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Like to suggest that we take up the end of Colossians chapter one and Colossians chapter 2.
The verse that's particularly on my heart is found in chapter 2 in the early in the chapter.
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Colossians 2 and verse six. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.
Exercises the importance of our personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, as well as all that the Lord Jesus is for us in our relationship with God.
Suggest, perhaps, if we are comfortable to take it up, that we begin in chapter one and verse 24.
Colossians, Chapter One.
24.
Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body's sake, which is the Church, whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God.
Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now has made manifest to His Saints.
To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles? Which is in Christ, in you the hope of glory, whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Where unto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. Chapter 2.
For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts might be comforted being knit together in love. And to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.
For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the Spirit, joy, and beholding your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith as He had been taught, abounding therein with Thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men.
After the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in Him which is the head of all principality and power, in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands.
In putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.
Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. And you being dead in your sins, and uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross.
And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them, openly triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of and holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come. But the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen.
Mainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the head, from which all the body by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Wherefore if he be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are you subject to ordinances, touch not, taste not, handle not, which are all to the which all are to perish with the using after the commandments and the doctrines of men.
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Which things have indeed a show of wisdom and will, worship and humility and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.
This letter was written to Gentiles. Gentiles were that class of people that had no direct relationship with God, as had the Jew. The Jew had been brought into a relationship, at least outwardly, with God. That was the true, proper one that God had established. And yet after the Lord Jesus died.
Then the message was all men for all men, and it goes out to all men. And these in this city of Colossi had accepted the message. And the apostle Paul is now writing to them, and he's encouraging them to go on in that which they had learned from the beginning and not get away from it. All of us are subject to the idea of starting out and saying well.
I've accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior and being happy in that for a while. And then other things come in and it's very easy for our lives to get away from the beginning of that which God has done for us and in US. And so he's encouraging them to give in their hearts and in their lives the Lord Jesus Christ to have.
That place that he should have in every Christian life.
Paul was, as he says, where we started in the verse we started. Paul was giving out his whole life to make truth known to others that God had given to him. And there were some things that he was given to share that had never been known in the history of man. God had never made them known before. Nobody knew them, but now that the work of Christ had been accomplished.
God was opening out His heart and making known to mankind, that is, those who had faith in the Lord Jesus, some wonderful things that concern their relationship with God and with His Son.
Wow.
So he speaks of it in the next verse, 26. He says it's been given to me to fill up the word of God.
That is, he wasn't the last one to write the last words of the Bible. Apostle John did that. But he was going to bring out something anew, truth or line of truth that had never been known before, to bring out things that God wanted us to know for our enjoyment, for our blessing that we had never known before. And so in the 26th verse, he speaks about the mystery.
He said it's been hid, it hasn't been known before and the world still doesn't know it. But for those who trust in the Lord Jesus to us, it's not a mystery anymore. It's something that we have come to know and enjoy and it it has to do with the truth of the church.
That God, through his Son, was going to bring people into a personal, collective relationship with the Lord Jesus, to be part of what we call his body, the Church. But the particular aspect of that mystery?
That is emphasized here is.
Explain to us in verse 27 that mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
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Most of us know that when we put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We became part of something we hadn't been part of before. Or maybe we don't know that immediately, but after a while, perhaps the first thing that's on our mind is our sins and whether we're going to heaven or we're going to hell. And so the gospel message is presented to us, and if we accept it, we come into the enjoyment of the fact that we're saved.
We're not going to go to hell. We're going to go someday to heaven. And God has loved us so much that he has done this wonderful work for us. But then after a while, we get to learn something else. We learn that we belong to something called the church, and we learned that the church.
Is made-up in one sense of a whole bunch of different individuals, but because those different individuals have been.
Each one individually and on the Day of Pentecost collectively, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God is come to dwell in each one of us. Then it's not just an organization of individuals, but we are all part of what we call one body.
And we are it's a living collection unity formed by the Spirit of God into a living relationship with the Lord Jesus. But here in Colossians that something else is that truth is not set aside. It's enjoyed in the first chapter, but he says Christ in you the hope of glory.
And when it says Christ in us, it's a wonderful thing, as we see in chapter 3, that we have.
A life that is new and different. We weren't born with this life, but we have a life that God has given to us. We call it eternal life, but where is that? Where is that life? What does it come from? It says in chapter 3, Christ is our life. This is a tremendous truth, brethren, that is easy to speak doctrinally about, but it needs to be enjoyed.
Personally and individually with us, because what it is saying to us is, yes, you have a life now, a new life, but it's my life, it's my life.
There's only one eternal life is life. There's only one. Every one of us. There's a couple of 100 or so individual personal lives in this room, but there's only one eternal life here. It's the life of Christ. It's a life that is imparted to us to enjoy, not separate from himself. That's impossible.
But he imparts it to us, but it's still his own.
It's our life for eternity. Is that a good life?
It's a perfect life.
It's as perfect as he is. It says Christ in you the hope of glory. Well.
Why is it the hope of glory? Well, if it's his life, where does he live physically? He lives in glory. And so our expectation of glory is as secure as the life that we have. And Paul is presenting these thoughts to his brethren to attach their hearts to the one who is their life. And it's the desire, I believe, of the Spirit of God to each day attach our hearts more.
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To the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, our life.
History is pretty much found just in the epistles, and I was thinking of a passage in Ephesians 3 to supplement what we've read there in Colossians. So we don't have this too much outside of the earth at all outside of the epistles.
And Paul introduces it in Ephesians 3 and verse two. If you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which has given me to you word how that by revelation. So this is new. It's not something he was able to bring from the Old Testament.
It's by Revelation.
He made known unto me the mystery as I wrote a four and a few words, whereby when you read, you may understand my knowledge, and the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known.
Under the sons of men that is this mystery, They expected a Messiah.
As it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. And this is a big portion of this mystery, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body and partakers of His promise in Christ. By the Gospel whereof I was made a minister according to the gift of grace of God-given unto me by the effectual working of his power wasn't even given.
That much to the other apostles, but primarily to Paul. It's Paul's doctrine.
It's found in the epistles.
Of Paul.
Before you turn back to Colossians 2, let's keep going a little bit there in Chapter 3.
Paul's praise in the first chapter of Ephesians that the Saints might know the working of the power of God for them.
Here he prays again in the third chapter and his the emphasis of his prayer is that the Saints might know the working of God in them. And so he repeats something that we have in our chapter in his prayer for them that they might know it. He says as in like verse 14, I bow my knees.
Verse 16 that he.
Would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in your inner man. And now this connects with our chapter, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend. We always like to know more. We like to comprehend more.
Every No one likes to be particularly ignorant.
And Paul is saying that his desire in his prayer for his brethren was that they might enter more into the truth that Christ was dwelling in their hearts. Christ was dwelling in their hearts. He came into their hearts by faith and.
In that if the law, if the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, was found in their hearts by faith.
Would there be love there?
Well.
Think of the truth of it.
You didn't say their love.
But if Christ was dwelling in their hearts by faith, it was his love.
That was in their hearts, and if his love is in the heart, then there's a capacity to comprehend that hadn't been there before.
Knowing God isn't a set of statements that he's all knowing and all powerful and all this and all that. That's all true about God.
But you don't know God if you don't know His heart.
And when Christ dwells in the heart by faith, then there is a capacity to know God as he can't be known in any other way, because for God to dwell in the heart by faith.
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Then that's the heart of God.
You can't separate the heart of God in the heart of the sun and say it's a different kind of love, it's the one, it's perfect unity. And so when Christ truly is.
Dwelling in the heart by faith, then dwelling in the heart is that very as John says as he presents some of these things that Christ is in us than our love is made perfect because it's really his love in us that is being enjoyed and is to be manifested to our fellow man.
Hello.
Well, he speaks in verse 28 that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
Man in responsibility to a God.
Is responsible for himself to God. Adam was a man in relationship to God. Eve was in relationship to God. And they were in responsibility. They were God's creatures. And God set down some a rule as to their lives and said you can do this, this and this, but this is one thing that you may not do. And God put that rule there to keep them in their place, if you will, as his creatures.
And they were in responsibility to keep it. And we know the story they felt.
They disobeyed and brought the consequence of death upon themselves. God, when He later on with the children of Israel, put man under law. It was a repetition of the same kind of relationship on a more formal way, and it was a relationship that God put man under. And he said, you do this, this, and this, and you live.
But if you don't do it.
The responsibility, the consequence to you as you die.
And the outcome of it is there's nobody living.
That hasn't failed it, and in that way died.
The introduction, particularly to us in the New Testament of grace, turns it around. And grace is God saying I'm going to do something for you.
You couldn't do it for yourself. You didn't have the power to do it or the desire to do it. And in fact.
The consequence of you being under the law was our relationship was really you were dead toward me, but in grace.
God has turned it around and he said I love you. So because I love you, I'm going to undertake the responsibility of making our relationship work and making it a permanent one and making you happy with me. And to accomplish that work, God introduces his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And the Lord Jesus comes to earth, and he does the work of the cross.
Which accomplishes redemption. It takes care of our guilt.
But that it doesn't go all the way. It takes care of our guilt, and in that way it keeps us from hell. But.
God says no, I have more. My grace is more than that. I am going to present you to myself through my son. I'm going to do some more work so that you before my eye are going to be before me as my son is.
And justification is part of that which brings us into that position into which now when God looks at you and I, he doesn't look at us only as a safe Sinner. He looks at us through the eyes of what the Lord Jesus is to Him. And having brought us into a place before him where he looks at us that way, and he sees us in all the perfection in which he sees His Son.
He sees us in all the righteousness in which his own righteousness has been satisfied, in the work that he's done. And so he can say this persons righteous before my eyes and their righteous before me in a way that it'll never be lost, it'll never be taken away. And this is what Paul is bringing out to the brethren here in colossi as part of what Christ is in them.
The hope of glory, because, as it says, that he might present every man perfect.
In Christ, in the word of God. When it's Christ that is brought before us in the epistles, it is generally the thought of what he is.
For us before God and what we are in Him.
Before God. And So what am I to God? Well, I'm in Christ.
And in Christ, I'm in it. And you are an absolutely incredible position.
That I suppose, and I might be a little bit facetious, but if we all were in collective full enjoyment of it, we probably wouldn't be sitting in our seats. We'd probably be standing up and dancing for joy. Or however else we express the truth in our own hearts of what we are to God in Christ. And that's grace.
Expression at the beginning of verse 28 that we should pay attention to, I should say a sequence of expressions that says warning every man and teaching every man because we need to have our consciences aroused before we can appreciate truth.
And we have the this, the meeting previous to this was a meeting of warning and.
It's good for us to take these things to heart because it's only as we recognize our need.
That we can really appreciate God's provision.
How does truth get from the head to the heart?
Is there a conscience in between?
I've heard it said that the conscience is the door to the heart, so to state that.
And then, once this truth gets to the heart, be followed. Yes, the feet follow the heart.
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In verse 25 where Paul is saying here that he was made a minister, that means a preacher according to the dispensation of God. That must be the new dispensation which we live in now.
And I was given to Paul for us. It was in the mind of God to fulfill the word of God.
And then he says something more about the ministry, the mystery which has been hid from the ages and from generations. So this ministry that Paul is now bringing before us, that is for thousands of years back.
And from hundreds of years back, talking about ages and generations.
But now it is being made manifest to His Saints. Now they would mean to those who have received the gospel.
Who have understood the gospel and received it, and repented of their sins, and come to the Lord Jesus Christ, Because only who have come to the Lord Jesus Christ can be called Saints.
And to them it is now manifested. That would mean to us, if we are Saints, if we have received the gospel, we have believed it.
When we come out from the Gentiles.
At least I know I came from out from the Gentiles, which we have in verse 27.
And these gentiles, now to them these mysteries are being made known.
And they are really riches of the glory.
Which the Gentiles are now going to receive from God.
Because having received the Lord Jesus Christ, though, they will partake of the glory that the Lord Jesus has in heaven now.
And that is Christ in you, in US. Christ is now in US.
And that's the hope of glory, because only when Christ is within us.
We can believe that we will be glorified with the Lord Jesus in heaven.
That's a sense of the preaching of all here, he says. Whom we preach.
And then the warning also comes in. We have heard about.
And then the labor comes in, and verse 29.
He is laboring now. We are still laboring too.
It worked in him mightily.
Indeed it was. We know the life of Paul, what all he suffered.
But all he did when we reached through it in the Acts.
But it should be working in US too.
Should be in our heart to work for the Lord strife.
For the righteousness which is in God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Which we have received.
Yeah.
All speaks about it. Verse one is for him a great conflict.
It was a real combat use, Mr. Darby translates it. It was a tremendous battle.
Because the truth of God is opposed.
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Sometimes it's supposed because it's fear. It's supposed by Satan.
As we had this morning, Satan opposes the truth of God. He's a liar. That's his nature, and he can't present God's truth. He can try to corrupt it, he can try to imitate it, and so on in an outward way, but when it comes right down to it, it's a lie. He's created a world. The world's a lie. It's a device of Satan against man, but that truth is opposed.
And because it's supposed, Sometimes it's opposed through fear, sometimes it's opposed through indifference. Sometimes it's opposed because people feel their consciences are reached when truth is presented to them, and so they turn against the source of the testimony to their conscience. It's at. Sometimes it's envied, and so on. But I want to.
Speak of an aspect of it that's a little more subtle, because Satans work is often subtle, and that is there is such a thing as a line of truth from God becoming, for a time at least, publicly acceptable.
We all in this country and Canada and so on, think of ourselves as living in a country which has had a history based on and its laws based on the truth of God and so on, and for some period of time certain things that are truth or true become acceptable to men.
But.
Very often when they do, it's only outward.
And there isn't an inward motive to support the outward act, and God is never satisfied. It's not really truth according to the truth of God, unless the inward motivation is that which is consistent with God's own heart. It's not really the truth as it is in Christ Jesus if it is not.
Have the inward motivation, that's why.
In Ephesus, in Revelation 2, thou has left thy first love. The difficulty there was if you don't represent my heart to your fellow man, then you are no longer my light to the world. And if the heart of God was not being displayed through His people, then he says, I'll have to remove you because my light has to be consistent with what I am.
And my heart has to be presented as as my heart. But the the failing was outwardly all the activity was still good.
And he could commend it as things they did, but the motivation was getting lost in them. And it's somewhat easy to go along and think we're living a life of truth if it is publicly acceptable truth.
But the test of God that brings conflict is when the public activity turns against it, and then the question of as Paul brings its conflict. And in fact, we know the conflict cost him his life.
It cost him his life.
The conflict of the two Saints that were prayed for this morning.
In the prayer meeting, one was a young man in a family who put his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was put to death less than two weeks after his salvation by his brothers. The other one that took place a few weeks earlier than that in the same place was a young sister.
Whose husband?
Put her to death for the same reasons, and that's combat for truth.
It cost them their lives, and the test often comes. Maybe it won't cost you or I our lives, but do we fear to tell the neighbor lest the good reputation of ourselves is put at risk? Sometimes it's nothing about martyrdom that's before us, but it's consciously What will they think of me?
That may keep us from.
Presenting the Lord Jesus and the truth to them.
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We may go back to verse 28.
That we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
Is that?
Now.
Rather than future.
The end of what the ministry sought.
Will be accepted in Christ eternal life.
It's ours by possession immediately. But there's also a striving, isn't there? Because we live in a land that opposes, in the world that opposes.
I agree with those comments. I would say Amen it. There's two aspects to it. Positionally before the eye of God there is no iniquity. The work that was done on the cross puts us in a position before God which is perfect and perfect it's not.
Going to be ever any better.
Our position before God can't be improved, can't be made more perfect than it already is, but the work of God is to in our lives, bring us into conformity and practice with that which we were in are in position.
And so the apostle Paul was laboring with his brethren that the actual living of it out in practice would be consistent with what it was going to be at the end of the road. So in some places, when it's talking another line, but the same idea some places, we presently have eternal life.
John's epistles, that's the view we have it. It's a present possession. But in Peters officials, for example, it's seen as that which comes at the end of the road when we're in glory. And so we have both lines of consistent aspects of it. But some things in Scripture are presented to us as a position into which we have been brought before God, but at the same time we have other lines presented to us that.
It's the working of it out in our lives that every day we become more consistent with what we have, that which is the end result of it, as John says in his epistle.
I'm going to have to turn to it, but it it gives that thought in first John.
First John, chapter 3.
And verse two, beloved now, are we the sons of God? That isn't, We're going to someday be the sons of God. We are the sons of God. I'll never be more of the Son of God than I am now.
It's what God has made me to be. But it says, and it does not yet appear, what we shall be. We don't have a full understanding yet of that.
Comprehension of what a Son of God is in its full character.
But he says, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We know that when we appear in glory, we will be morally just like the Lord Jesus Christ, perfectly like him morally. His brother Clem Buchanan often used to say, God is so pleased with his Son and what he is that he wants heaven to be full of people that are just like him. And that's our destiny.
We will be just like him in a moral way. We'll never be him. He's uniquely the Son of God. But then he goes on to say.
Verse 3. Every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. That is, if that is the true expectation of the heart, then the desire of the heart is every day to become more and more like.
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What is going to be perfect in practice as it may already be in position?
Portion and Ephesians regarding the perfecting, and that's the practical perfecting of the Saints. It's in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 11. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. So we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man.
Unto the measure of the stature and the fullness of Christ.
Might be encouraging for some of you to know that.
Because you came to the conference today and you're enjoying the benefits of the gifts that the Lord Jesus has placed, God has placed in the body of Christ. You're in the process of being perfected right now.
And so I think we might have both thoughts of perfection in that chapter, because there is that day in which it's all headed up to until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Is that more perfection in the coming day?
Yes, and also we tend to think the word perfect means and when we think that word perfect, we think without defect. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. Actually sometimes in our Bible and and.
Those verses in Ephesians and also in Philippians if you'd be perfect.
Speaks about being perfect. There it has the sense not of perfection without a blemish, but the sense of being full grown.
And we should all be growing. And if we are truly growing spiritually in Christ, we will become morally each day more like Him. And when the process is complete, we will be fully and perfectly like Him. And.
But the Rapture will change us physically, and we won't have the flesh in us to hinder us.
But we won't have a new life. We are going to change in the life that we have. We already have it. It's just the hindrances to the enjoyment of it and the living of it will be removed from us. But if we.
Learn to walk with God. We grow up. And so he's wanted all his brethren to grow up. You feel bad when you see somebody and you say.
They aren't growing.
They just seem to stay in the same place. The the desire, the heart of God for His people and His work with us is that we grow.
We learn to know our God better, we know the Lord Jesus better. We we become more like Him and put away those things that belong to childhood and become more that which is suited to being.
Sons.
Mind if I bring us back to that verse that started this conversation and asked again, because I'm not clear, is this a positional perfecting in verse 28?
I think it's.
Now, if it was positional, he wouldn't have to labor.
There wouldn't be any labor in it and so he was laboring so that the Saints in colossi would grow up into the enjoyment of that that the Lord Jesus was for them. So it was to grow into the to the place where.
Their walk was equivalent to the position, the perfect position in which they've been brought.
So I don't think you want to totally separate them.
But it's not simply positional because there was labor in it.
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He was driving according to his working. That would be the working.
Of the Person of the Lord Jesus in the hearts of man.
He is the only one who can work with us.
We cannot say which works in me mightily. I wish he would.
But he does work within us. But here he could say he was working with in him mightily.
And when we come to the next verse in chapter two, he speaks about.
Great conflict.
And here it's looking forward to Loudisha. Well, we know Laurie Shea being the last of the churches or assemblies mentioned.
They had given up the Lord Jesus. He was on the outside there that he had to knock on the door to let the man.
So we asked ourselves, well, how could that be?
They hadn't given up Christianity, but their heart was away from them.
He's talking about.
That those that had not seen his face in the flesh, there might have been, someone said, Well, who was Father? We've never seen him.
But the important thing is what Paul is teaching.
He is telling them how to stay close to the Lord Jesus.
Yeah.
And then he speaks in the second word, about to being knit together in love.
It has to do a lot with love. We know that if there's no love, we got nothing.
Love is of God, the love of the Lord Jesus in our hearts.
That is what is important and that will also bring about to the love to each other in the Lord Jesus. If we don't have that, we have nothing.
There were things that.
We're missing in colossi that the apostle Paul saw, and he brings them out later in chapter 2.
But he lays the groundwork for it in chapter one. And what he's saying to them here is this is the my laborers for the Lord with you, brethren, are to this end what I want, what I desire for you as a result of what I'm going to tell you later in this chapter. I do it with the desire that your hearts might be knit together in love.
That's what he wanted to see as an outcome. He wanted to see them grow.
But he also saw there were things there that they hadn't laid hold of or they weren't following that were hindering them. And.
Let's try when someone brings something before us that speaks to our conscience.
Not immediately sort of turn them off or turn it off or turn against the messenger. Sometimes they may not be able to present to us exactly what it is that they're seeking as an outcome. But if it's a God.
They're seeking our good. God is seeking our good. Even if He's he's using a vessel or an instrument that's imperfect in trying to do it. But God does allow us to say and do things with respect to each other that has a right in desire.
Built into it, and Paul wanted them to, as a result of his teaching and of his exhortations. To be knit or united together in love and understanding of the truth of God brings assurance to the soul. It brings peace to the heart as nothing else can. And to know fully the mystery of God is tremendously liberating to the soul.
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And it gives someone.
Things to enjoy that are totally outside the world and anything it could ever offer. And Paul wanted to bring them into the enjoyment of those things that, as he was going to show later, the world and its thoughts were hindering them from entering into them.
He also mentions here the.
Fact that this brings us into relationship with God.
As our Father.
And he mentions of Jesus Christ of Christ Messiah. They were waiting for the Messiahs, but only He is the one.
Who could bring anybody that is them and us.
Into relationship with God as the Father before knew. Nobody knew that God was their father.
In the sense as we understand the relationship of father and son.
Because he brought.
That is, power brought us into the understanding that we can have a relationship.
With God as our Father that we have a relationship with our natural sons, we can be real close to Him.
And only Christ could bring better about.
Because he thought it, he revealed that.
Nice to see.
Apostle Paul says verse one of the second chapter, I would that you knew what great conflict I have for you. Darby's translation says for I would have you know what combat I have for you and you know, it's it's nice to know if you have those who are doing spiritual combat for you.
If they're, if they're warring on their knees, you know, we a lot of set parents, we have grandparents and they spend their time on their knees doing battle for us.
Sometimes in the assembly matters come up in the enemy gets.
You might say a stronghold and there's a need to do battle for the Saints.
Sometimes.
We fail.
To battle the enemy in the right way.
We have to learn lessons.
Regarding that warfare.
Maybe we need to be a little bit patient with each other to learn a few lessons in in in the warfare and in the battle so that the enemy might be resisted.
He might be held at Bay.
So that there can be spiritual growth, but just think of those in your life that care about how you get along spiritually.
They're battling for you.
Well, he tells us here in verse, in the Father and in Christ, in the revelation or the mystery that God is making known, are found all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
01:05:10
Said it many times, probably in this room multiple times, but there's only two ways we know anything.
There's only two ways to know anything.
The 1St way is by personal experience.
Everyone has been told probably at one point in their life that fire is hot and you didn't fully believe it, and you found out by personal experience that fire is hot.
And so there are things that we all know.
By our own the experiences of our own lives. But other than that, the only other way we know things is somebody else tells us.
Somebody else tells us. Nobody in this room, my personal experience, knows that Abraham Lincoln ever lived.
We probably all believe she did, and the only way we know it is because we've been told by others.
Who have said so?
There are things that only God knows and could tell us. There are treasures in the heart of God for us that no one could tell us. No one could discover them by personal experience.
But God has chosen to make things known to us, not only to the mind, but to the heart about Himself that will satisfy us for eternity. And so we need to be on guard whenever we have thoughts, to have some sense in ourselves of where they came from.
Where did that idea, where did that thought, where did that stated supposed truth come from?
The only ultimately.
Safe source is from God Himself if it has to do with things moral or spiritual. And so God has chosen to reveal Himself and to tell us. And not only that, but if our hearts are open to Him, He says, not only will I tell you, but I will confirm it to your own spirit and soul by my spirit which dwells in you.
And so the Spirit of God confirms the truth of what's being said to us.
If it's really the truth.
And so we have a double power of God at work, not only to give us a pure source of knowledge, but also to make it good in us in a way that it doesn't matter who said it.
As far as the instrument to which it came to us, if it's the truth of God, the Spirit of God makes it good in us, then we may be thankful for whomever said it, but we're not dependent on that source anymore for it. We say God says it. And so I'm happy. I'm going to live. I'm going to.
Walk by that which comes from God himself. But the Satan has put a innumerable.
Sets of thoughts into the world that have no source of truth connected with them at all, and they're so freely available and so publicly. Everyone promoted.
And so on. And it's ever increasingly easy to get your own thoughts out there for everybody else. But be sure the danger here in Colossi was they were listening to some of those voices and it was pulling them away from that which was coming from God.
Was so closely knit together with his brethren.
That when he was absent in the flesh, he was with them in spirit.
And that's encouraging for us.
When I'm absent, when I'm someplace else, I think of my brother and come together.
01:10:03
And the rating meeting at such and such a time, and in the prayer meeting of such and such a time.
In spirit.
And enjoying and beholding the order.
And the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.
There is still.
A certain order, even though it might not be perfect and it never will be.
But there is an order in the coming together.
It should be more punctual in the start.
Sometimes, oftentimes, maybe all the time, but there is an order, and that can only be in Christ.
It has to do with your faith in Christ. That's the only reason we come together.
Because we are in Christ and He draws us together.
Freeze you read earlier in Colossians chapter one.
The end of verse 26.
His Saints, the word St. means holy one, His holy ones, His Saints, to whom God would make known. What is the richest of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles?
Is Christ in you the hope and glory? Let's thanks.
What's up with Grace to?
Hold on.
I'm going to go.
And watch the Game of Thrones.