Wisdom for a Worthy Walk

Well, good morning. It's a real privilege. Thinking of that last song, I love to tell the story. I love to talk about Jesus. And we were working on installing some flooring yesterday in our house. I was working with the boys, and our kids found the old CD binder. Who remembers CD binders? That's kind of 1990s. J.D. remember this because J.D. did the cover photo for my brother's CD, right? And we were listening through it. The kids were playing, you know, playing the CDs on the CD player. Anyway, we came to this one song and I told the kids, you know, I wrote the words for that song. Really?

And it was a song I'd written because I was playing in a band at the time. and we were a Christian band. Our purpose was to share Jesus with those who had maybe never heard his name or certainly didn't know him. We got to a point with the band where the guys were, do we really need to be a Christian band? Can we just be a band that We can be Christians, but do we really have to have the purpose of sharing about Jesus with others?

And so I'd written the words to this song. It never got used by the band, but my brother ended up using the words for his song. And the part that stuck out to me this morning, thinking about telling the story of Jesus, are the words, how on earth can I say that I won't speak his name? It burns inside my bones of flame.

Anyway, it struck me as what a privilege it is to get to come here and to just share with you about the Lord Jesus. And so that's our focus this morning, is Jesus. Jesus is enough. He is enough for every single moment, every single day. And this morning we're going to be talking about those verses that Jim just read. And wisdom for a worthy walk. Where does that come from? How does that work? So let's just begin with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus, your son. We thank you for everything that he has done for us, but also everything that he is to us. We thank you that he is enough. And we just pray this morning that you would open our eyes to behold wonderful truth from your word, and that you would teach us by your spirit the things that you have for us this morning. Amen.

Well, here we are. We're working our way through Colossians chapter one, and we're biting off somewhat bigger chunks than we sometimes do. whether you maybe have a personal preference about how fast we move through the text. Roger took a chance. He said, Miles, why don't you divide up the verses for Colossians? I did. And maybe you're thinking, well, there's so much here. We could slow down. We could get a little bit more in depth. We could get a little bit more into the details here. And there's a lot more we could talk about. And it's true. There is.

But part of the reason that I broke this into somewhat bigger chunks is because I wanted us to be able to really catch the flow. Get the big picture of what is going on. And sometimes, and again, it's like, what do you do? If you break it up into really small chunks sometimes you lose that flow and you lose the context.

And so I've chosen some of these sections here to cover quite a bit. So just keep in mind that as we do that there's gonna be a lot of stuff that you're like, well, boy, we could spend a whole message on that and we could. But there's a perfect opportunity for you to take that thought home and ruminate on that over the course of the coming week. Which is always the case. and continue to think on these things and discuss them. But this morning we're covering verses 9 through 14 because this is Paul's prayer and everything about that prayer. So that's kind of our focus this morning.

But to kind of get our place here in Colossians, we had an introduction to the letter. Last week we covered verses 1 through 8. And what we want to understand about Paul's letter to the Colossians is that he has a desire to encourage the Colossians to walk in the power of their heavenly position in Christ. There's kind of a few thoughts kind of crammed into a sentence, to walk in the power of their heavenly position in Christ.

And that's where we get the theme, Jesus is enough. And as believers, as Christians, that's true. Whether we believe it or not, that's true. You have the Lord Jesus and he is enough. No situation is too big for the Lord Jesus Christ. And we can trust that in Christ, nothing can defeat us. By the way, don't separate the portion before that comma, okay?

Romans 8.37 says, but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer not period, right?

We overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us. That's where our victory is as Christians. But in order to have that kind of confidence, we've got to have some foundational understanding in our hearts. There's some things that we really have to understand. First of all, we have to know that we've been born again. And that was the whole theme in verses one through eight, right? The gospel that came to the Colossians through Epaphras that they received, and that they have been born again. And there is a major problem here in many, if not most, churches today.

Most believers are being taught that the only way to know for sure that you are born again is to look at how you're walking, how you're living, right? Are you walking in habitual sin? Or are you striving against sin? What kind of evidence do you see in your life? Et cetera, et cetera. But if how you walk is the way you measure your salvation, then what? You will never have assurance of your salvation, okay? And I went off a little bit last week with R.C. Sproul. I got a little bit heated there for a second. you know, but because it's a big deal. It's a really big deal.

We can love our brothers and sisters who think and teach along these lines, but if you're always teaching that how you know that you have salvation is based on how you're living or not living, then you will never have assurance. You will never actually have assurance.

And any assurance that you do have is faulty and based on what you see in yourself, rather than being based on the word of God. Every time you sin, you're gonna fall back into this doubting kind of a mentality. And so it's impossible to walk in confident dependence on the Lord Jesus when you're constantly trying to evaluate whether you're even in Christ. And instead of beginning from a place of assurance and looking to the Lord Jesus to live through you, you're looking to yourself to live the life that you're not even sure you have. That's a pretty hard place to live the Christian life from. So uncertainty about your salvation cripples your Christian walk.

If we're going to trust Jesus Christ to live through us, then we have to know at the outset that we're actually joined to him. And that's why what Paul says about the gospel is so important. God actually wants you and I to be sure of our salvation. We need to realize that, right?

He's provided salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ as a free gift. And when I give you a gift, yeah, I don't want you to sit there and wonder if it really belongs to you or not, right? I want you to know that it's yours. I want you to receive it, and I want you to enjoy it as your own. That's what grace means.

We're all familiar with Ephesians 2.8, right? For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and that, not faith, but salvation, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Okay, it is by grace that you've been saved. And confidence about your salvation is not a bad thing.

It's simply trusting God about what he's promised. Is that a bad thing? To trust the Lord? That when he said that you put your faith in what Jesus did for you on the cross, that you have eternal life? No, that's a good thing. And it's the foundation of your Christian life. You've got to be confident that you are in the Lord Jesus before you can begin to depend on him to live his life through you.

And that's why in verses 1 through 8, Paul reminds the Colossians of the gospel message that was delivered to them by Epaphras. And we want to remember that the gospel is a simple message. We talked about this last week. Sometimes you're put on the spot to explain the gospel. What is the gospel anyway? And we start to think of big, huge theological words. It's hard to explain, but it's not. The gospel is a very, very simple message. The good news is that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins and rose from the dead. That's it. Now there's a lot of stuff we need to flesh out in that, right, to understand it.

And of course we have to understand that that needs to be received by faith in order to actually be of any benefit to you, right? And Paul reminds them of their faith response to that message, right? He says they understood the grace of God in truth. Right? But we have to understand that the gospel message is a simple message and it's clear. And we need to be able to know that to share, but we also need to know that in our own hearts so that we can have that kind of confident assurance that, yes, when I put my faith in Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross for me, I received salvation and I can never lose that.

It's a gift from God. And the result of that faith is described, if you're, hopefully you're still in Colossians, flip over to chapter 2, verse 13. Okay, the result of that faith is described there. I don't have this on the slide, so you'll have to look in your Bible.

Colossians 2.13, when you were dead in your transgressions, that's the unbeliever, right, you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him. having forgiven us all our transgressions.

And that, that's the only foundation for the Christian life, having been made alive together with the Lord Jesus. And the fact that we've been made alive together with him is the only means by which we're ever going to have a Christian walk, or as we're going to talk about today, a worthy walk. Okay? Because that's what Paul is going to talk about here in these verses. the worthy walk that he's praying for, and we have to know that it's built on the foundation of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

That moment that you put your faith in him. Now, you may not remember that specific moment. Sometimes people put a big emphasis on, well, when was the day that you were saved? You might remember. If you were four years old like myself, you probably don't remember what day it was. You kind of know, yeah, I remember the day.

There comes a moment where you place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and what he did for you on the cross. You know that's true. You know it was for you. And that moment, you were born again. We're not putting an emphasis on whether you know exactly when that moment was. Maybe you don't. Maybe it was kind of a long, slow, convincing process for you, but it did happen at some point in time that you trusted that message to be true. And that's the foundation for the Christian life that the Lord has for you.

Now, I know Jim already read these verses. I just want to read through them again, because one thing I realized, for the recordings that go online, we don't get the text in the recording. So I'm going to read through them again one more time, just to also have it fresh in our minds as we go into studying them here.

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, of what? Of their salvation. They heard the report from Epaphras that they had put their faith in the gospel. So from the day that we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Why?

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 the one having qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light who 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.

The first thing that we have to recognize is that this whole section is about Paul's prayer for the Colossians. And we're just going to break it down into three parts. First of all, in verse 9, we have Paul's prayer request, right? What was he actually praying for? And if you read there, he's praying that they'd be filled with all knowledge of his will, et cetera, et cetera.

And then verse 10, gives us the aim of Paul's prayer. And we could just summarize that as a worthy walk, right? A walk that is pleasing to him. And then in the last half of verse 10 through the end of 14, I'm just going to lump that all together as a description of the walk that Paul was praying for. And so beginning back in verse 9, we want to ask the question, why did Paul pray for the Colossians?

Why did he pray this for them? Now, I'm not asking what his aim was, because that's right in verse 10. We see what the aim is. We could say, okay, that's why he was praying for that. But I'm asking, why would he even pray for that? Why would he pray for that worthy walk that he's praying for? And well, we could say, well, it's because it was God's will for them to grow.

Or we could say, you know, whenever someone asks you the question, well, why did God do this, or why, oh, for his glory, for God's glory. Yes, we know that's the theological reason behind everything that God does. It's ultimately for his glory. But I'm trying to get at something else here, something that's easy to gloss over. It's so obvious, right?

What I'm getting at is the fact that Paul actually prayed about this because he didn't expect it to just happen. Spiritual growth isn't automatic, and that's fundamentally behind Paul's prayer. He knew that spiritual growth wasn't guaranteed. Have you ever wondered why some people have been believers for years, but they don't seem to have any spiritual maturity? It's possible to be a Christian for a long time and never really grow, contrary to what all the, you know, the works-oriented people are teaching. They say there's got to be growth or you're not really saved, and that's not true.

Because we have an example in Corinthians, right? What did Paul say in 1 Corinthians 3? He calls the Corinthian believers infants in Christ. So they were saved, they were born again. He didn't question that, but he pointed out the fact that they weren't growing, they weren't actually maturing spiritually. But we want to notice what Paul says a little farther down in 1 Corinthians 3 verse 7. Because he says, so then, he's talking about Paul and Apollos, you know, himself and Apollos, they labored amongst the Corinthians. He says, so then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but God who causes the growth. This really ties in with Sunday school this morning in the 2nd Timothy class.

Paul's not denying that the Corinthians had a responsibility in their growth, otherwise he wouldn't be reprimanding them about this, right? But he is pointing out that their growth, spiritual growth, is always from the Lord. Spiritual growth is always from the Lord.

Our responsibility is to receive it from him, to depend on him for it. And that's where the Corinthians were failing. They were failing to grow. But we've got to be approaching this whole matter of spiritual growth with an attitude of dependence on the Lord for what only he can provide.

And that's why Paul is praying for spiritual growth. When he hears that these Colossians have received Christ, he begins to pray for them. And we can make an important application here because we need to be praying for spiritual growth in ourselves and all of us here at Holly Hills and for other believers everywhere as the Lord gives us opportunity to pray that the body of Christ would grow and mature spiritually. So that's the first thing. Why did Paul even pray? Because spiritual growth isn't guaranteed. We need to be seeking the Lord about that. But we want to ask another important question about Paul's prayer. When did Paul pray? In verse 9, he says, for this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you.

So Paul prayed immediately. and he prayed continuously. So first of all, when Paul heard about these new converts, he didn't wait a few months to see if it stuck. That would be the kind of mentality that looks for good works as the proof of salvation, but Paul didn't have that mentality, right? If you expressed faith in the gospel message, Paul welcomed you into the family and began to pray for your spiritual growth, because he knew that spiritual growth can begin immediately for every believer.

And it's a long process. See, every time I come to that word now, I just pause and decide which way I'm gonna say it. And Courtney says, no, no, just do it naturally. Can't happen naturally because if you, anyway, process, process. But it's a long process.

But it can begin right away. It can begin right away. The moment you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you can begin to grow. It's slow, and it's gonna start small, but grow and grow. But there's no probationary period in the Christian life. It's not like you have to, well, I accepted Jesus 10 years ago, and now I can begin to grow.

No, you can begin to grow immediately, and we should be praying for that. It was new believers, young believers that they would grow, and Paul prayed for that immediately. But Paul also prayed continuously. This wasn't a one-and-done prayer, like, oh Lord, those guys accepted Christ. Well, cause them to grow, Lord, and then just forget about them for the next 20 years, right? Paul prayed continuously because growth takes time.

There are some prayers that God answers right away. There are some prayers that we pray for for a while, and eventually we see God's answers. And then there are other things that we need to pray for continuously from now until the time the Lord takes us home. And spiritual growth is one of those things, because it's not over until he takes that believer home.

And we have to keep looking to him for that growth. The Lord wants us to continue in this attitude of dependence. Your spiritual maturity is never going to get to the point that you can just coast, right? Or that you can grow apart from this dependence on the Lord's working, right? We have to continue to look to the Lord to grow us up.

So this is really practical for us so far. We haven't really looked at the text. We're just going to ask some questions about what's the purpose for this prayer and what we see about it. But one, we should be praying for spiritual growth because it doesn't just happen. Two, we don't have to wait for spiritual growth. We can begin to pray for that immediately, and we begin to grow immediately. And we need to continue to be in prayerful dependence for spiritual growth until the very end. the Lord takes us home. And that's very practical. That's some very practical information this morning.

But none of that is really much good if we don't know specifically what we're asking for, okay? And that's why we need to know how Paul prayed and what he was asking the Lord for. And thankfully, Paul tells us exactly what he prayed for the Colossians. So what is Paul's specific request? Well, it's the last part of verse 9, right?

It says, that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. That's it. That's actually the prayer. That's the request right there. That you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

Do you ever look at a verse or a phrase like that in scripture and kind of think, Look, great. What does that mean? Right? This prayer can sort of have that feel to it. Okay, what in the world does it mean to be filled with all knowledge according to his will, you know, and all spiritual wisdom understanding, you know? And what does that actually mean?

And I mean, so I had to, you know, study this out and prepare to share that with you this morning. And so I prayed, Lord, Can you make this a little more concrete? It's just, you know, just for all spiritual wisdom and understanding, it's just, how can we get our hands around that?

And I think that we can do that a little bit this morning by God's grace. I think that he's helped give me a little bit of understanding about what exactly Paul is praying for. We need to, you know, we can get to a verse like this, and it says, you know, that you be filled with all the knowledge of His will. And, you know, you could take an interpretation of that and say, well, we need to know God's will so that we can go out and do it. Right?

And it turns the whole Christian life into a very workspace thing. But that would be man's wisdom. As we said, Paul is contrasting this letter, man's wisdom, with God's wisdom. But we've got to notice this is to be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

Now when we talk about spiritual wisdom, we've got to be clear that we're talking about wisdom that comes to us from the Holy Spirit. That would be spiritual wisdom, right? Wisdom that comes to us from the Holy Spirit. So we've got to ask the question, where does that wisdom come from? Does it just float into your head? No. Spiritual wisdom comes from God's Word, the Word that the Holy Spirit inspired and had written down. Okay, so when we talk about all spiritual wisdom, we're talking about what God has revealed to us in the Word.

So I want you to hold that thought. We're talking about truth revealed to us in the Bible. Now understand that when Paul wrote this, this was still being written, right? This wasn't all on paper yet. I mean, he was actually writing it down. But today, we have all this spiritual wisdom contained in this book, the Bible.

So that's what spiritual wisdom is, and that's where it comes from. But there's something about the word understanding there at the end of verse 9, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And the Greek for the word understanding is interesting.

This just kind of helped me to think this through. And what it really has to do with, it's used in a metaphorical kind of sense when we talk about understanding because the word literally means to see how two things come together in a junction, at a junction point. And it could be used, for example, of two streams that converge. So seeing how things are connected. So the idea here, when we apply it to understanding or wisdom, is being able to take different facts, individual facts, and see how they fit together. I call this connecting the dots.

I keep looking at Bob because I was thinking of Bob as I worked on this because Bob has, his whole career is about taking, you know, facts, different things that you've discovered about the human body and understanding how it all fits together, because as you've said, the human body is incredibly complex, and you've got this over here and this over here. You know, sometimes there's a piece of information that's missing, and that's why you research, that's why you study, because you're looking for that piece of information that makes the whole system click. Okay, now I understand why this interacts with this, and why this you know, over here, fits with this fact over here.

So as we study the Bible, you know, we see what I'm going to call distinct streams of truth. I took that from this idea from the Greek word that, you know, where streams converge. Two distinct streams, one flowing from over here, and they converge. And sometimes as we see different streams of truth in the Bible, they can seem to contradict one another.

And that kind of came up in Sunday school this morning as we're talking about, you know, in 2 Timothy, Paul's giving these instructions to Timothy about, hey, you know, I want you to serve as a soldier. I want you to labor as a farmer or, you know, strive as an athlete. And they were kind of asking, well, how does that stream of truth fit with grace, you know, over here.

And so sometimes, you know, the temptation can be, well, let's emphasize one and just downplay or ignore the other, which would be a big mistake. I think Bob could testify that in science. You're not going to get the right answer if you just ignore part of the truth. Right?

So the other mistake is to just hold them in constant tension with one another as if God's word reveals contradictions. Well, it's this and it's this. But we all know that you can't have a contradiction that just stands, right? If God's word, if he contradicts himself, that's just a soft way of saying that he lies.

Okay? Because if I say it's, you know, it's hot in here and it's cold in here. It can't both be true. We understand that, right? To say different things about the same, it can't both be true. Now, there can be, I could say things that sound like a contradiction, okay? I took this out of my notes and now I'm putting it back in.

But I could tell you, I was going on a trip. I was walking at an average pace of about one mile an hour. But the trip was a trip of a thousand miles. And within only two hours I arrived at my destination. How does that work? I was only walking one mile an hour. On a trip of a thousand miles and in two hours I arrived at my destination. Is that even possible?

I don't know if you like those little brain, we had a grade five teacher that did all these brain, what do they call them anyway? It doesn't matter. What if I told you, though, that I am a flight attendant and I spent this flight walking back and forth down the aisle the whole time, pretty much, at about a mile an hour, but in a couple hours we traveled a thousand miles and I arrived at the destination?

You think, oh, that's kind of silly. Yeah, it is a silly example, but I just try to make it simplify the idea. I've presented you with two truths. And they seem to contradict. It seems impossible to put together, but it's only because you're missing a critical piece of information. And once you have that piece of information, it's like, oh, okay, I get it. That's actually kind of silly, right? But what we need when we see things like this in the Bible is we need understanding.

We need to see the piece that puts the two pieces together in such a way that, no, they don't contradict. It's absolutely consistent and it's true. So what are the two streams of truth, biblical truth, that seem to contradict each other when it comes to the Christian life? On the one hand, the Bible tells us about the utter sinfulness of man. I put a couple of references up there, we could multiply that, right?

But, you know, we got Isaiah 64.6, all our righteous deeds are as filthy rags. And then Romans 7, 18, which is one of my favorite chapters to go to. For I know that nothing good dwells in me. And let's just stop there.

This is Paul talking about a time in his life when he was a Christian. He was already saved. He was a believer. He was a justified born-again believer. And he came to this realization, and it's critical that we understand that this is a situation as a believer.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. And as I said, we could multiply references there, but we have this stream of truth. That even as a born-again Christian, you in your flesh, in yourself, are utterly sinful and incapable of producing any kind of righteousness or anything that is pleasing to God.

But on the other hand, we've got this stream of truth in scripture that talks about the righteous life that pleases God and that God expects for you and I as Christians. He actually commands it. We've been working through 1 Peter, right? So we can look at that. 1 Peter 1, 14 through 16.

As obedient children, this is in the imperative, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in ignorance. But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior. Because it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. But we can look at our present text as well, right?

Right here in Colossians 1.10, Paul is praying, 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.

So we've got this other stream of thought. Right? How do we get these two distinct streams of truth together? Because Christians have tried all sorts of approaches. They're trying to resolve the tension, which is what we're designed to do, because God created us to be rational, thinking people. And we will not tolerate Honestly, we will not tolerate a contradiction. We will either emphasize one truth over the other in some way, shape, or form. We will try to find some way to resolve a tension like that. But what Christians have basically done is emphasize one side of that truth over the other.

And to do that is going to land you in either some form of legalism or some form of license. Right? And we could, I thought we could flesh this out a little bit more, kind of give some examples. But if you just think about that a little bit, right, if you de-emphasize the righteousness that God expects and even commands, where are you going to lean? You're going to lean into license. You're just going to say, well, you know, I'm this is just what I am. This is what I am. I just know that God loves me.

He's forgiven my sins and I'm so I'm just gonna kind of do whatever right and so you've you've You haven't held on to both of these truths at the at the same time. Yeah, the other angle would be to you know Emphasize this righteous life that is commanded right and and today and kind of ignore or downplay the sinfulness of your own nature, and that'll get you into legalism, right? And I mean, some people even deny that we have a sin nature as believers, and they've got to do that, right? Because they don't think that Romans 7 is about a Christian. They say, oh, Paul's writing about before he was saved, right?

But no, we could go to a hundred other places. So we've got these two things. We don't want to ignore one or the other, and we can't hold them in constant tension with each other. So what's the problem? And what's the solution? The problem is that most believers are missing a critical piece of information. What is it? What is the critical piece of information that reconciles these two things? And the answer is the cross. Now, we gotta be very clear. We wanna understand.

Because it's not, when I say the cross, I'm not talking about here Christ's death for me, which is absolutely true. That's the truth you need to believe in order to be born again in the first place. But what we're talking about here in reconciling these two truths for you as a believer is your death with Christ. That when he died, you died. And also that when he was raised, you were raised.

And I thought we could do the Holly Hills logo there in the middle. But I just thought, let's keep it simple. The cross, because that's what That's the root at the root of it. This is the truth that bridges What is the unseemingly or the seemingly unbridgeable gap, right? And and it's it's clearly revealed in Scripture. This is not we're not just making this up. Well, that would do it Hey, no, this is what we have to take what God says if we're gonna reconcile these two truths We need God's truth.

We need his revealed truth and we could go to Romans 6 and We could go to Galatians 2.20, but we want to see it right here in Colossians. So flip over to chapter 2, verse 20. And if you mark your Bible, why not just put an arrow between 2.20 and 3.1? Because what you actually have there is both sides of the equation. You have the death and the resurrection.

In 2.20, Paul writes, if you have died with Christ, and then he goes on, and the sense there is you have. Since you have died with Christ, okay, that is your crucifixion death. You share with the Lord Jesus Christ in his death. You died when he died. But if you look down at 3.1, what does he say down there? Therefore, same sense, since you have been raised up with Christ, And then he goes on to talk about seeking the things above where Christ is seated, set your mind on things above, etc, etc. You have died and you have been raised. Both sides.

The simple truth of our death and resurrection with Christ is the spiritually revealed wisdom that resolves this whole issue. That's the knowledge that gives us understanding that allows us to see how these two things connect. without denying or downplaying one truth or the other, right? We are able to agree completely with the fact that in our flesh, we are thoroughly sinful and totally incapable of producing any kind of righteousness pleasing to God.

I don't have to deny that. I know that. I can trust that to be true. But at the same time, I can accept the fact that God expects a righteous walk in me. And I don't have to deny that or downplay that or, you know, at all. I can hang on to both of those truths totally because I understand what it means that I have been crucified with Christ and raised to new life. Even though in the flesh we are still sinners by nature, we know that we have died to the power of the flesh. We're no longer slaves to sin. And We are now free to have the resurrected Lord Jesus live through us.

See how big that is? How important that piece of truth is? Our co-crucifixion and resurrection with the Lord Jesus Christ resolves all that issue and most of the church is missing it. And they're struggling with those twin truths because they don't seem to be any way to put them in the same box.

But it's through our co-crucifixion and resurrection. So I believe That that is the knowledge that Paul is praying for the Colossians to be filled with. And that's the way we can be praying for fellow believers. that we would see this in the scripture, that we would be convinced of it, and that we would be increasingly filled up with that knowledge.

The whole idea of being filled up with something is the idea of being controlled by it. When something fills you, It's not part of this and some of that. No, it's all. It is the thing that controls. And the idea of being filled up with the knowledge of God is the idea of being controlled by it.

Because truth is powerful. What you believe is very powerful, whether it's true or not. Right? But when you are convinced that something is true, it has powerful implications in your life. And so when you trust what God has said as the truth, it has very, very powerful implications. When we take the fact that we've died to sin and we actually believe it, that has powerful implications in our lives. When we trust that the Lord Jesus is ready and willing to live through us, the results are amazing. absolutely miraculous, you could say.

So what result is Paul looking for? He's praying for this knowledge, this understanding of what God has done for them in their Christian life. What is he aiming at? What is to be the result of that kind of knowledge for you and I as believers? Verse 10, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects. And that's what we've been talking about all along this morning. That's the result that Paul's aiming for, a righteous walk that is pleasing to the Lord.

Second Corinthians 5.9, Paul wrote this. He said, therefore, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him. That is our ambition as believers. It should be that we are to please the Lord.

And verses like this don't make any sense if we don't have the truth of our co-crucifixion and resurrection with Christ. Right? You can't. It's only because we are dead to the power of the flesh and alive to God in Christ Jesus that we can ever have that kind of life. And our part is important, right? This life doesn't just happen. But we can't produce that life.

Our part is to be actively depending on the Lord, actively trusting him about the life that he has provided, that what he's done to us is separating us from the power of sin and giving us the Lord Jesus as our life. Hebrews 11, 6 says, without faith, it is impossible to please him. That's our part, to trust him about what he's done, to let him live through us the life that only he can live. In the rest of the passage, we've talked about Paul's prayer, why he prayed, we've talked about what his aim was, this worthy walk, this life pleasing to the Lord. In the rest of these verses, Paul's going to describe what that life looks like.

And what he does is he uses four participles to do that. So a worthy walk is a life that is characterized by these four things. And the ING is kind of the tip-off that this is a participle. Now, sometimes they translate it a little bit differently. But we could say that it's this, bearing fruit, increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened, we can insert the being there depending on your translation, being strengthened and joyously giving thanks. So bearing, increasing, being strengthened, and giving thanks. So first of all we have bearing fruit. Bearing fruit in every good work.

The Christian life is a life of bearing fruit. Understand that it's bearing, not producing. Which is something that Jesus taught so clearly in John chapter 15, where he said, I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me and I in him, that's his union of life, he bears much fruit for, apart from me, you can do nothing. The Christian life is to be a life of fruit bearing, but apart from him we can't do anything. He produces the fruit, we bear it. And Jesus is so clearly depicting the Christian life. It's not me working to produce the fruit. It's him working to produce it.

And then in verse eight, he says, my father, this is how it ties together, a life pleasing to the father. He says, my father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. The father is pleased to see the life of his son in you and I. And what does that fruit look like, right? We've got Galatians 5, 22 through 23, not a list of things for you and I to do, but a list of the fruit that he wants to produce through us to bear, right?

For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law." That's the life of Christ. That's who's being described there. That's the kind of life that pleases God the Father, and you and I can't produce it. Have you ever tried to make yourself be patient about something? Have you ever tried to make yourself love your enemy? That's why it's our job to bear the fruit, not produce it. So that's the first thing, bearing fruit.

The second thing is increasing in the knowledge of God. The worthy walk is characterized by coming to know God more and more. You know, God isn't impressed by people who know about him. In Matthew 15 there, Jesus is, he's actually quoting Isaiah. He's quoting Isaiah 29, 13, and he says, you hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. Jesus wasn't impressed with people who could honor him with their lips. People who had all the right theological facts about God. God is looking for people who know his heart.

And we can ask ourselves the question, am I growing in that kind of acquaintance? Am I growing in that kind of knowledge of the Lord? A lot of that knowledge, a lot of that knowing of the Lord comes through suffering. You're all familiar with Philippians 3. And I put verse 10 on the overhead, but if you back up to verse 8, I probably should have put that on there as well. He says, more than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. And then down to verse 10, he says, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death.

Why is suffering so important to coming to know him? Well, do you know what it feels like to meet someone and find out that you have a shared experience, that you've been through something very similar? But how much more so when it's someone who has experienced the same kind of suffering or tragedy that you have experienced, right?

No one else understands, but this person, because they've been through what you've been through, they get it. They understand. They get you. They know what you've been through. And that's why the New Testament apostles were so excited when they were suffering for Jesus' sake. They knew that by going through these things, they could understand Jesus a little bit better. They could get him.

And as we go on with the Lord, he's bringing you and I into a greater and greater ability to just understand him, to know him, to know what he's like. And that is just an amazing thing, to grow in that kind of intimacy. And that's what Paul's talking about here, when he talks about growing or increasing in the knowledge of God. It's not just knowing facts about God, not being able to answer questions on a quiz. This is about getting to know Him personally.

And then we have this third part is simple, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might. Now we get to the power verse, right? And we've talked about this every week so far because our theme is Jesus is enough, right? In every situation, we have all power in Christ Jesus.

But sometimes we get this idea in our heads that, well, this kind of power, it looks powerful. It looks almost explosive, you know, it's flashy. But this is not a macho kind of power. This is a power that is way beyond that. Because look at the way that Paul describes the working of this power. He says, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience. So what is more powerful? I think we realize this, right? What is more powerful?

The guy who has the power and ability to make all his problems go away, or the person who has the strength to stand fast and unmoved, trusting the Lord through incredible opposition and difficulty. And this isn't just strength to trust the Lord through a hard day. Both steadfastness and patience are about enduring for the long haul. The word there, steadfastness, is hupomone, a word we like to see a lot around here. It has a sense of remaining under. It's the power to calmly trust the Lord day after day, year after year. When things don't get better, they get worse.

That's real power, and that's the kind of power that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our job is not to work up this kind of power, and our job is not even to respond in things as if we have this power. Our job is to look to him for the power that he has, just to rest in him about this thing, and allow him to produce through us his life by his power. So being strengthened according to his power. And then we have this joyously giving thanks. And Paul's final description of the worthy walk of the believer is that it's characterized by an attitude of thankfulness to the Father.

And that only makes sense, right? Because all these things, right? This worthy walk, this life that's pleasing to him, this fruitful life, this privilege of knowing him and growing in intimacy with him, this strength that is ours in the Lord Jesus, all because of his grace. And just like we couldn't work for our salvation, we can't work for any of this either.

That's what grace means. And when we appreciate that he has done all of this for us as a gift of grace, then thankfulness is really the only response that makes any sense. It's the only response that fits. Thankfulness is the only response there that fits with grace. I mean, faith, right? but faith responds to grace. And then you spend the rest of eternity just giving thanks for what he's done.

And then Paul summarizes what God has done to bring us into this kind of life, okay, in verses 12 through 14. He says, giving thanks, Sorry, this backs up a little bit, verse 12. I'd help if I was in the right chapter. Verse 12, giving thanks to the Father.

And then the Greek language there really is, who has, 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 into the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So that's the work that makes the worthy walk a possibility, right?

God rescued us And he transferred us. Think of the word separation, right? He separated us from everything that we were in Adam. And he separated us from the sin that enslaved us, and he gave us this entirely new standing. He transferred us. And it says that he transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son.

Which is, we could get into a whole discussion about the kingdom, but the only question we want to ask you this morning is, why? Why do we belong to that kingdom? Because of our relationship to the beloved son who is the king. We have been transferred into his kingdom because we have been united to Jesus Christ. Notice verse 14, it says, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. It's because we are in Jesus Christ that we have all of this.

We never could have placed ourselves in this relationship. Only God could have done that, and he did it. He rescued us. And the word for rescue there really has a sense of almost like dragging someone or pulling someone out of something. He removed us from the whole mess that we were in. And he transferred us into something brand new. And we call this our position, right? That's our theological term for this. But he transferred us into this whole blessed place that we're in. And this brings us back to where we started, right? How do we have this kind of life?

What piece of wisdom do we need in order to walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him? It's the wisdom that Paul is praying for, right? It's the key that bridges the gap between our total inability to please God and the reality of living a life that pleases the Lord. What connected those two streams of truth without denying one of the others, the cross, right?

The fact that I died with Christ, my death with him, and also our resurrection, that every Christian has been identified with the Lord Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. It's the power of that Sorry, it's that death that cuts us off from the power of our sin nature. And it's through the resurrection that Jesus is able to produce in us that worthy walk, pleasing to the Father.

But it doesn't happen automatically, right? We've got to be walking by faith in that fact. But before we can walk by faith now, we have to know it. We have to know it to be true. We've got to have this truth revealed to us through the word, and then we can trust it. And that's why Paul prayed for this wisdom for believers. And the Colossians needed it, and we need it just as much today. And so we can continue to seek the Lord to give us that kind of understanding and to apply that understanding, right? To trust it to be true in every situation that we face so that we can walk in that freedom, we can walk in that life that is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you have done. We understand it, we know it's true, but we're still learning it. We're learning to depend on it, moment by moment, each day, in every situation, as we go through things that you take us through. You take us through all these things for our growth, for our maturing.

And Lord, we just pray that you would continue to teach us to always go back to the cross, go back to our death and resurrection with you. that we have a brand new life. We've been separated from the power of the old man. We've been separated from that total sinfulness of the flesh that still dwells in us, that's still there, still the same, hasn't changed any, but we're freed from it so that the Lord Jesus can live his life through us, so that you will be glorified, so that you'll be pleased with the fruit that you produce. It's such a gracious thing, and we just pray that we would learn to walk in the light of that, to trust it, and to glorify you, to thank you, give thanks to you for that. We just pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.