to 2:3 Proclaiming Him
Colossians 1:28-2:3 · Brian White · Sep 20, 2026
Colossians, No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/920261741305575

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

All right, well, good morning. I'm so glad we sang The Love of God. I remember that being one of Hal Molloy's favorite hymns, and every time I hear it or we sing it, especially in this church, it takes me back to those days, especially when Hal Molloy himself put his arm around me right outside those doors and said, hey, you know we're having Greek class on Saturday morning? And I said, yeah, I know. And he said, I'll see you Saturday. And I said, well, I guess I'm going to the Greek class. So much appreciate him and what he did for me personally. All right, so as Jim read, and thank you, Jim, for reading our passage, he did add a little bonus verse in there, which I always appreciate.

So our passage today is Colossians 128 through 23. And the title of this message is called Proclaiming Him, and we'll see what that's all about. Before we get there, I'd like to kind of take a step back and see where we are, where we've been in this book of Colossians. So in the first eight verses, Paul, of course, gives his greeting. It's his usual norm. He gives his greeting to them. But then he also expresses gratitude for them as a church, right? He commends them for being a solid church. And this will play into what we're going to talk about today and why Paul's message specifically today is very important to understand that this church was a very good one.

And then in 9 through 14, it's kind of like a no-walk-do sequence. Paul prays for them so that they may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and understanding so that they'll walk worthy and bear fruit. And then we went through 15 through 18, which was all about Christ's supremacy, right? He's the originator, the builder, the owner, the predecessor, the sustainer of all things. And he's also the head of the body. And then we looked at Christ's work, all right, 19 through 23. And his work was based on the Father's good pleasure.

And then last week, Miles started us down this path of Paul's ministry. And Paul's ministry was based on Christ's ministry, which was based on the Father's good pleasure, all right? So this is what we'll be finishing today. Miles started this last week. All right.

So as a reminder, a big thing in the culture was something called Gnosticism. And I wanted to put a little picture up here so you can understand what Gnosticism was all about. On the left side, we have God. They saw God as holy. And then there's this barrier. All the way on the right, we see the physical world, which was thought of as evil.

So because humanity was living in the physical realm, anything that had to do with humanity or the physical realm was thought of as evil, as opposed to God being holy. So the idea was that in order to move closer to God, you had to have some sort of secret knowledge. You had to grow in knowledge, wisdom, in order to get closer to God. Well, they thought of angels, emanations of angels, of being higher than humanity, So they were closer to God, but not quite there.

So you had these angelic emanations, right? And so they would even do things like worship angels. Later on in the second chapter of Colossians, Paul talks about the worship of angels. You ever thought about that idea? I never think about worshiping angels.

Well, this is where it comes from, because they saw angels as being higher than them. Well, they also thought this one guy, Jesus, was also higher than the angels. They thought that. But if you'll notice, Jesus is also on the other side of the barrier. They didn't see him as God. Why? Because he became a man. So they thought Jesus was not God because he became a man, and as we'll see in the next couple of weeks, when it comes to all the fullness of the deity dwelt in him in what bodily form.

There's a reason Paul said that is to combat these Gnostics. So Gnosticism had this word linking the entire series of angelic emanations that supposedly mediated between humans living in the world and God, and it was a word called fullness. The Greek word is pleroma. The reason why this is a big deal is because this is what it looks like.

The link between man, evil, and God is called fullness or pleroma. And in verse 19, if you noticed, verse 19 says that all the fullness dwelt in Christ. So Jesus Christ Paul is saying is the link between man and God, linking between what we thought or what they thought as evil to God, to holiness. So how do we get from evil to holy? It's Jesus Christ. That's what Paul is saying. We also saw in verse 19 that it was the Father's good pleasure to dwell. We just talked about that, right?

So the entire link from man to God dwelt permanently. The word there is dwelt permanently in Christ. It was also his good pleasure to reconcile, and reconciliation made peace between man and God across that link, fullness, right? And it was also his pleasure to present So God was not satisfied to merely provide that link between man to God, but to present us as holy, blameless, and beyond reproach.

And then last week, Myles started the passage on Paul's responsibilities, and there were three of them. We started out as Paul's responsibility to the church, there in verse 24 where Paul says, that I do my share of suffering on behalf of his body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. His next responsibility was to the word in verses 25 through 27. All right, Paul says, I was made a minister to the church so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God. And then his next responsibility is to individuals.

And we're going to cover that today. Okay. So last week you heard miles talk about the mystery, this mystery, right? Hidden for ages now revealed. Now to keep you on your toes this morning, we're going to have some pop quizzes. All right? I know you're looking concerned. All right? Pop quiz, but you should know this if you were here last week or if you listened to the message. What's the mystery? Christ in us. Keep going. The hope of glory. All right? Seven words. All right? Christ in you, the hope of glory. All right? The question is, if Christ is in you, then what should we do about that? Well, Paul's going to expound on this and tell us what he does about it. So let's read today's passage.

So we proclaim him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ. And for this purpose also I labor, striving according to his power, which mightily works in me. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea. And for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

So here's some key points we're going to go over today from this passage specifically. We're going to talk about proclaiming and teaching, laboring by his power, Paul's struggle on their behalf. We're going to talk about unity and assurance, and then hidden treasures.

So let's dig in. So notice how he starts in verse 28. After revealing and defining the mystery, Paul doesn't say, now we're going to explain some doctrine. What does he say? He says we proclaim him, not a system, not an idea, a person. So everything he's about to describe all flows out of that one word, him. All right, so let's dive into some of the key words here. We're gonna talk first about proclaiming, admonishing, and teaching. All right, so first, proclaiming. The idea behind this word proclaiming is an authoritative voice.

All right, meant, meaning it's not something you're supposed to just whisper. It's not a secret, right? That telephone game where you're whispering to somebody else, right? It's meant to be shared. And why was that important? Because to the Gnostics, it was something secret. It was meant to be a secret. It's only for us. It's only for us, not for everybody, right? This proclaiming is for everybody, right?

News would be spread by gathering people together, kind of in a town square idea, and someone would use a big booming voice authoritatively to get their information across. That's how they did it. So Paul is saying, hey, with this message of the mystery, we're going to proclaim this to everybody, not just for a select few. The next word we're going to talk about is teaching. You might think, well, how do we proclaim Christ? This describes how.

Teaching. Now teaching, Didasco, it's not simply just a transfer of information. It's not just a lecture, a teacher up there with a piece of chalk and writing on the chalkboard, if you remember what those are. The idea is not just about lecturing, it's actually about coming alongside. It's not just somebody standing up here like I am and lecturing down. It's somebody coming alongside, sitting down with you, and teaching you. You might think this is basic, however, think about what their classroom would have looked like. It wasn't like a one room schoolhouse. It wasn't like a big university where there's 300 people in a lecture hall. It wasn't like that at all.

Their idea of a classroom, whether this was physically like this or not at that time, the idea of learning something came from Aristotle. And the idea of, he had this thing called the peripatetic school. that the peripatetic school was Aristotle. He would walk around, and as he was walking around, he would be teaching. And in order to hear what he had to say, you had to do what? follow him. There was no sitting down, listening to Aristotle lecture, you had to follow him. So the idea of this word here is not having to follow around, it's the teacher coming alongside. So think of Paul, we proclaim him, and this is the way we're gonna do it. We're gonna sit alongside of you and we're gonna teach you.

Our next word is admonishing or warning. So the English words admonish or warn. Literally, the word means to put or place in the intellect. So why would it be admonish or warn? To put or place in the intellect, wouldn't that just be like teaching? Well, the reason why Paul uses two words here for teaching is because the specific intensity of this word for admonish or warn is more than just a transfer of information. It's the idea of after it's taught, it needs to be placed in the mind, or it's meant to stay there, all right?

It's almost like if I give you something valuable, and I want you to, here, I want you to take this, now don't forget it. I want you to keep it. I want it to go from, here, you're gonna learn it, and you need to stick it in long-term memory. That's why he uses the word admonish or warn. I'm warning you that this is so important, so valuable, I want it to stay in there.

It's not just a transfer of information. Kind of like the old expression, in one ear or out the other. This is the opposite of that. He wants it to go in the ear and stay there. He does not want this message to be forgotten. Now, what does he want to be forgotten, to not be forgotten?

The mystery. The message of the mystery. Pop quiz, what's the mystery? Christ in you, the hope of glory, right? Needs to be stuck there. So just like we talk about how faith has to have an object, the mystery Paul's revealing, or has revealed, has to stick. That's the idea here, right?

But then Paul uses a qualifying phrase that this proclamation of the mystery is to be done with, and it is with all wisdom. Now wisdom is a recurring theme in this book. We see it used five times specifically in the book of Colossians. Now in Bible study methods, the very first step is something called observation. When we observe that a word or an idea or a phrase is repeated like this is here, it's something to make note of, something to investigate. There must be something here that the author is trying to get across. Wisdom in that culture was assumed to belong to people with the right training, the right school, the right teacher. It wasn't intended for everybody. You had to be a member of the club, the secret club.

Throughout this whole book, Paul has taken it to the Gnostics and their ideas. Because it was such a big prevalent thing out there that especially these people in the town or city of Colossae were being inundated with Gnosticism. Well, Paul is taking it to them. And Paul's not playing around. Paul is pulling out the punches. He's pulling out the knockout punches throughout this whole book here, throughout the whole book, okay? By the way, I wonder if this is what Paul meant by, I do not box is one beating the air.

Maybe, maybe not, but maybe. So when it came to gaining wisdom, they thought it was something you achieved by some secret knowledge and that you climbed your way into, like a ladder that you had to kind of keep going up toward this thing called wisdom. Or it came by visions that you had to be spiritual enough to see. Later in Colossians chapter two, he's going to talk about visions, right? The worship of angels, but then there's visions.

Well, these words that are in scripture are not just there randomly. They're there for a reason. And it was because Paul is trying to knock out this idea of Gnosticism. So look at what Paul prayed for back in verse 9. He prayed that they may be filled with the knowledge of his will with all spiritual wisdom. And then, in our verse here, he says, notice how wisdom is achieved. It's achieved by being taught. Not by some secret society, not by some vision. No, it's by being taught. Not for some secret society, not for a select few. In fact, notice the pattern here.

Three times in this one verse, he says, every man, every man, every man, every man. What do you think his point was? Every man, right? Every man. This is not accidental repetition. Paul was very deliberate here. I'm not sure exactly what they used as a physical thing to write on the papyri. But whatever it was, it was probably valuable and it probably was not as prevalent as it is today where we're always losing pens. Courtney's got 14 pens over there just in case he loses one. So why would Paul take the time to use his writing utensil, the ink, whatever they used? Why would he do that to say every man three times? Because he intended it for the audience to say, no, this is not for the select few, this is for everyone. So what's the goal, he says, for every man?

It's to present every man complete in Christ. There's a goal to it, right? To be presented complete in Christ. Where have we seen this before? Well, a couple of weeks ago, Mike covered verse 22, and he says, to be reconciled in order, we were reconciled in order to present us holy, blameless, and beyond reproach, right? Christ's work of reconciliation was to do this.

And what's Paul doing? He's taking God's purpose of it and he uses the same goal of presenting for his purpose in teaching, right? We proclaim him admonishing every man, teaching every man so that we may present every man complete in Christ. So Paul doesn't come up with his own ministry.

He says, what's God doing? He's in the ministry of presenting every man blameless, holy, beyond reproach. I'm going to take that and I'm going to teach every man so that I can do the same thing. What God's into, I'm into. Now, at this point in Paul's life, he's been a believer 20-ish years.

He's been writing some letters. He's been preaching. He's been teaching. He's been walking with the Lord. So he's done his fair share. He's been teaching the teacher. It's a good run. 20 years is a good run. He probably could have just delegated this teaching and warning. Probably could have. He could just sit around. He could. He's done a lot. But no, Paul's not thinking of retirement here. He's not thinking, all right, it's time for me. I know enough. Now I'm just going to start writing some books, collecting some royalties. He's not doing that. What's he say? Verse 29. He says, for this purpose also I labor, striving according to his power, which mightily works within me. So for what purpose does he labor or strive? The presentation of every man complete in Christ. And that'll take some effort, right?

Not sitting down on a beach. So how does Paul say he does this? Let's look at some descriptive words. He uses this word labor, which means labor to the point of exhaustion. Labor to the point of exhaustion. He's not sitting around. Then he uses this word, agonizo, to strive. It was used in athletic games to strive for the goal, to reach for the finish line, if you will. Take a look at this Broncos player. What's he doing? He's striving to reach the quarterback. By the way, I tried to find a picture of the Bengals striving. It doesn't exist. See you, Bob. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist.

What am I supposed to do? But look at where Paul says the power comes from. It's his power which mightily works in me. A couple more words here. He uses the word energeo, which is where we get our English word energy. He uses it twice. Twice here. He also uses the word dunamis, which is where we get our word for power, like dynamite, right? So Paul says his labor runs on this, not on his own sheer willpower. Think of Paul. He's not going from place to place writing these letters, preaching, teaching, proclaiming, admonishing, mourning. He couldn't do it all in his own sheer willpower. It had to be run by a different type of power, and that's what he says.

But think of this as a continuous, sustained energy, more than it is explosive or dynamic. It's not a one-time kind of a deal. It's a sustained kind of energy. Now, last week, Miles taught us that a mom delivering a baby is only the first stage of labor, right? That the real labor is the years that follow, raising that child to maturity, right? Well, Paul's ministry works the same way. It's not one dramatic moment, but sustained labor toward maturity.

And it isn't ultimately his effort, it's Christ's power working in him. Now, as we saw last week, Paul's suffering is Christ's suffering. Here, Paul's labor is Christ's labor. It just worked out through him. And that's why he can rejoice in it. His eyes aren't on the pain, they're on where it's headed. And none of it is for his own sake.

It's for the church. Think of Christ's example in Hebrews 12, 2, where he says, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. It wasn't about the pain, the labor, the struggle. It was the goal, right? And here's the thing we can all recognize. You ask a woman about giving birth, and she doesn't say, well, it was hard. It doesn't stop there, right? She takes you through it. All right, hour by hour, 14 hours,

14. All right, some of you ladies have done this, right? But every detail is shared in order, almost like she's building a case. But not to brag, it's because she wants you to actually feel what it cost. She's not satisfied with you nodding like you get it.

And that's exactly what Paul does here in 2.1. He doesn't just say, I struggle for you. What does he say? I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf. He's saying this intentionally. It's sort of in the same way the woman recounts the details of her labor. And of course, the husband tries to relate, right? Well, when I had my kidney stone, and then she just kind of looks at him like, yeah. But Paul's not saying this for his own ego, and nor should we have that attitude either.

Struggle. Struggle, this is from the same root word as striving. Agonize, agonizo, right? It's the same exertion here as in verse 29, except it's aimed at people who didn't even know that they were being labored for, right? For those who had Laodicea and for all those who have not personally seen my face. But just like the woman who tells you every hour of her labor, it's not for sympathy. It's because this labor was for something.

And that's even true for the dad who isn't even directly involved. Here's a picture of a useless but anxious husband. He's outside the delivery room in agony. But he's not pushing, he's not doing any of the work that she is, but he's not neutral either.

He's every bit invested in what's going on. He's trying to be a good coach, right? At least I know I was tried. But why would he be so invested? Because it's not just about the struggle. The 14-hour labor, that's the struggle. It's about what it produces, right?

And then they finally meet the brand new little one and it shows why she went through it. Well, Paul says in verse two, that their hearts may be encouraged having been knit together in love. Encouraged. This is what Paul is trying to get. This was part of his struggle. He's not just struggling so that you can see how hard he's working. He wants them to be encouraged.

Now, does anyone ever get discouraged by the news? We all do, right? It's not just about the content of the news, is it? Sometimes it's just like, well, you listen to one guy and he says, hey, the economy has never been better. The other guy says, the economy has never been worse, right?

Or, hey, you should eat eggs. They're really good for you. You shouldn't eat eggs. They're bad for you. Or coffee may or may not be good for you. Who knows, right? Where's the discouragement come from? It comes from not knowing who you can listen to. Right? Who's got the right source? Who's got it? And it can be very discouraging.

Well, this is what was going on at the church in Colossae. Colossae and Laodicea were very close to something called the Silk Road. And the Silk Road was where they traded goods, spices, things like that from the Far East, from the areas like in China, India, all the way over to modern day Middle East. And so you can imagine as they were trading goods, they were also trading ideas. Somebody would have come from, say, India learning about Hinduism or Buddhism and come along and stayed the night in Colossae and was like, hey, I've learned something and I'm going to say with an authoritative voice what I've learned.

And then the next guy would come and say something else. Well, there was a lot of Judaism, there was a lot of legalism, there was a lot of asceticism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, a mix of things, a mix of ideas. You can imagine that would be pretty discouraging.

He's like, well, that guy says he's got the truth. That guy says he's got the truth. I don't know who to listen to, right? So Paul comes in and says, I've got the answer. The answer is in Jesus Christ, right? So this is the reason why Paul gives such intense effort, and he describes his efforts in such a way.

And it's so that they would be knit together in love. Now, this phrase is also used later on in Colossians 2 in verse 19, but it's also used in Ephesians 4, where it says that the body being supplied and knit together by joints and ligaments. And what's the idea there is that the body of Christ, the church, is to be knit together as a body by the joints and ligaments that supply the life that goes into it, right? Knit together in love.

He's addressing the potential fracture by way of the false information, by all these different ideas, or some being pulled into different direction of beliefs. We have this problem today, don't we? I mean, we have so many different sources of information.

Now, a lot of us in this room remember back when the TV only had three channels, right? Whatever it was before that, it was probably less. That was before my time. But the idea is now, well, it went from three channels to a whole bunch when cable came around, and then you had satellite TV, and then you have the internet. And then you had all these bloggers, and now you have social media, and it's just everybody's got a voice, right?

And you can hear 15 different opinions on the same thing, and it can be discouraging. Can't it? I know I get sometimes, especially when it comes to things about health. It's like, well, should I be listening to this guy for my health, or this guy says something else? It can be very discouraging.

The idea Paul is going for is jointly together, knit together in love. In fact, James 1 warns about this in, I believe it's verse 7, James 1. It warns about a double-minded man being unstable in all his ways, right? And the idea of being double-minded there and unstable is the crest of a wave. You know, when a wave is coming in, you don't really know exactly where it's going to go. There's no stability there, right?

Philippians 2.2, Paul talks about, he wants the church at Philippi to have the same mind, right? Being one in the same faith. There's unity.

Ephesians 4.13 talks about the unity of the faith. The body should be unified and we should be united together in love.

Then he talks about attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding. We see a pattern of this word for wealth. And the pattern starts in verse 27 that Myles went over last week, the riches of the glory of this mystery. The word riches is the same word that he uses here for wealth. The wealth comes from full assurance of understanding.

Paul wants them to have a settled, confident understanding, which leads to a result. leads to the result of the true knowledge of God's mystery. What was God's mystery? Christ in you, the hope of glory. The true knowledge of what that mystery was, that's what he's looking for. The true knowledge of God's mystery, he says here in verse 2, is Christ himself. The hope of glory, Christ himself. See, the false teachers were claiming that they had access to a superior, more exclusive wisdom.

Something extra, something hidden from ordinary people. Paul's answer isn't, our wisdom is better than theirs. Paul's not being a sales guy saying, oh, they have that product, my product's better. He's not saying that at all. What he's saying is that everything, all of it, the full wealth, all the treasures, it's already hidden in Christ. And you don't need anything else, only him.

So what Paul prayed for back in 1.9, which was for the people of Colossae to be filled with all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding so that they'll walk worthy and please him. Here in 2 and 3, he expounds on where that knowledge exists. He explains that it's in the person of Jesus Christ, and he wants them to have full assurance of understanding that in him is where all the wisdom is, not in any worldly system, not in any secret writing. The coming next in this chapter are some warnings. Instead of saying every man, Paul's going to use phrases like no one, as in let no one deceive you. Let no one defraud you. Let no one rob you.

And why would he say this? They were an incredible church. Remember, I started out that way. Paul said they were an incredible church. They were full of faith, full of hope. They were spreading the good news of Jesus. and all the world back in one six, they were unified. We'll see next week. They were walking arm in arm in lockstep together. They were united. They weren't it together in love.

So why is he all of a sudden going to change to some warnings? Why would he do that? Because it's possible to fall. It's possible. It's possible to be taken captive. No one, no one in their right mind would say, hey, I don't mind being kidnapped, please come take me. And then the kidnapper warns them. It doesn't do that. We have to be on the alert. We need to stand firm so that we're not taken captive because it can happen. And that's a real warning for us.

So we started today by Paul telling us what he does. He proclaims him, not an idea, not a system, a person. And then just a few verses later, He tells us why that's not enough, because it's in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Everything the false teachers promised you, that promised that you would have to climb toward, Paul says it's already there.

Now, we talk a lot about who you are in Christ here at Holly Hills. We talk a lot about our identity. We take a lot of time going through books like the Book of Romans, right? You could probably recite all the different verses, all, right? You could probably do that because we talk a lot about it here, and I get that. Why? Well, Paul keeps saying it because it's what keeps him from getting pulled off course. It's what keeps you from drifting away. Drifting away from what?

The stability that you have in Christ, in your position, in your identity of who you are. Because the person who's truly secure and knows they're truly secure in their position isn't going to go shopping anywhere else. Not going to be looking for the next voice, the next social media influencer to tell them what the real truth is. Because you know it. You don't have to go anywhere else. You shouldn't be reaching for anything else because you know who you are. Standing firm in the reality. of the mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, and you need to stand firm in there.

Let's pray. Father God, we're just so grateful for you, for who you are and who we are because of you. We're thankful for Paul and his ministry of teaching us and warning us so that it'll stick in our minds, so that we'll know who you are and all the treasures that we have because of you. and that we don't have to seek anything else, that you are enough. And we can proclaim you. And we're grateful for that, Father. Thank you for our position. Thank you for this body that we knit together in love. And may we continue and not be fooled, not be strayed, not be deceived. And we can just stand firm in who we are. In Jesus' name, amen.