgiving. He thanks the Lord for what he knows of them. And then he goes into this prayer of intercession. And that's what I've titled this particular lesson, is the prayer of intercession.

And it's verses 9 through 14. And we're going to look at 9 and 10 really in depth because there's a very rich sequence there that we want to kind of try to pull out. So in looking at 9 through 14, we'll call that the prayer of intercession. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a head start in terms of what I think that we're going to learn from these verses.

And again, don't hesitate to ask questions. If you've got thoughts or you've got things that you want to get clarity on, feel free to do that. That's the nature of this style of class. But I'm going to continue to guide and direct us through the text until we have those questions arise. So verse 9 through 14 are going to teach us two things.

First of all, The root of Christian living and growth is knowledge that is filled with the knowledge of His will. And we talked a little bit about that last week. We started talking, Mike mentioned the plan. How important is it to know God's plan? And I think we got into it just a tad, but what I wanted to do is expand on that a little bit today and get a little bit more clear with what's behind that.

So we want to first of all recognize that these verses teach the root of Christian living is the knowledge And then second, it will tell us the essence of prayer and how to pray for fellow believers. I think there's a really interesting lesson to be learned here about how Paul prayed. And I don't know that we talked a whole lot about that yet, but there's some really interesting points here that I thought we could bring out. So, in order to kind of teach how these verses layout in terms of these two major points, the knowledge and how to pray. What I found is that William Macaulay has an audio lesson on this on the book of Colossians, and it's just been great. It's been extremely helpful to me. He uses the analogy of a tree to help tie these verses together, and so hopefully we can use that same analogy to help build that picture of what Paul's talking about as well. So, we learned these two main factors.

Let's talk about this. without looking at the slide and thinking about what was it that you think moved Paul to pray. I remind you, he's praying twice now. He's got a thankful prayer in verses 3 and 4, and now he's moving to a prayer of intercession. What was it that moved him to pray about this stuff?

We've talked about this a little bit, so I'm not going to necessarily look for you guys to answer the questions in the same way that you might do with Mike and Courtney, but feel free to. The point that I want to make here is that there's a very interesting situation that Paul is praying for that doesn't seem quite normal, and so I wanted to kind of pull that out. First of all, You see, it's for this reason. It's literally because of this. So, because of what? Because of verses 1 through verse 8, there's a situation because of this that he wants to pray for them and intercede for them.

Verse 4, since we heard of your faith in Christ. Well, that's pretty basic stuff, isn't it? He heard about the fact that they were believers. So are you going to pray for a believer? Okay. Verse 6, He understood the grace of God in truth, and so they understood grace. They were aligned with grace. Well, that's pretty basic, isn't it? Is that a good thing? How often do you find a young believer that maybe has faith but is not aligned with grace? often, but these Colossians were. They were aligned with grace, they had faith in Christ, and in verse 8, they were loving one another in the Spirit.

You'd say, wow, that sounds kind of like a mature believer in our day and age. But for Paul, he recognizes this as being the basic foundation of Christian living. He says, and it's because of that, I need to pray for you. You think, well, goodness, you know, that's different. But it was these walking in basics of Christianity that moved Paul to pray in these verses.

And so their faith was directed toward the object of Christ. And that's important. Because their faith was not in the other philosophical teachings of the day. It was directed in Christ. And they were oriented towards grace. And they had already had this teaching.

You get the feeling that the very basic presentation of the gospel that Epaphras would have made to them contained what we oftentimes see missing in the gospel message itself to young believers. But it contained these elements. It contained the object of Christ, and it included the grace teaching associated with that. And they were in tune with the Holy Spirit and experienced the fruit of love.

So they knew about this already. They already knew what the whole walking situation looked like to some degree, but Paul said, I've got to pray for you. He felt like he needed to pray. So why pray? for believers walking in the basics. I mean, why do that? We usually are moved to pray because of troubles, right? We see a situation where maybe they're taking on a whole different perspective. They're being challenged with the truth and say, well, that's a situation we need to pray for.

When we talk about prayer requests in the morning, and again, there's no reason not to pray for the troubles and the physical ailments that we face, definitely we see that being brought before the Lord in prayer too, but this is not the situation that Paul was experiencing. He was experiencing good news about the basic walk of Christian believers, and he said, I'm going to pray for you still.

Of all people who don't need prayer, it would seem that these believers didn't need Paul's intercession. But what did Paul ask for? He asked for something specific, and that's the chain of content that we want to look at over the next two weeks. What is Paul asking for, and what comes from the intercession that he makes?

So the word ask, it's just got this sense of urgency there. I mean, it's not a difficult word, but inside of that word, from a Greek perspective, we'll kind of add a little bit of color there, there's a demand, an urgency that Paul has for this. So it's not just, while you're walking, so I'm going to ask for a few things just to make sure you keep going. No, he's interceding for these believers. And in the King James Version, it says, desire, and that's not near a strong enough word. I think the word is ask, and maybe you can ask for urgency. that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will."

And that statement is one that we talked about a little bit. Mike mentioned the idea of the plan. How important is it to know God's plan? Well, it is, and we want to look at it from that angle. We want to apply that truth, but we also want to say, what was it that the Colossians needed in order to grow from where they were? Go ahead, question? No, that's good. Oh, okay.

So Paul's asking that they would be filled with the knowledge of his will. We alluded to certain aspects of these words, and some of this will be reviewed, but we'll just try to tie it together. So again, we're trying to pull these verses together so they make a concrete, clear sequence in our mind, because I think that's where Paul was going. We want to look at what does this phrase mean, what do these words make up? because there's a lot of big topics here. You can get off on a lot of big rabbit trails pretty quick with this, but we've got filled knowledge and his will.

So this is the route where everything else through verse 14, which is where we're headed in the next week, this is where everything flows and this is what I'm calling the essence of prayer. This is the essence of what Paul's praying for. It starts here.

This is the only thing he asks for. He doesn't ask for everything else that happens. He asks for this, and as a result of them receiving that they may be filled with the knowledge of his will, there's a series of things that start to happen to these believers. But Paul only asks for this. So if we are to ask this on behalf of believers, all kinds of other things will happen in their life. I think that it's really interesting to see that in this book. This is all that Paul asked for.

All else was an outcome. So I started thinking about this, and maybe you can think about this too. You've got young believers, I've got my young children. I'm thinking, how do I pray for these guys so that they eventually bear fruit? That's next week. We'll start this week and we'll finish out next week. But we want to see our children bear fruit. We want to see our fellow believers bear fruit. So how do you pray for them? Do you pray that they would bear fruit?

Well, you can. There's nothing wrong with going to that way of thinking, but there's some interesting factors here that I think would potentially direct our prayer in a more root, foundational way, and that's what I want to get at today. So, what does it mean to be filled, and with what? We talked about this last week. Courtney mentioned that this is in the passive voice, and I think that's very important. We're going to get a little Greek-y, geek-y every now and again if it helps us understand something. We're not going to do it if it's not necessary, but when it helps bring something to light, by all means, that's a part of how we study the Bible and the advantage of it actually being written in a language that has more to say than just English. So this word filled means to cause something to become full.

And it's passive, which means, who's doing the filling? Are you supposed to fill yourself with the knowledge of His will? No. No. God does. That's right. It's a passive action. This is something that happens to you as a result of something. So, Paul is asking nothing less than the most. Notice he's not saying, just give him a little smidgen of it. Just give him a little tint. He says, no, fill him all the way up. Get him all the way full. So they weren't spiritually ignorant, but Paul knew they needed more of God's word, that is, more of the knowledge of God's will.

I think that's interesting. When we see young believers walking in a positive direction, or in a negative, what do they need? Now, there's a lot that comes from this verse, and so don't hear me say that all a person needs is the knowledge of God's will, and then that doesn't have any more context to it in the New Testament. There's a lot about what that means that Paul adds. in the book of Ephesians, in the book of 2nd 1st Corinthians, I mean every single one of Paul's epistles helps expand this knowledge, but the knowledge itself is a key factor to what it is that a believer needs, and that's what we talked about, how important is it to aggressively pursue this, and I want you to keep that in mind, that was one of my questions, how important is it to aggressively pursue this? And we'll see that as we go here. But he's saying, you're making beautiful progress in your walk. You've got your faith oriented toward Christ. You've got grace. You've got love in the Spirit. Now let's keep on moving in the knowledge of His will, so that all these things that we're about to talk about occur in our life.

So Ephesians 1, 15 through 18, it's the same thing. He does the same thing. And you can look that up on your own just for the sake of time. We'll leave that there. And oftentimes what I'll be doing is referring back to... I'll be referring to the parallel verses in the book of Ephesians. One of the things that's neat about the book of Colossians, and as you read it, I would encourage you to read the book of Ephesians alongside it. They're parallel... commentaries on one another.

They give further additional light to each other. And the way Verne refers to it, it's a divine commentary. Forget the commentaries that you can get out there for now. You've got another divine parallel commentary that can give you additional light that you don't have to worry about whether it's right or not. And I think that's good.

So these Ephesian passages will help shed additional light and clarity and consistency with how Paul's thinking. So let's look at this word knowledge. We talked a little bit about it. but to know about, to know fully and accurately about. And I think that's what's interesting. There's this, and again, don't feel like you need to remember this, but what we see as we look at in the Greek side of things, there's this epi in front of gnosis. And gnosis is knowledge, and you might have heard that used for knowledge, but this is epinosis, which is a little bit different. And that epi has something that's interesting that gives us a further picture of this knowledge that he's praying for these believers. So the epi actually directs it and intensifies it. So this is a full, complete, accurate knowledge of God's will.

And you think, how in the world are you going to get that? Well, that's a good thing to think, right? I mean, if we were praying for less, would that be the standard of our Lord? I mean, everywhere we see in Scripture when we're going to talk about this, the standards are high. And Paul doesn't lower his standard just because these believers have started making progress. He says, no, I'm thinking about the full, complete, accurate knowledge that you're going to be filled up. Not anything less than the fullness of that knowledge.

How in the world is that going to happen? We'll talk about that as we go. I'm anticipating your question there, and hopefully one of you would have asked that. How in the world do you get to a full, accurate understanding of the knowledge of God's will? Well, let's keep going, and we'll talk about that a little bit more. So this kind of knowledge is the root to growing in the Christian life. This is the root. You think, well, wait a minute, isn't it Christ? Isn't it a personal relationship with the Lord? And the answer is yes.

But this is how Paul is phrasing these things, and we're going to see that other scripture gives additional light and clarity to this, but right now Paul is praying for this accurate, full knowledge in God's will. So verse 10 is the evidence of this feeling. Can someone read verse 10? So that ye will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please him in all respects. bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. That's the evidence of having been filled with the knowledge of His will. So, just to kind of keep that, we're going to move into that verse in a moment. Keep that in mind, that this is verse 9, talks about what Paul is asking for. Verse 10 is the result of that prayer being answered by the Lord, if it is.

So Colossians 2.2, same word here. Notice it is found in Christ himself.

Someone read Colossians 2.2, because this is where we're going to be in several weeks, and it's talking about the same thing here. But their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes, resulting in the true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ himself. True knowledge of God's mystery, and that is what?

It's a person, okay? So what we're not saying is that this knowledge is what's in your notebook, okay? We're talking about the knowledge of a person. And we know that that relationship, and especially when we think about our position and our condition, I mean, this gets really, really colorful in terms of what it means. And it's personal, and we're going to talk about that more as we move through the passage.

But look at this question. Can a believer come to a fullness of this type of knowledge in this present life? I mean, that's what I wondered. Does anybody else have that same curiosity? Can you come to a full knowledge of God's will? So, what I would say is that apart from glorification, that is, the point in time where we are conformed fully to the image of Christ, we're face-to-face with our Savior, we have our resurrection bodies, we will not come to that fullness until that point in time.

So, this full and accurate knowledge is so far as is possible and is known, and that we can, through the time that we spend with our Savior, in His Word, beholding Him, as 2 Corinthians 3.18 talks about, that's going to come up again and again, we can know Him increasingly. But to know Him fully is in the plans. It is part of where you will be.

But that doesn't mean that you just set down You've got the faith, you've got the grace, you've got the love, just like these believers in Colossians. And you say, that's all I really need. No, Paul says, no, you need more. Because that more is going to produce things in your life, and as a result, God's going to be glorified from that, and it's not about you. And that's what we're going to see here.

So interesting, all the exhortations in the New Testament, if you fulfill them completely, I mean, describe the glorified state if you fulfill all these completely. Rejoice always? No, not us. Don't grieve the Holy Spirit. Is that you? At least at one particular point in time over the last day for some of us, week for others.

In everything give thanks. Now these standards are very important. God did not intend to lower the standards because we're placed in Christ, as we're going to learn more of in this book. We're placed in the perfect Lord and Savior, that's our place. We are there with Him. We are in Christ. And so, of course, every standard that Christ is capable of fulfilling in His deity is mentioned to us as well, right?

Well, most of them. The very term identification means that your ID, you know, that thing that you carry around in your pocket, you pull it out and it says, In Christ. That's your identification. Well, if that's who you really are, then in your position, you don't read the Holy Spirit. In your position, you rejoice always. But, we all know that we don't necessarily align our condition by faith with our position, do we? And that's where the rub starts to take place.

But Paul doesn't say, I'm just going to go ahead and lower the standards because, no, you're identified in Christ. So the standards are always that perfection that Christ is capable of. As we rest in Him, He lives through us. We're going to talk more about the mechanics as we go, but just realize Paul didn't necessarily talk about how all this is getting done right now, he's just talking about what he wants to intercede on their behalf for. So the standards for God are perfect and that's on purpose, so that the accomplishment of it will be in Christ so He receives all the glory. That's important for us to know. But it doesn't mean that the standards change. Legalism and law brings these standards down, and we get the glory. Paul didn't have any, you know, you're dead to the law. The standards are Christ.

You think, well, how in the world? Well, that's where this whole identification stuff that Mike and Courtney have been talking about, that's where this Holy Spirit class that they taught last session, or last semester, whatever, What do you call those? Last time. You know, that is the mechanics in what's happening in a grace-based, identification-focused life.

That's what that means. So we've got lots of teachings surrounding that. But what Paul is not saying, well, you've got to do this, you've got to do this, you've got to do this. No, I'm going to pray for the knowledge of His will. that you be filled all the way to the brim in it, so that when you come to know the person of Christ himself, these things start to happen as an outflow, because Christ is doing the living through you, as we see in other verses. So this is the very reason why we abide above. It's available. That's what's different, is that you don't just see a standard and say, I've got to pull up my bootstraps and get her done.

That's not what Paul had in mind here. The rest of his epistles give clarity to the fact that we're resting. Our mind is above. We're abiding there. That's where we are. And Christ's life, literally the fruit that is being talked about in these next several verses, is Christ's fruit in us, as we'll see.

So, I believe that the 2 Corinthians 3.18, we've talked about it a number of times already in this class, it's kind of a theme verse for Holly Hills, and I think it's a great one, because almost everything that we teach, even when we were talking about the book of James, man, you talk about standards in the book of James. It's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, okay? And James didn't have all of Paul's teachings yet. He didn't have clarity on all the identification.

He pointed to a lot of it, but at that particular point, that was the first book written in the New Testament, and he's just like, standards, standards, standards, this is how Christ expects us to operate and live. And then as we get into Paul, we start to see, oh wow, that's Christ doing the living through us.

And this 2 Corinthians 3.18 is so key because it talks about us beholding Him, and as a result of that, being transformed in His glory.

And that really summarizes almost every time we see a standard, you know, every time we see rejoice always or be filled with the knowledge of His will, I go back to 2 Corinthians 3.18. This is how that gets done. Don't get confused about pulling up your bootstraps and trying to rejoice through the day.

That's called faking it till you make it. And guess what? You don't make it. We fake it, right? That's how we start. In fact, in a lot of cases with young believers, they go into a faking it pattern. I've got to look this way, and by golly, if I don't fake it good enough, people are going to start praying for me, so I better keep it up. And that's what you do. And that's important. We talk about that process is important, that process of dying and understanding that our old sinful nature is not capable of producing the types of fruit that the New Testament tells us is supposed to be produced in our lives.

And so we say, well, goodness, let's get back to beholding the Lord in his words so that we are transformed and he gets the glory. So, can a believer come to the fullness of this type of knowledge in his present life? No, but it doesn't mean that he can't grow in it. And that's what Paul is desiring here. And that will happen at the point of glorification.

And what's interesting, I think I mentioned it a little bit later, in the book of Ephesians it talks about how we're going to continue learning about God's grace on into the ages to come. So, even in eternity, we're going to continue to be learning about and have access to the knowledge of His will with regards to grace on into eternity. But we have the mind of Christ, haven't we said that a few times?

What does that mean? Well, you have access to the knowledge of his full will, and it's yours. So how important is it, or how important is having knowledge of God's will? So of his will, we talked a little bit about this last time, we used the word plan, his plan for your life. I wanted to delve into the subject of his will a little bit more.

So by this, that which is desired by God is made known to believers by the Holy Spirit's teaching ministry via God's words happening right now. And God gave certain people charge over transferring what is in the scripture to other believers to encourage them, to teach them, and to bring the knowledge of His will to them. And so that's what we do. That's where we're going to be headed with Vern in a little bit. That's what we're doing now is we're working through what he has revealed about himself specifically in the Word, and we're relying on the Holy Spirit's teaching ministry to work that into our person.

Colossians 4.4, again looking forward into the book that we're studying, Epaphras is their teacher, and he wanted them to be fully saturated in the will of God. Someone read chapter 4, verse 4. In order that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak. Read it, keep on going. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunities. No more?

Is that your speech? Yeah, just one more. Sorry. Is that your speech? Always be with grace, seasoned as it were with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person. Might have got the wrong verse there. As to all my affairs, titch us. That's right. Can you amplify a little bit about that? Let your speech be of grace seasoned with salt. We sure can.

In fact, since that's coming up in a future lesson, we're going to go into great depth about that. And I think that that is a result of what Paul is asking for here. So, when we get to that verse, we're going to find out that our speech should be seasoned by the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. That's how we talk because that's who we are because we are filled with the knowledge of His will and we're growing in that. We're growing in an intimacy with the person of Christ.

And so that's an outcome. It's one of those standards. Again, how often is the things that you say seasoned with grace and so forth? Well, It has to do with, again, beholding the Lord through His Word, and as a result of that, His life gets lived through. You're at rest, and He's very busy. Does that make sense? At least for now?

Thank you. Yeah, you bet, you bet. I'm not sure if I got the verse right there, but It's 412. Thank you. Read 412 for me. Epaphras, Epaphras, who is, whenever you 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. Stand perfect, fully assured in the will of God. Epaphras is connected with what Paul is praying for. And so we see that connection.

And we won't go into Acts 22, 12-15, but we see there that Paul was appointed, literally in these verses, to know his will. This is the instance where Paul is receiving his sight back. And as a result of that, he's given his purpose. This is where his commission is in these passages. in these verses, is to know his will and, additionally, to be a witness for him to all men of what you have seen and heard. And this was Paul's purpose, that is, to share the final authority of God so far as he had seen and heard it. And so I place the final authority on the word of God, God himself, communicated through the word, and Paul is a witness for it. We also see the word ambassador being used of Paul.

So, in terms of the will, this whole big God's will thing, every religious system has a different version of will. What it is that's desired and is pleasing to that system. Some it's karma. Others it's Allah. But in the case of God, God has communicated his will more clearly and more specifically, more directly, than I believe any other system out there.

And you think, well, what does that really mean? But it can be broken down, I think, into three different perspectives. God's sovereign will, his moral will, and his individual will. And while we're not necessarily going to try to attack this in great depth, that could be a study in its own right. This is the big picture. I borrowed this from Vern. The big picture on God's will.

God's sovereign will, it's fixed and it's irreversible. It includes your position and your possessions in Him. This is God's sovereign will. And for us as New Testament believers in the church stewardship, or age as we might call it, we find that the more we understand our position in Him, the more we understand God's sovereign will for us. And that's fixed and unchanged. And you have possessions associated with your position. The book of Ephesians. My goodness. Citizenship. Blessings.

All of those things are God's sovereign will for you as believers in this age. His moral will is revealed in scripture and is intended to be lived by the life of Christ. And so we have to ask ourselves, is this God's will for us in this age? And if so, how does it get done? If it's supposed to please God, well then how in the world does it get done? And there's a whole system of thought that says you've got to work it out. Carry your cross daily.

And that's not what we believe is the case here. We believe that it is God who does the living through us. That we're at rest, abiding above, beholding the Lord through his word, and He accomplishes the fruit through us, as we'll see in these next passages.

So we've got the moral will, and then we've got God's individual will. So that's the stuff about, you know, what kind of car should I buy? I've got to go read the Bible, find out which kind of car I should buy. Now, this has to do with God's individual will for each of us, and it consists mostly of learning to make wise decisions.

You know, wisdom is a part of this verse. I'm going to talk about it in a minute, a little bit further. but making wise decisions with godly wisdom rather than worldly wisdom. So just in brief, that's some of the big picture on God's will. When we see being filled with the knowledge of his will, that contains a lot of different aspects. And that's why I think the next part of the verse really goes into that individual will side of things. This is also borrowed from Vern. I thought it was really insightful from a previous Colossians class that he did. What does being filled with the knowledge of God's will consist of?

So, there's four different points, two are knowing, two are understanding. I think these really wrap things up well. Again, we're reviewing right now, these are things I know we talked about last week, but hopefully it's giving some meat and potatoes to what's in the Word. Also, having the opportunity with Mike and Courtney to be able to expand into other areas that have to do with what Colossians is talking about.

So, knowing in depth your position in Christ through His Word. So, we said, how aggressive do we need to be? Well, when you think about, you need to spend X amount of time in your Bible so that you can know in depth your position in Christ. That's not the way I would phrase it. You need to spend a great deal of time in your Bible so that knowing that your position in Christ is founded and you're having been identified with Christ, you need to understand that. So you gotta go spend more time in your Bible.

I wouldn't say that. Here's what I would say though. The aggressive pursuit is not like we think of aggressively pursuing a scientific study or a class in university. It is about spending time with where you're identified and who you're identified with. go read your Bible, I would never think of it that way. I would encourage my heart and remind myself that it is about spending time with my Savior that results in these things.

So it's as we have time together, as we get to know each other. Mike uses the term, you know, we want to know. We want to know what's going on. He talks about himself with Donna and the time that they spend together. They want to know each other. Let's record it in our notebooks, memorize it, and make sure we quote it whenever we have a problem. This is about spending time with the person, and as a result, you come to know these things. And you do that through His Word.

Again, 2 Corinthians 3.18. It comes up over and over and over. You're going to get tired of hearing it. Hopefully not. Third, understanding that God has predetermined that you will be conformed to the image of His Son. He's taking care of it. You spend time with him, he's taking care of it. Understanding the character of the life of Christ and the believer.

So these are aspects of the knowledge for us in this age that we grow in. These aspects are very important. And there are things that we don't hear as we go grab a book off the Christian bookshelf. We don't talk about this stuff very often. This is different. Why? Well, I don't know. It's in the scripture. But somehow it gets looked over often.

But knowing your position, knowing how you've been identified, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, seeding, those are all parts of knowing God's will. And His individual will for you comes out of having understood that sovereign will of identification.

So let's move to this one. What are the qualities that make up this knowledge? So we're moving on into the verse. We talked about some of these things. I just want to give a little bit more color to them. Is this just documented knowledge that you can recall or quote, and the answer is, we've already said no, that's not the way this works. I mean, you're taking notes right now, but that's not being filled with the knowledge of His will. That's only a component of it.

You've got to know the facts. You've got to know what's true, yes, no, right, wrong. You've got to know those things in terms of how the Lord communicates Himself, but that's not where you get filled, and that's not what the complete and accurate knowledge, that word epi, Epinosus, on the word for knowledge, that's not what that means.

So it goes on, and Paul qualifies it with these two qualities. He says spiritual wisdom. Your Bible may read spiritual wisdom and understanding, but that spiritual is attached to both. It's actually in the Greek attached to both. So I say it's spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. So spiritual wisdom, that's the skill to perform. Not just grasping the facts, but the capacity to perform.

If God asked you to do something, and you didn't have the capacity or the wisdom to actually see that in your life, then there would be no application for wisdom. I mean, you couldn't grow beyond just, well, I don't know how it gets done, but I know what he says. But that's not what the Bible is talking about, and that's not what Paul is talking about in this part of the Bible. So, it moves from being in our heads to our life, and so we often talk about, you know, it's not just head knowledge, it's heart knowledge.

Well, that's similar to what's being said here, but I think we could say it without such a fancy little term and say it exactly how Paul says it, and that is, it's wisdom. It's the knowledge that moves into the state of wisdom. Wisdom starts with the facts and then uses them.

The spiritual aspect applies to both of these, as I mentioned, and it relates to the source of these abilities. Where is your wisdom coming from? Is it your wisdom? Is it your capacity to perform these things? No, it's spiritual. This is different than the worldly wisdom. Spiritual understanding, the capacity to relate truth to concrete situations. So now you have the knowledge, you have the capacity, and the understanding figures out how do I actually apply and have the capacity to see this happen in this situation in my life. Now again, go ahead. I'm sorry, just real quick.

So spiritual meaning of the spirit? Yeah, it's sourced in the Spirit. We pray when we sit down and study that the Holy Spirit would enlighten us and illuminate us to the text. That's spiritual enlightenment, if you will, or illumination. In this case, when we rely on the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom and understanding, that's spiritual wisdom and understanding. Because you can fake it, We all do, but that's not what Paul's saying.

The source is in the spiritual aspect of what's going on here. And as we see, and we move into the book of Colossians, we're going to learn so much about the person of Christ, the person and the work of Christ. He's going to be deity undeniably. And the verses that we're moving into have some of the most clear, if not the most clear, verses about Christ's deity. And that's who we are placed in.

And so, don't take these verses and say, oh man, I've got to go seek knowledge of His will, and I've got to go get me some spiritual understanding and some spiritual wisdom, and I'm done. No, we've got to move on. We've got to see the rest of the story here. And I use that example, I think, in one of our last lessons, classes and lessons together. I mentioned that a lot of times when we study the word, it's like we put on a movie and we go to the scene selection, we go right into the middle and we expect ourselves to try to understand what's going on. Well, that's a really poor decision in terms of deciding how to live your life if all you're going to do is watch scene 12 and not consider the very first scene and how that moves on to the last.

So we're growing and being filled with the knowledge of His will as we learn more about what the Lord has to say about who we are and where we're placed. So we can't just stop with verse 9. But verse 9 is very clear about what Paul is praying for and what the result of. Notice that spiritualism and understanding is not what he's asking for. Those are the results of than being filled with the knowledge of His will.

So this is the essence of Paul's prayer, and I have a question, should it be ours? And it doesn't mean that every single prayer that we pray should be, I'm praying to be filled in the knowledge of His will so that I can da-da-da-da-da-da. But there is a very, very impactful and powerful process or sequence that Paul talks about here that I think it's worth understanding as your prayer life grows. When we think about praying for our kids, we can pray that they would be filled in the knowledge of His will. I use that example with kids a lot because that's where my application stuff is going on, for my wife. When she prays for me, I would ask that she pray for those things so that these next several verses can be evident in my life as I rest in Christ. So there's a lot to say about prayer here and how Paul was praying for these guys and gals that were doing great things in their basic Christian walk. When I say doing great things, am I saying that they were doing them? No, I'm not. I'm saying that the Lord was... what? Oh, it's not you at all. No, it's not you at all. But it doesn't change the fact that that's the way the Bible talks about me.

It talks about us doing the rejoicing. But we know that our source, and the actual empowerment of that, comes from further knowledge of the Word. So we can't get caught up in the doing, we have to be caught up in the beholding. And the Lord is involved in the doing. And still, it's through our person. We are the ones that are light in dark places. but it's not us as the source of that light. We are vessels and we have a privilege, don't we? It's a very privileged thing for the Lord to be living through us and for others to see that.

So let's talk about this root. I've got my tree here. So the root of Christian growth is to be filled with the knowledge, that is, complete and accurate, of God's will, and all spiritual, that's the source, wisdom, the capacity to perform, and all spiritual understanding, capacity to relate truth to concrete situations. So right now, some of you might be learning certain things, but not knowing how to concretely, you know, not knowing how they spiritually are understood in your life. Well, we can pray for you. And we can pray that as you continue to grow in the knowledge of His will, that that becomes more clear in your life.

And it will. So what produces a worthy walk for believers? And I'm going to move rather quickly through this, so hold on to your hats. So Paul now moves to the trunk of the believer's growth in verse 10, a worthy walk. And the phrase, sow that. So both verses 9 and 10 show the relationship of doctrine to living. The living flows from correct doctrine. You get the wrong teaching, and when I say doctrine I just mean the teaching of God's word. you get the wrong teaching, you're going to have the wrong outcome. So how important is it that we sit in here in the mornings on Sunday or whenever we do and we study those things which are true, we understand them, that they're very important because that is a result of how the Lord uses his word as we behold him to actually grow and bear fruit as we see.

So this is how all of Paul's epistles are actually structured. He's got doctrine first and living second. Ephesians 1-4 is all doctrine. It's all truth about who you are and where you are and what you have access to. Before he ever exhorts us to do anything, he tells us everything that we have as possessions and where we're located. Our heavenly citizenship. Same thing with Romans. Romans all the way up to 11.

Doctrine. When we say doctrine, we don't mean cold and disconnected. We mean teaching, solid teaching in the Word of God. And then all of a sudden, verse 12, he starts moving into the exhortations. So, here's the problem. We often jump straight to the application. We want to talk about, what does this mean for my life? Well, let's make sure, before we do that, that we don't miss out on an opportunity to understand the true foundation of what it is that the Lord is going to be doing in us. That's important.

That's the whole aspect of the knowledge of His will. So the worthy walk here is just a figure of speech that Paul's using, and it's referring to our behavior. And this conduct that comes as a result of having been filled with the knowledge of His will, it should honor the person in the work of Christ.

Why should it honor the person in the work of Christ? Why? Does that mean that you're making sure that you look like a good Christian? It honors the personal work of Christ because it is the person in the work of Christ, in you. That's a distinction that is not made often in talking about how a Christian walks worthy. It's very important.

Ephesians 4.1, 1 Thessalonians 2.12, look those up on your own, but those are very clear about the walk that Paul talks about and where the source is.

Yeah? Just a thought there, if we're doing things and people say how wonderful we are, then the source is not Christ. They're not seeing Christ, they're seeing us. But if they rejoice in Christ and what He's doing in us, then we can be pretty confident that that's the work of Christ.

I think so. I think there are instances where Mike was telling me a story about how he had come alongside a neighbor and she had a different kind of background and so forth, but she saw something in Mike where she ended up referring to him as a minister and eventually she asked that he would come and pray with her family because her husband was near passing and he's like, I don't know what she saw or how she saw it, but she grabbed onto something. And that's the experience that one has, I think, when people recognize Christ's work in you without you sitting there thinking, oh yeah, I remember when I did this, and this laid the foundation for her to think this, and made sure that I was there on time, and helped her, and got her, drove her. That's not how Mike was thinking, I don't believe. I believe that he was resting in the person and the work of Christ in him, and that someone caught a glimpse of that light and was just attracted to it.

It doesn't mean that that's always going to be the case. So we're not creating a, you know, this is how it always works type of scenario, but I think oftentimes that's a good indicator. But this worthy walk pleases him in all respects. Literally, with a view to his complete pleasure, living unto him as opposed to living unto men.

The thing, Micah, or Jim, is that they could hate us because they hate Christ. They hate the manifestation of His love and His grace. They want to live under God, maybe, or something. And so they just don't see Christ. They just see their own standards.

I think that's what's interesting about, in terms of how people interpret our lives, I guess my take on that would be, I'm not worried about it. I'm worried about keeping my eyes focused on the Lord. And if they hate me, if they want to know more about what's going on, that's up to the Lord and how He's working in their minds.

But all I'm thinking about is, How am I oriented to you right now? Where is my trust right now? Am I trusting myself wanting to please men? Or am I trusting you so that you please your own standards for living by doing the living through me? And so that's where I think this please Him in all respects. We're not worried about pleasing the Lord as if we have to carry that out in all our energy, in all our effort. We're resting and He will please through us. What do you mean by not like the Old Testament? Well, the Old Testament says, do, do, do, do, don't, don't, don't, don't, do, do, do, do, don't, don't, don't. It doesn't ever tell you how in the world that stuff gets done. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Sorry, I missed that. Let's put the trunk picture in place. So the trunk of Christian growth is to, on the basis of sound doctrine, walk in a way that is consistent with what we believe, so as to bring in pleasure. Again, all this happens as we behold and rest. But this is what happens. It's what Paul was praying for these believers for. Again, I've got that beholding at the bottom. Let's not forget it. So let's move through this last one.

Actually, let's Let me just take the time before I try to rush through this. Are there any questions about what we're talking about so far? I want to make sure you have an opportunity to get clarity or add thoughts that I didn't necessarily see as I studied. Are you ready to move on to a branch? Want to get a branch under our belt? Yeah.

It came to my mind the verse that says that all things are new, that after we're saved all things are new. What exactly does that mean? What's new? All the things that we're learning about, that we are in our position, and all the things that we... For instance, having the mind of Christ is new. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is new. All these things are new. And I think learning about those things, instead of just sticking at, I'm saved, which is a wonderful thing, but building on that and moving on to all these other truths, it just fills you up with joy, you know, and you realize, really, that he's the one that's doing and has done all that. New creation?

You have a new source. You used to try to please people. You used to try to gain knowledge. You used to try to apply it. You used to have wisdom. You used to want to all do these things and whatever your source was, was whatever it was. You could have been a believer and still have been disconnected from the new creation source. But now, you have a new source for getting all of these things accomplished in your life as the Lord transforms and sanctifies and conforms and He's in charge of all those things, mind you, not us.

That's new. It's like, this is paradoxical. I've been busy all my life and now all of a sudden it's new because I'm a new creation and my source is different and my relationship with the Lord is not just about salvation, it's actually about every single aspect of the knowledge of His will. It's about understanding Him, spending time with Him. This is new stuff. In the New Testament. It doesn't actually relate, but I thought it would be interesting. Weird. It's the New Testament. I mean, it's the new creation.

Things have changed in terms of how the life gets lived. But we still need to understand what it is that that life looks like. That's part of the knowledge. So, that's where we're going to... I think that's my bell. So we'll keep going with these branches and the bearing fruit as a result of, but now we've got a really solid foundation for how that stuff gets done. And we'll be able to fly through these a little bit quickly as we move forward.

Let's pray. Father, I just want to pray for the believers in this class, including myself. I want to first of all thank you that we have access to you as a part of the new creation and that, Lord, you are You are seated in the heavenlies and we are there with you. And our position, our identification is in Christ. And Lord, we just rejoice in the reality of that. And Father, we just pray that as we move forward this week that you would fill us with the knowledge of your will so that our walk would be worthy, that we would have spiritual understanding and spiritual wisdom as in how to apply the knowledge by trusting you and beholding you so that you accomplish your good pleasure in us and that you get the glory. It's in your name that we pray. Amen.