The people watched in amazement as Jesus created a whip from cords and removed their commercial ventures. He drove them out with their sheep and oxen, and He overturned the tables of the moneychangers. And the people said, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” What? 
Maybe they heard about the sign Jesus did in Cana, we don’t know. It’s the same word, sign. But in our vernacular, they were saying, “Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to disrupt our business here?” They questioned Jesus’ authority, as the majority of people around the world do today. Who do you think you are, telling us how to run our business, order how lives, and practice our worship? What gives you the right? Prove that you have the authority to do this in our temple! So… Jesus did. He answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” What? 
 
He didn’t challenge their right to question His actions, of which they had none. Instead, Jesus answered them by prophesying about His own death and resurrection. Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days. They hadn’t a clue what He was saying, and they made that clear. It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and it is still not finished, and YOU would rebuild it in three days? John then wrote, “But he was speaking about the temple of his own body.” John didn’t understand that at the time Jesus said this, none of the disciples did. Not until after Jesus was raised from the dead. 
 
Malachi 3:1-4 is considered a prophecy about this time in Jesus’ ministry. “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.” You see the double reference in that text, to His first coming and His cleansing of the temple, and to His second coming, and final judgment.  The religious leaders had corrupted true worship. Jesus confronted them and cleansed the temple, and no one could stand before Him. But then Jesus went further, by telling them what or Who the temple actually is. The temple, and the tabernacle before it, was the place where man met God. Jesus told them that now He is the only “place” where anyone can meet God. “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” He said later in John. The temple was also the place where sacrifices were made for sin. Not anymore. He is the final sacrifice. Jesus gave His blood for sin, once for all, for all those who come to Him by grace and through faith. Jesus told them plainly, but they did not understand, that His body would be destroyed on the cross, but God would raise Him up in three days. 
 
The temple Jesus cleansed was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans and has never been rebuilt. There is a mosque now where the temple once sat. The Jews who still look for the Messiah long for the temple to be rebuilt. Even many Christians long for it as well, because they believe it is a final sign that Jesus is about to return. But the temple has been rebuilt. Christ is our temple. Paul preached on Mars Hill and addressed those who worshiped all the gods they could think of except the true God. And He said, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”  
 
Our assurance that Jesus will return comes from the fact that He is raised from the dead. His church is established, the day is fixed, and His return will be glorious. Because of that, we may worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Christ our temple.   

Jesus and his mother went to a wedding in Cana, and the disciples came as well. We can assume that the couple getting married were friends or relatives of Jesus and His family. A Jewish wedding and celebration could last up to seven days, so there was a constant need for food and drink to be replenished. And it would have been a big deal when the wine ran out at this wedding in Cana. We are not given any details as to why, but it could mean the groom’s family, who were responsible for the feast, had not counted the cost, had not made sure there would be more than enough. It could mean there were wedding crashers, people who were not invited but eating and drinking nonetheless. It could be there were some in the crowd who were particularly “festive,” they might say, but were in fact overindulgent. They were drinking wine like it was their job. We simply don’t know. But we know it was a problem. In fact, it was a scandal. There was a strict social and covenantal obligation for the groom’s family to make sure that there was enough food and wine for everyone. Running out would be embarrassing, at best. But it could also result in a breach of the marriage contract, which would expose the groom to public humiliation or financial penalties from the bride’s family. It could, in other words, result in a lawsuit. 
 
We have a hard time understanding this, don’t we? I mean, the worst that can happen at one of our wedding feasts might be that we don’t get to go back for thirds on pigs in a blanket. Or the dance floor is not big enough for the Cha Cha Slide and the Wobble. But in the ancient Jewish world, running out of wine was a serious breach of hospitality. That’s why when Mary heard about the dilemma, she went immediately to Jesus and said, “They have no wine.” And He replied, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” I remember hearing this verse as a child and my mouth fell open and my eyebrows went up. “He called his mother ‘woman’!” But I learned that in Jewish culture at the time, this was not a show of disrespect. It was another way of saying, “Ma’am” or “Madam.” I get it, but I would not recommend saying, children, when your mom says that you can’t have milk in your cereal because it’s all gone, “Woman, what does that have to do with me?” That may not end well.  
 
What did Jesus mean when He said to His mother, “What does this have to do with me?” Scholars agree that Jesus was gently chiding His mother, saying, “Why do you involve me?” Or even stronger, “Don’t tell me what to do in my earthly ministry.” Remember, Jesus did not come to the earth to do man’s bidding, but to accomplish the will of His Father. Matt Carter wrote, “If He responded to what men desired from Him, He would have filled bellies, healed diseases, and overthrown Rome, and then all humanity would have died and gone to hell.” He came for our good and God’s glory. 
 
Then Jesus said, “My hour has not yet come.” As you walk through the Gospel of John, you see this theme of “my hour” or “the hour” repeated several times. Two times the Jews were seeking to arrest Jesus, “but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.” In the week after His triumphal entry, Jesus said “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He was speaking of His death, which He made clear by saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The hour is the time of His suffering and His death. The hour is the reason Jesus took on human flesh and came to earth. He came as the exact imprint of God’s nature so that man could see God and not die, so that man could see God and believe in Jesus and never die. 
 
Mary heard what Jesus said to her but was not deterred. She turned to the servants and said, “Do whatever He tells you.” There are two truths that strike me about her response. First, she acted in faith. James would write later, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith.” Mary looked into the face of God and believed that He would give generously. Second, she spoke an eternal truth. She said to the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” It is not taking this verse out of context to say that this sentence from Mary’s lips is universally true in every circumstance and with every person. Mary was essentially saying to the servants, who had no idea who Jesus was, “He knows what to do. Listen to Him and do what He says.” We are His servants and that is our primary job. Listen to Him and do what He says.  
 
You know how it ended. Jesus turned as much as 180 gallons of water into the best wine anyone there had ever tasted. It tells us of God’s abundant grace in meeting us at our point of need. It reminds us that the Lord loves to give lavishly to His people, abundantly above all that we could ever ask or even think.  
 
And it encourages us to always “do whatever He tells us.” 

John the Baptist testified one day that Jesus was the Lamb of God, “who takes away the sins of the world.” Then he said something curious: “I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” Certainly, John knew his cousin! He had grown up knowing Jesus. They may have played the ancient version of soccer or baseball together. But John had no idea that his cousin had come down from heaven and was the Son of God.  
 
I didn’t put this together until recently as I preach this passage that I had read before an untold number of times. John the Baptist said it was at Jesus’ baptism that he finally saw his cousin with new eyes. He said, “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.” This was a clue. The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament would come upon people, but He would also leave. But He remained on Jesus. Then John said that God sent him to baptize with water but that the One upon whom the Spirit remained would baptize with the Holy Spirit. In other words, as John gave witness, this One would be the Son of God, the promised Messiah. When did John get this information from God, these clues to look for? Luke tells us: “During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  
 
John was told by God to preach repentance and to baptize. And I believe he was told more than that. I believe the preaching and the baptisms of John had a two-fold purpose. First, he was sent to prepare people for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which they would need to be saved. But second, and most important, John was tasked with “finding” the One whom God had sent to save us. John did not know who the Messiah was, not until Jesus entered the Jordan and was baptized. When Jesus was baptized by John, and he came out of the water, Mark’s gospel says, “immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” As we put all of this together, we see that John the Baptist finally understood who his cousin really was. He was and is the Christ. 
 
How about the people around us? Or maybe someone reading this column? Do we know who Jesus is? Millions, if not billions of people on the planet today may know about Jesus. But most of them cannot say with John, “I have seen and I know, I am a witness, that Jesus is the Son of God.” What about those who used to know, or said they knew, but now they don’t believe? We all know someone like that. Do you remember what John the Baptist asked when he was in prison, facing execution? He sent word to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the ‘one who is come,’ or shall we look for another?’” Maybe it was his suffering that caused John to doubt. Maybe it was, like many of the disciples, he believed Christ had come to drive out Rome and liberate Israel. And when all he heard from prison was Jesus going about preaching, he was confused. Some might say he was on the verge of deconstructing his faith. Jesus sent back the messenger to John, saying, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” Hey, cousin John. I have come to reverse the curse, even the curse of death itself. Do not lose heart. You were right when you said of me, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”  
 
As for those we know who used to believe, let’s pray for them, and if there is opportunity, let’s say to them, “You were right the first time. Jesus is the hope of our salvation. Go back to what you once believed, and help others return as well. Be like John in prison. Ask Jesus yourself if He is truly the only Savior. And listen carefully to what He says about himself in the Word.” 
 
We can know what we know.  

 
When John the Baptist started drawing huge crowds in the wilderness, the Pharisees got nervous. Who does this guy think he is? They sent priests and Levites to find out. They first asked John if he was the Christ. No. How about Elijah? Nope. The Prophet? Not him either! The interrogators, frustrated no doubt with his answers so far and feeling pressure to bring something definitive back to the Pharisees, asked John, “Then why are you baptizing?” You see, it was Jews who were coming out to John to be baptized. That was outrageous even on its face. The Jews believed that they were the only people who did not need to be baptized. The Gentiles were unclean, not the Jews! There were some Jewish groups that practiced “proselyte baptism” for Gentiles who wanted to convert to Judaism. But that was self-baptism. They took a bath, essentially, in order to ritually cleanse themselves. But this was different, as John was administering the baptisms himself. So, these men sent from the Pharisees said in effect to John, “Who do you think you are?”  
 
I remember a story years ago from a man who went to church in a nearby city. There were people from his small church going door to door in neighborhoods. They were asking people if they knew Jesus, sharing the gospel if they could, or at least asking if they could pray for them. And one day the pastor of this church got a phone call from another pastor in the city, one who led a much bigger congregation. And he asked the pastor of the smaller church, “What do you think you are doing? The neighborhoods where your people are witnessing are part of our territory.” To which the pastor of the small church said, “What? Your territory? I didn’t know that churches had territories.” Then he laughed and said, “With all due respect, brother, I believe it was John Wesley who said, ‘the world is my parish,’ or ‘my territory.’”  
 
Amen. By the way, if we are sharing the gospel in the way the Bible presents it, there is no place, no people group, no classroom, no office, no playground, and no neighborhood that is off limits. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, wherever it is shared. 
 
After John’s interrogators got nowhere with their first three questions and had eliminated Christ, Elijah, and the Prophet from their list of who he might be, they started to whine a little. “Hey, listen, we can’t go back to the Pharisees with three no answers. Help us out here. We need to know who you are. So…who are you?” John ran to Isaiah in his reply, and said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” Isaiah had declared that before the Messiah would appear, there would come a voice crying in the wilderness, “Build a road! Make it straight. Lift up the valleys and level the mountains, so the glory of the Lord may be revealed. This is the highway for the King!” The road grader Isaiah was talking about was John the Baptist, who told those questioning him, “That’s who I am. That’s what I have come to do. It’s not about me. It’s about Him. It’s the Lord!” 
 
Need a why? There it is. We live and move and have our being because of Him. It is not about us; it is about the Lord.  
 
Best why ever. 

I love the Gospel of John. I love all four gospels, but John is my favorite. It is not a synopsis of the life of Jesus, as Matthew, Mark, and Luke are. It is structured around Jesus’ encounters with different people, like Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the man born blind, and many more. These encounters each reveal something about Jesus, who He is and why He came. John’s gospel is also built on seven signs (or miracles) and seven “I am” statements. For example, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and then demonstrated that by raising Lazarus from the dead. These signs take place, for the most part, in the first eleven chapters of the book. However, nearly half of this gospel is about the final week of Jesus’ life, and what happened after He was crucified and then rose from the dead. John clearly puts the spotlight on the redemptive sacrifice for which Jesus came, the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ the King. 
 
John wrote his gospel primarily to persuade those who read it to believe in Jesus. He says so himself in chapter 20: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” John wrote to persuade his readers to the truth of who Jesus is so they will believe in Him and become His disciples. What does it mean to believe in Jesus? It is not the same as believing in most things we talk about. If someone says, “I saw where it is going to be sunny tomorrow,” you might say, “I believe it.” But your belief will change at the first sign of a raindrop the next day. Many people say they believe in Jesus, but their belief is simply a product of their intellectual agreement with a set of facts about Jesus’ life. But that’s not a belief that saves us. The word for believe, pisteuo, means to trust completely, to commit to, to put faith into something or someone.  
 
A classic illustration of this is the story of Charles Blondin, a Frenchman in the 1850’s who walked across the gorge just below Niagara Falls on a 2-inch cable, with nothing to save him if he fell. The cable was 1,100 feet long and 160 feet above the water. He walked across it, he walked it blindfolded, he did it riding a bicycle, he crossed it carrying another man, and he crossed it pushing a wheelbarrow. When he asked the crowd how many believed he could push the wheelbarrow across, the crowd all yelled affirmation. “We believe!” But when he asked who would get in the wheelbarrow while he pushed it across, no one believed. The difference is critical to our understanding of faith. The crowd gave intellectual assent to what Blondin could do, but their “belief” did not rise to the level of completely trusting him to the point they would put their lives on the line.  
 
If we believe in Jesus, we put our lives on the line, or better, we put our lives in His hands. We surrender all that we are to Him.  

When Paul asked Philemon to forgive and be reconciled to his runaway slave, Onesimus, he made that appeal on the basis of how Christ forgives and receives us when we have been running from Him. “Receive him as you would receive me,” Paul writes. How could Philemon do that? How could he fully forgive Onesimus’s breach of trust? 
 
Paul could have referred Philemon to what he had written to the church in Corinth at this point. “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  
 
Paul asked Philemon to look at Onesimus the way we are to look at everyone in Christ, no longer regarding them according to the flesh. We are to see them as new creations in Christ, partners in the ministry, brothers and sisters in the faith. Even when we have been offended!  
 
I don’t know how Philemon felt about Paul’s request, but I know how I have dealt sometimes with one like it. Have you ever had to meet with someone to be reconciled when you really didn’t want to? In an elders’ meeting early on in the life of Antioch, one of the elders said after we had prayed, “I think we need to be reconciled with our former pastor.” Five families, mine included, had left our former church in 1986 with legitimate biblical reasons, and several months later had started Antioch, but we all knew that there was sin involved in how we had left. We each agreed to write a letter to the pastor, asking humbly for his forgiveness, hoping that he would give it freely. What he gave us was a letter in reply asking to meet with each of us, individually, at his house. Gulp. Here’s what I wrote about that:  
 
“I remember turning into his driveway and my heart felt like it would pound all the way through my chest. My palms were moist, my mouth felt like cotton, my breath was shallow. It’s a wonder I didn’t pass out right there on his doorstep! He led me down the path to his back-yard retreat (a small storage-building he used as an office), and we entered and closed the door. Then the greatest thing happened. He smiled at me and told me that he forgave me. He prayed with me, and I floated back to the car, feeling maybe 20 pounds lighter. The other Antioch elders had a similar experience. When we gathered to share our experiences, we rejoiced at the good news that as we obeyed, God supplied His grace for reconciliation. We could turn our sails into the wind of His Holy Spirit now and receive His power and direction.” We had been received as brothers. 
 
Again, Paul says, “receive him as you would receive me.” Onesimus had offended Philemon, and now Paul is asking Philemon to receive him back as if he were Paul. It is important for the sake of our spiritual health that when we are offended, we not only forgive, but we seek to be reconciled. We teach our children that, right? Cindy and I used to ask our children when they had gotten into a fight to tell each other they were sorry, and to hug. And to say, “I love you.” I remember one of the boys pushing Luke over and causing tears, and the ensuing hug and the “I’m sorry.” But what I remember most is the offending boy, who couldn’t really talk very well, saying, “I wubboo kookie!”  
 
I was at a meeting several years ago where some pastors and some men from Piedmont Men of Steel were there. These guys are ex-offenders who grew up rough, in many cases with either a missing or abusive father. And they said that one thing that drew them to the Piedmont Men of Steel meetings was that every week, at every meeting, all the men go around the room and give every other man a hug and say, “I love you.” At first it seems weird for a new guy, and he doesn’t want to do it, because he has never experienced that before. But it wasn’t long before he starts coming to the meetings because of those hugs and the “I love yous.” These men were finally being regarded, not according to the flesh, but as new creations in Christ.  
 
Paul says in effect, “Philemon, receive this man back. Give him a hug, like you would give to me, and tell him that you love him. He is your brother.”  
 
Reconciliation is costly. Jesus knows that best, and with His help, we can, too. 

Paul’s letter to Philemon is considered one of the most powerful and eloquent examples of reconciliation in all of history. Paul writes to a friend whose slave has run away, and in his running has found Christ through Paul’s gospel message. You have to look at Paul’s approach to Philemon in asking him to not only forgive his former slave, but to release him and let him help Paul in his imprisonment. Paul doesn’t push or prod or make a demand as an apostle. Commands from authorities are often resented, so instead he makes an appeal as a friend. “Oh,” he says, “I am bold enough, or confident enough in the Lord to tell you to make good on what is required.” Up until this point in the letter, Philemon has no idea what Paul is going on about. He may be thinking, What is required? Paul…what is this? What it is, is Paul practicing wisdom that comes from above. The wisdom that reminds us that we catch more flies with a pot of honey than with a bowl of vinegar. Wisdom that has learned to lead people, not to drive them. Paul does not want Philemon to do anything from compulsion. He knows that love cannot be forced, and he wants his friend to act from love, not from duty. So, he adds, “yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you.”  
 
The word picture for “appeal” is wonderful, as it can mean to come alongside in order to exhort or entreat, to stand side by side to make a request. It’s a father putting his arm around the shoulders of his teenage son and saying, “Hey, I want you to do the right thing here because I know it will be best for you. I will not force you, but I am asking you because I love you and can see down the road that this will result in blessing for all parties involved.” Paul could have said, “And remember, Philemon, I am an apostle appointed by Christ.” But he didn’t! Instead, he said, I am an old man, and a prisoner for Christ Jesus. I think Paul is just adding credence to his humble appeal by saying, “Even if I wanted to force you into this, Philemon, I couldn’t do it from where I sit here in prison as an old man. But I am asking you to do it for the sake of Christ.” And then, Paul mentions the name. Verse 10 of the letter is the first time Paul mentions Onesimus. Some have speculated that Onesimus waited outside the house until he heard his name mentioned as the letter was read aloud, and then he stepped into Philemon’s presence. Maybe so!  
 
For a second time, Paul makes an appeal: “I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.” Hey Philemon, good news! I have become a father in prison, and his name is Onesimus! What a shock this must have been to Philemon, that his runaway slave was not only standing before him, but that he had come to faith in Christ. Then Paul adds irony, even humor when he says that the one who was useless to you, Philemon, is now useful to me and to you. “Onesimus” means “useful.” Before he ran off, Philemon may have been known to say on occasion, “Where’s Useful?” To which someone replied, “Use-less, you mean? Haven’t seen him all day.” What names or labels have been put on you — "difficult," "screw-up," "the one who gets on people’s nerves" — that Christ wants to rename? And let’s be honest, often we put those names on ourselves. Even though we know we are in Christ, we see ourselves as a disappointment to Him and to others. We see ourselves as a burden, even a thorn in other people’s sides. Or maybe we say, “I’m nothing special; I’m just ordinary.” Consider this from C. S. Lewis. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit.” 
 
Change that name for yourself, because God did not give it to you. Do not call yourself anything less than what God calls you: Beloved, holy, blameless…son…daughter. Onesimus didn't get a new name; he got a new reality that made his old name true for the first time. He was a changed man, useful to God and to God’s people.  
It is a beautiful picture of the transforming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

In his greeting to Philemon, Paul writes a familiar refrain that never loses its importance: “I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers.” Just a reminder that when a beloved brother or sister in Christ comes into our minds, we can silently thank God for them. You can certainly pray more, but we should be encouraged to not pray less. As you are driving down the road or sitting at your desk at work; as you are cleaning the kitchen or changing a diaper and someone comes to mind, simply pray this: “Thank you, God, for him, or for her!” Paul does that here as he thanks God for Philemon and his family, and then rejoices in their love and faith. Or in their love and loyalty, as FF Bruce says, because they have it for the Lord Jesus and for all the saints. They love Jesus and one another and their loyalty to one another is a testimony of their love. How did Paul know? He heard about it, even in prison! He heard reports about Philemon and his family and the way they loved the church in word and in deed. They were living out in Colosse what Jesus had told the twelve in the upper room: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” The church in Philemon’s house was walking together, encouraging one another in love and loyalty. That should an identifying mark of every church. Think of it this way: a flock of geese flies together, honking encouragement. Skunks travel alone. Love and loyalty in a church is a great source of encouragement to the people in the church. But it is a refreshment to others as well. 
 
Paul writes after the greeting, “For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you.” Paul says, Hey I want you to know that your walk with Christ is a source of joy to me. I want you to know, Philemon, that the way your life refreshes the people in the church there gives me great comfort. This is not Paul’s way of flattering Philemon in the beginning of the letter to get him to do what he wants him to do at the end of the letter. No, this is Paul doing what he always did with men and women who were serving the Lord in truth. He built them up, he encouraged them. Sam Crabtree wrote, “God is proactive in a person’s life when that person refreshes others. That factor alone should produce in us an eagerness to be a refresher, a cheerleader—a clear, strong, consistent, energy-giving affirmer of those around us!”  
 
Are you one who refreshes others? It is a wonderful thing when other people are refreshed by being around you. Maybe you have never thought of it that way, but we all know people who suck the energy out of us and we all know people who make us feel energized. Philemon was the latter, and Paul tells him, Hey, Philemon, you are a refresher! Thanks for that, brother. Proverbs says, “Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.” It’s the law of the harvest. What you sow is what you will reap. Why not sow blessings and refreshment wherever you can? 
 
I heard about a lady who opened her door one morning to see a dog on her front stoop with her newspaper in his mouth. She was delighted at this unexpected delivery service, so she gave him a treat as he dropped her paper and looked up, wagging his tail. The next morning, he was back with 8 newspapers. The law of the harvest! 
 
Refresh others. Bless the hearts of the saints. And watch for those seeds to bring forth good fruit. 

I want to make sure that if I died today my wife would be provided for. There are lots of ways of doing that, and I am not an estate planner, but I will say that we need to follow Paul’s command in 1 Timothy to provide for our households as men. The word for provide means to “take thought…to provide beforehand.” That means for many people that we are to work hard to save, invest, and prepare for the future when you or your spouse is gone, or when neither you nor your spouse will be able to work. That is one reason why I have had a term life insurance policy for years and have made investments that will be part of my wife’s provision if I go see Jesus before she does. 
 
I also want her to know where to find whatever she needs in my absence. So, we have put important papers in a fire-safe box. You may have everything online, and that’s great! But in the firebox is our will and health care power of attorney, vehicle titles, the deed to our land, birth certificates, social security cards, passports, all insurance information, and other important documents that we want to have access to immediately. I have also prepared a folder for my wife entitled “Who to Call When.” That document is on our computers, but there is a hard copy in the fire-safe box that I update every year or so, as needed. The folder includes who to call for Car Repair, Septic Service, Plumbing, Electrical, Heating fuel, HVAC, Tax preparation, and more. The last thing I want to do is compound her grief in my passing with having to try and make sense of our finances or how to take care of our house and possessions.  
Men, let’s be honest. Providing for our future also includes staying as physically fit as we can possibly be. If I am not taking care of my body, I am violating God’s Word in at least a couple of ways. First, the Bible says that I am not my own, that I have been bought with a price, and that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Bible also says bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things. The Bible gives us practical steps to take for temple maintenance that include eating right, exercise, going to the doctor for regular physicals, and doing what we can to be able to stay here a long time and provide for our family. It will not look the same for every person! 
 
I go the YMCA every week and I have seen this scenario repeated over and over. I am getting dressed to go run and lift weights. There is a man a few lockers down from me who is also getting ready to exercise. It takes him a while just to bend over and tie his shoes. The sweat is pouring off him just from that exertion. And I am guilty so often of judging him for allowing himself to get to this place with his body. But I believe the Lord gives me a different perspective. He whispers into my heart, “At least he’s taking a step. He has a hard road ahead, but he’s on the way.” 
 
How about you men? Are you on the way? To being the provider for your wife and your children? Do you have a vision for their emotional, physical, and spiritual needs? And for their future? Don’t let this be a burden to you. Instead, choose to let this be a word of encouragement. Choose just one of these areas where you believe the Lord has spoken to you this morning, and commit to walk in a new direction in that area. I believe God will meet you in that commitment and give you grace.  
 
For His glory and for the blessing and benefit of your family. 

As Paul closes his letter to the church in Colosse, he mentions ten “fellows,” or, partners in the Gospel. Some he calls beloved or faithful or a servant. The first man he mentions, Tychicus, receives the full complement: “He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord.” So, what do we know about this man? 
 
We know that he was probably Paul’s favorite courier. He delivered at least three letters for Paul, to Ephesus, Colosse, and to Philemon. It is believed he also delivered Paul’s letter to Titus, as well as his last letter, 2 Timothy. It is clear he was a man trusted by the Apostle Paul. We know that he had been with Paul in Rome and was sent to Colosse. Not just to bring the letter, but Paul says to the church, “I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts.” Paul said the exact same thing about Tychicus in Ephesus. Paul’s love and concern for all the churches, whether he had planted them or not, was for their lampstand to stay bright, despite false teaching from within or persecution from without. But you also see his love for the churches who were concerned for his welfare. He writes, "I want you to know how we are... and that your hearts may be encouraged." That’s one of the reasons he sent Tychicus to them. 
 
There is no mention in Scripture of Tychicus as a great orator, preaching to the masses. He is not described as a brilliant theologian or a careful apologist for the Gospel. He didn’t write any books or letters that we know about. But Paul loved him and called him a fellow servant in the Lord. That’s Paul’s way of saying, “He is not my servant. We are servants of Christ, together.” Some have said the best ability is dependability, and Tychicus will eternally be known as a servant of Christ who was dependable. The letters he carried to the churches outlasted the churches themselves. They outlasted the Roman Empire where those churches were built. And those letters are today a vital part of the life and legacy of the church. They will stand.  
 
The last of the ten people who get a call out from Paul is Archippus. I wonder if he was called Arky for short, because it’s a hard “ch” in his name. Nickname notwithstanding, Paul gives interesting instructions to the church about this man. He writes that they are to say to Archippus, “See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.” I wonder how that went. The courier of Paul’s letters was assumed to also have been the reader. So, you would think that Tychicus had been coached by Paul before he left, “Hey, when you get to this part, ask Archippus to stand and then read this to him. And then ask the congregation to repeat it to him.” We know Paul was a gracious man, and maybe he knew Archippus well enough to know that he could handle this spotlight and exhortation in front of the church: “fulfill your ministry, brother!” 
 
Who was Archippus? Most believe he was Philemon’s son, from Paul’s greeting in that letter: “To Philemon our beloved fellow worker and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house.” We don’t know what prompted this message. Many believe that Archippus was a growing young believer who had showed tremendous promise in faith and in serving the Lord. Perhaps he was also a young leader in the church. Paul wanted him to be reminded that his calling was from the Lord. All that he had been given came from the Lord and it would be his joy then to “fulfill it.”  
 
All of that begs this question for you, dear reader: What “ministry have you received in the Lord” — big or small — do you sense God calling you to fulfill right now? Or are you walking in it, already, and are known among the saints as a beloved and faithful servant?  
 
May your tribe increase! 

Paul said to the church in Colosse, “At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison—that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.” Paul was in the business, if you will, of proclaiming the Gospel. And he was in prison for that very reason. I love that Paul was clearly not concerned about his own welfare. That’s not his prayer request at all. He asks the church to pray that God would open a door for the word. Let’s make it a habit of praying that God would open doors for the word. He still does. Sometimes those doors are for encouragement from strangers whom we find out are really family. Cindy and I were taking an airport shuttle in Portland, Oregon last week and the driver was playing Christian music on his radio. I asked him if he was a believer and he said yes. A brother I had never met! I then asked about his church, saying, “Do they preach and believe the Bible there?” He almost turned around while driving to say, “Yes!” Then he said, “Don’t all churches?” We had a discussion about the sad state of affairs with many churches that have left the truth behind and the damage that causes to the people who are there and to the world that is watching. At the airport as we walked into the terminal, our new friend yelled, “Pray for the churches!”  
 
Paul also asked the church to pray for him, that “I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.” We may not know how to answer every question, but the message of Christ, the Gospel, must be clear. The word is phaneroo, and it means “to make manifest or visible or known what has been hidden or unknown.” It is critical for those who speak for God in the church to make the Gospel clear, lest you end up with what’s called “mist in the pulpit and fog in the pews.” Joe Bayly wrote years ago that someone passed along a quotation of graffiti he found on the wall of a university: “Jesus said to them, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ And they replied, ‘You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our interpersonal relationships.’ And Jesus said, ‘What?’” We need deep thinkers, but they must be able to explain on a layman’s level the deep truths of God. To put the cookies on the lower shelf, as many have said.  
 
Many commented on a man’s testimony at Antioch at our last men’s breakfast because, they said, “It was so clear. So well communicated.” Chris spoke to the issue we have all struggled with, fear about our job, our calling, and whether we are in the right place, or whether we can even do what God has called us to do. And he painted a picture of God’s encouragement to him that ministered to us. It was clear; we were able to see it with our own eyes. That kind of clear message changes us.  
 
My wife and I recently took a trip to the Pacific Northwest. One of our stops was Crater Lake. I had heard about the lake, I had read about the lake, and I had seen pictures of the lake. But nothing made Crater Lake clear to me like seeing it with my own eyes. I saw its breath-taking beauty up close. That’s what clear Gospel communication does for those who hear it. We see Jesus up close. 
 
Finally on this point, Paul asked them to pray for him and his communication. Why would the anointed apostle, perhaps the greatest church planter of all, the one responsible for nearly half of the New Testament, ask this? Because he knew that the prayers of the saints have powerful effect. Hudson Taylor told the story about a mission station in China that was blessed above all the others. He couldn’t think of a reason for this, because there were equal devotion and ability in the other stations. But this one stood out. Then one day when he was traveling and speaking in England, a man came up to talk with him about that particular station. He told Hudson Taylor that he had been the college roommate of the missionary at that station and had committed himself to daily pray for the work there. Hudson Taylor said, “Then I knew the answer.”  
 
Only God can change a heart. Or a group of men. Or a mission station. But our prayers, and our clear communication of the message matter.  

You have heard the story of the little girl who saw the movie “Cinderella” for the first time and was telling her neighbor about it. The lady said, “I know what happened in the end.” The little girl said, “What?” She replied, “They lived happily ever after!” And the girl said, “Oh, no they didn’t. They got married!” Sadly for many in the world, marriage has fallen into disrepute. But in God’s economy, it is meant to be a blessed and holy place for all who enter into it.    
 
Life in the Roman Empire was brutal for women, especially single women, but married women as well were considered property more than people. She had no legal rights. She lived in seclusion, mostly, and was commanded to be chaste and pure, even while her husband could enter into as many relationships outside of marriage as he chose. What Paul writes to the believing families in Colosse was revolutionary and liberating: “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.” Paul went further in helping us understand this in Ephesians when he wrote that the wife is to submit to her husband just as the church is to submit to Christ. And the man is to love his wife, even lay down his life for her, as Christ loves the church. So, what does that mean? 
 
For the wife, it means she agrees with the biblical order of authority in the home. FF Bruce wrote that Paul “did hold that there is a divine instituted hierarchy in the order of creation, and in this order the place of the wife comes next after her husband.” The word “submit” comes from a military term that means to be “under in rank.” Not under in worth, talent, or ability. David Guzik wrote, “We know that a private can be smarter, more talented, and be a better person than a general. But he is still under rank to the general. He isn’t submitted to the general so much as a person as he is to the general as a general. In the same way, the wife doesn’t submit to her husband because he deserves it. She submits because he is her husband.” The word for submission is in the middle voice here, which means it is voluntary. He is not a cruel tyrant who forces her submission. And she is not a woman who resents being under his authority and chooses to circumvent it or seek to manipulate it any way she can. She submits, as Paul said, “as is fitting in the Lord.” 
 
Paul then turns to the man and says, “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” Two commands. Love your wife. Do not be harsh with her. We can say we love her, but harshness, anger or dismissiveness will rule the day and sour the marriage. Paul says, “Love your wives.” And the word for love Paul uses is not eros, erotic love, or even phileo, brotherly love. It is agape, unconditional love. We are to love our wives with the same love God has for us. The love that Jesus had for us that sent Him to the cross. Paul said in Ephesians we love our wives as our own bodies, which we nourish and cherish. Sometimes, we nourish our own bodies way too much, right men? So we are to cut way down on self-nourishing and turn way up the love that cherishes and nourishes our wives. And we are to study her to know her and know how to love her the very best way we can. When it comes to studying my wife, I confess I have gotten a C- on way too many days in my marriage. But God gives grace.  
 
I love the account by Dr. Robert Seizer, a surgeon who removed a tumor from a young woman and had to sever a facial nerve to do it. The surgery left her mouth permanently twisted. He wrote this about what happened next. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But her young husband smiles. “I like it,” he says, “it’s kind of cute.” All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with the divine. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to her; to show her that their kiss still works.”  
 
Husband, love your wife as your own body. And see if you don’t, even so, live happily ever after. 

Paul warned the Colossian church against legalism and other “ism-traps,” making a clear argument that we must simply trust what God says about those who have died with Christ. We don’t need to work ourselves into favor with God; we have that perfectly in Christ. If we read what the Bible really says, we will see things as they really are. And that’s a safe place. I have never done any dangerous rock climbing with harnesses and carabiners and climbing shoes. But there’s an analogy here to how we must live in the reality of God’s Word and His creation. A professional rock climber said, “If we are keenly alert and aware of the rock and what we are doing on it, if we are honest with ourselves and our capabilities and weaknesses, if we avoid committing ourselves beyond what we know is safe, then we will climb safely. For climbing is an exercise in reality. He who sees it clearly is on safe ground. But he who sees reality as he would like it to be, may have his illusions rudely stripped from his eyes when the ground comes up fast.” The answer to a fleshly desire for legalism is a day by day, sometimes moment by moment reminder of what is real for us as believers. We have died, we have been buried, and we are resurrected with and hidden in Christ.  
 
Paul then starts chapter three with “If then.” If (or “because”) we are raised with Christ, then we should seek the things that are above. If Christ is our treasure, then we look to Him, we put all our hopes in Him, and not in things on the earth. Where our treasure is, Jesus said, is where our heart will be. I was reminded this week of the old Jack Benny routine where the penny-pincher was accosted by an armed robber. The man said to Benny, “Your money or your life!” There was long pause as Benny didn’t respond. The robber said, “Well?!” Jack Benny replied, “Don’t rush me. I’m thinking about it.” Funny, but sad that there are many who live as if their money and their stuff is really all that matters. Their identity is in what they can accumulate. I like Kent Hughes comment on this: “Paul is not suggesting that the Christian withdraw from commerce and any possibility of prominence or achievement. Taken to absurdity, there would never be a Christian surgeon or chef; there would be no excellence. The difference is that the Christian is no longer to see these things as if they are all that matters. His mind-set is to be dominated by ‘the things that are above.’” 
 
What we set our mind on determines our seeking. What matters to us most will be evident in our actions. I know my dog Bella has her mind set on playing fetch with me. She hears my car arrive in the afternoon. And she waits. As soon as I walk out on the back deck, that’s her cue. She runs to get her ball and runs out from under the deck with it in her mouth, looking up at me and wagging her tail as if to say, “I have waited all day for this. Come throw this ball!”  
 
Paul says, “Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” You and I have died, and our life is now hidden with Christ in God. Our spiritual identity is not always visible to the naked eye, and the world certainly does not understand our faith. But we are and we will be hidden with Christ in God, and all will become clear on the last day.  That truth looks back to the cross and the resurrection, where our life began. That truth also looks forward to the glorious day of Christ’s return. Paul writes, “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” If we are raised with Christ, we seek what is above. And because we are in Christ, He will return for us. Paul wrote in Philippians, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.”  
 
Stay hidden, saints. But don’t let the Gospel be hidden. Live in Christ out loud every day. 

Kent Hughes tells the story of a colleague he once had in the ministry who stopped discussing the meaning of Scripture with him or others because he said he now had a “higher hermeneutic” than others did. He believed that he had gotten to the place in his study of Scripture where he could see “truths that transcended grammatical and traditional theological interpretation.” With self-proclaimed “superior knowledge,” he fathered a terrible legalism and led others into a false cult. Paul knew the Gnostics were luring the Colossians into the same captivity, so he appeals to them in this letter to run to God’s Word and pursue spiritual maturity in Christ. To be rooted and built up in Him. 
 
It is an essential command in Colossians 2: “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” Several simple but foundational truths spring from these two verses. First, how did you come to be saved? God revealed to you that Jesus is the Messiah, the only one who can save sinners. And you “received Christ Jesus the Lord.” Received means much more than “accepting” him. It means that we surrendered our heart, mind, will, and emotions to the Sovereign Lord of all. In the book of Acts, which is the story of the birth of the church and the spread of the Gospel, the word “Savior” only appears twice. But the word “Lord” appears more than 100 times. The Philippian jailer asked Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus.” 
 
Paul goes on, as you received Christ Jesus, so walk in Him. We walk in Christ Jesus in the same way that we received Him: by faith. That’s what we do every day, whether we walk 10,000 steps or whether we are confined to our bed because of infirmity. We walk in Christ. Our life in Christ is a testimony of our moment by moment walk with Him, as He leads us, feeds us, delivers us, and loves us. 
  
We walk in Him and are “rooted and built up in Him.” Our root, our foundation, our life, is in Jesus. When I am weeding the flower beds at our house, I don’t mind the clover or the dandelions, because they are so easy to pull up. They have no root. But the volunteer crape myrtles growing in the shrubs where we don’t want them are a different story and often require a shovel to get to the root. Our root is found in Christ! It is deep and established and immoveable. We are oak trees, believers, not dandelions. And the rule on trees, for the most part, is the greater deeper the roots, the greater the spread of the branches. It is the same for a believer. The deeper our roots are in the Lordship of Christ and His Word, the greater the spread of our shade, and fruit, and beauty of a life in Christ. 
  
Mark Dever shared this word in a recent post in reference to the parable of the mustard seed, a picture of the kingdom of God on earth. Remember, Jesus said that though the mustard was the smallest of seeds, it becomes larger than all the garden plants. Dever wrote, “The point is not simply that the kingdom of God will be great. Everybody knew the kingdom of God would be great. The surprise is that the kingdom of God could appear insignificant. It appeared at the time to be an exceedingly insignificant movement composed of an itinerant rabbi and a varying band of hangers-on, hardly a movement to shake the world, let alone to shape it. Surely there must be some more obvious means of growing a kingdom – the media, the academy, the military, the marketplace, politics, or multiplying disciple making movements. But Jesus already faced that temptation at the beginning of his earthly ministry. Satan had said, worship me and I'll give you all the nations of the earth. Instead, Jesus looked at that small band of disciples and said, I'll take them instead. The surprise is not that Jesus uses those who belong to Him to build His kingdom. The surprise is that we so often don’t remember who we belong to and how much He has given to us for His glory.” 
  
So we who have received Him walk, are rooted, are built up, are established in the faith. What’s the result? We are abounding in thanksgiving. Paul seems to be saying that the greater we are established in the faith, the more abundant and intentional is our thanksgiving. And the more it becomes a powerful force, a centripetal force. A heart of thanksgiving to Christ draws others to it. 
 
Keep drawing them, Lord, even through me. 

 
Brothers, God has put in us from birth a desire to protect. That is standard equipment for men. When a man is protecting his family, it is a picture that makes sense and fits with the reality of God’s divine plan. When a woman is left to fend for herself or she tries to assume the role as protector of her household, it is a pitiful sight, one that brings shame and makes us shake our heads in bewilderment and even disgust. A common movie plot involves a man who is challenged in his protection of the family. He wimps out and his wife has to step up and do it. Or, and this plot is less prevalent in our current culture, he does whatever it takes, even taking the law into his own hands, to protect his family. The truth is husbands and wives both should work to protect the family from danger. But it is the man who is called to lead.  
 
The Bible records the story of David and Abishai sneaking into King Saul’s encampment one night while everyone was asleep, including Abner, the commander of Saul’s army and the one who was therefore responsible to keep the king alive. David could have speared Saul to death but he knew that was not permitted by the Lord, so instead he took Saul’s spear and a jug of water that were by Saul’s head. Then he went up on top of a hill nearby and yelled like a wild man until everybody woke up. David yelled, “Will you not answer, Abner?” Abner said, “Who are you who calls to the king?” I love David’s response. He said, “Are you not a man?” Hey, Abner, are you a MAN?! Then David said, “And who is like you in Israel? Why then have you not kept watch over your lord the king? For one of the people came in to destroy (him).” David went on to say that Abner had messed up royally and deserved to die.  
 
Let’s turn that question back to you and me, brothers. “Are you not a man? Who is like you in your household? Who is equipped by God like you are equipped by God? Are you guarding the treasure that has been entrusted to you? For you must know that the world and the devil are trying to come in and destroy that treasure.” 
 
The whole issue of a man as protector of his family goes back to the garden. God created Adam first. He gave Adam His Word: You can eat of any tree in the garden except one; the day you eat of it, you will surely die. Eve was then created to be Adam’s helpmeet, and it was clear that God held Adam responsible when he failed to protect Eve from deception. She took of the fruit and ate it, then gave some to Adam, whom, the Bible says, “was there with her.” The next thing you know, the darkness of sin had fallen on the earth and God came calling. “Adam, where are you?” He could have just as easily said, “Adam, where were you? Your wife was deceived, and you were standing right there watching! You did nothing to stop it, nothing to protect her, nothing to protect your family. Look what happened as a result.” Men, nothing good can come from a man stepping out of his responsibility to protect.  
 
Paul addressed this issue of protection in 2 Corinthians in writing to the church, “For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” Paul referred to the marriage covenant here as an analogy to the church, warning her to listen to her Husband so as not to be deceived as Eve was. Our bridegroom, Christ, has spoken clearly through His Word to protect us from every deception. Men, exercise godly jealousy over your household. We can clearly see that there is a jealousy that is good and there is a fear that is good. “I feel a divine jealousy for you,” Paul wrote. In the same way, we are to pray for, establish and hold onto a godly jealousy toward our wives and toward our children. No one in his right mind would allow another man to waltz through the front door of his house and lead his wife away. No one in his right mind would allow a stranger to come into his house and carry off one of his children. We are called by God to exercise a godly jealousy for our wives and children, spiritually and emotionally, just as we do physically. Paul then says, “I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” There’s a godly fear that motivates us to action.  
 
Man the ramparts, men. Watch the road. Dress for battle; collect all your strength. Those words from God through the prophet Nahum are appropriate for us today. 
 
Men, you can say to your children, “I cannot walk every road for you, but while God has entrusted you to me, I will do everything I can to help you recognize dangerous roads before you choose them.” That captures the biblical role of a protector. A godly man is not called to control his family but to shepherd them toward Christ, guarding them from dangers that would pull them away from the truth.  
 
We can do it, men, and we have a community of godly men in the church who are standing together in this fight. We are not alone.

Paul said to the Colossian church, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” It starts and ends with Christ because He is Lord. He is all. Christ is preeminent. The goal of our ministry and indeed our very lives, is to know Him and grow in Him to maturity. That was Paul’s passion, that every church and every member of every church would be “mature in Christ.” He wanted nothing less than to present to Christ fully-grown, mature, spiritually vibrant Christians, who are members of growing, maturing, and spiritually vibrant churches. That meant he did not separate evangelism from discipleship, as some tend to do. He worked with all of his strength to see converts become disciple-makers. If that was Paul’s goal, spiritually mature believers, by what work did Paul labor to accomplish this? 
  
Three means of grace: proclamation, warning, and teaching. Christ is Lord of all, so it is Him we proclaim. Christ is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and the gospel we proclaim is Jesus and Him crucified. You say, “Well, I am not good at doing that.” George Whitefield said, “Other men may preach the gospel better than I, but no man can preach a better gospel.” We proclaim Christ even if it is with a lisping, stammering tongue, as William Cowper wrote in his famous hymn, “There is a Fountain.” The last verse says, “When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave, then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy power to save!” 
  
We proclaim Christ, and we also warn everyone. This is the task of admonishing and correcting, which followers of Christ must do as well. There is certainly a right way to do this, for example, making sure we don’t have a 2x4 sticking out of our eye as we try to help a brother get a speck of dust out of his. Jesus taught us that one. That’s why Paul added “with all wisdom” as a qualifier for each of these means of grace: proclaiming, warning, and teaching must be done with all wisdom. If we lovingly confront a brother or sister who is walking in sin, we are to do so with great humility. Coming from a low place, not from on high. If you try to help a brother in the right way, might you still end up being scoffed at, scolded, or rebuffed? Yes, and Paul was no stranger to that. He said to the Galatians, “Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” It will happen sometimes. But because we love our brother or sister, we do not shrink back from warning them, for their sake and for the sake of the Gospel. 
 
With what resource do we proclaim and warn? Paul gives it to us: “in Him is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” The truth is in Christ. Paul says he is telling them that so that “no one may delude you with plausible arguments.” As believers, we must always be on guard against persuasive teachings that sound wise and spiritual but ultimately draw us away from Christ. Any teaching that makes you doubt the wisdom and glory and love and sufficiency of Christ is deception. The best defense against deception is a deep knowledge of Christ, in whom is all wisdom and knowledge.  
  
We proclaim, we warn, and finally, we teach. We know what that means. That’s our mission as a church, to invest in every person that we may present every person in the church mature in Christ. That’s what we gather for, on Sundays. The goal of the church should never be to put on a good show, but to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Because we leave church to go do “the work of ministry.” We walk out the church doors as missionaries. We leave the gathering as ambassadors for Christ the King, who sends us to the lost and to brothers and sisters in Christ who need to be encouraged and taught.  

It has been argued that Colossians 1:15-20 was an early hymn or poem the church knew well and recited or sang regularly, for it is a summary of the preeminence of Christ in all things. It starts with the critical truth about Christ, that “He is the image of the invisible God.” Image is the word from which we get icon. It is a representation. We can look online and find a famous person we don’t know and see his picture, his image. In the same way, Jesus is a picture of the invisible God. But much more that, Jesus is the revelation of what God is really like. One commentator said Jesus exegetes God for us. Hebrews says, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature.” Jesus is the exact image of God’s very nature, because Jesus is God.  
 
Jesus is also “the firstborn of all creation.” That doesn’t mean that Jesus was created, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Arius (a third-century priest) long before them have taught. You have to wonder…how can one so easily ignore the context of that phrase, “firstborn of all creation”? It does not mean that Jesus was the first creation of God. Paul simply means that Jesus is first in rank and honor. Highest honor belongs to Christ, because He is supreme. Why? 
 
“For by Him, all things were created.” John said the same in His prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Jesus, the eternally begotten Son of God, created everything that was created. Think of the wonder of creation, which is the work of Christ! Comets have vapor trails up to 10,000 miles long. If you could capture all that vapor, and put it in a bottle, the amount of vapor actually present in the bottle would take up less than 1 cubic inch of space. Saturn’s rings are 500,000 miles in circumference, but only about a foot thick. The earth travels around the sun at 67,000mph, or more than 60 times the speed of a bullet fired from a handgun. Oh, and how about this one? There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth. Obviously, the vast majority of those insects are microscopic. Otherwise, it’d be like, “Go on outside and have fun, honey. There are 8 billion bugs waiting to play with you.” Yikes! 
 
All the wonders of creation came through Christ, who is God. But according to the Gnostics, the world was not created by God because matter is evil and therefore anything that touches matter is evil. So God could not possibly have even touched dirt, much less formed Adam out of it. So, Gnostics say that God must have created a lesser god who created a lesser god who created a lesser god and so on until finally a distant “lesser god” created all that there is. And of course that lesser god would be evil because it had to deal with matter. Once again I ask you because you are thoughtful people, should we place our faith and our very lives in the belief of such nonsense? Or do we trust in the very words of God Himself? Christ created all that there is. 
  
Not only is Christ the agent of creation, He is also the goal of His creation. “All things were created through Him and for Him.” It is all about Christ. Not only is Christ the agent and the goal of His creation, Christ is the sustainer of it all. “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” There is not a random molecule in the universe. Every last one of them is under the control of Christ. A.T. Robertson said, “The permanence of the universe rests, then, on Christ far more than on gravity. It is a Christ-centric universe.” This is why Paul wrote this about Jesus in Romans: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”  
 
The late preacher Haddon Robinson used to talk about the priorities in sermon preparation by saying, “An old recipe for rabbit stew starts out, ‘First, catch the rabbit.’ That puts first things first. Without the rabbit, there is no dish.” If Christ created all things and sustains all things and is the beginning and the end of all things, then we should live for Him and Him alone. That puts first things first. Nothing else makes any sense.  
 
In fact, we would be living outside of our minds, as most of the world does, to live for any other reason than to know and love and serve Christ, who is Lord of all.   

The primacy of prayer is in view in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Paul wrote that since he had heard of the faith of the Colossians, he had been praying for them without ceasing. The Apostle was in prison and could not go to the church in Colosse but he knew that even if he could, his greater work was prayer. And he could do that from anywhere, with or without chains. Sometimes we say, “But I want to do more than just pray!” Remember two things. First, prayer is enlisting the help of Almighty God through praise and thanksgiving and intercession, that He might intervene in His creation is a way that brings Him glory. With that in mind, we must pray first. Second, as S.D. Gordon said, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.” What did Paul pray for the people in Colosse? 
 
First, he prayed that they would be “filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” That they would know God and know His will for them. Is there anything more important for us than that we come to know God, more and more, and understand His ways and His will? Is there a better way to pray for our spouse or our children? Or anyone else, for that matter? Paul also knew that the people in Colosse were being deceived by the Gnostics, who were teaching that Christ was great, at least as a starting point, but telling the church what they really needed now was to go much deeper by understanding some of the secret ways of knowing. These false teachers believed in secret gospels and personalized interpretations of the Bible. Gnostics often took eastern mysticism, elements from Plato’s philosophy, and astrology, and blended them together to have what they believed to be a higher plane of knowledge. One form of Gnosticism was the idea that inside of every person is a divine spark, and you just have to find it and be fully liberated from your flesh. Another form came to be known as Docetism, which is the idea that all matter is evil, so, they said  Jesus could not possibly have come in a human body. He only appeared to be human and was only present in spirit! This heresy was condemned in the Council of Nicaea in 325AD and again in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. Both councils affirmed that the Bible clearly says Jesus was fully human and fully divine, and that He truly suffered! This is part of what Paul was dealing with then in Colosse, and things have not changed in 2000 years. Those beliefs still exist, along with many other forms of heresy. 
  
They needed knowledge, and Paul used the word epignosis for the knowledge that he was praying for them to walk in, a word which means “full knowledge, precise, and singularly spiritual.” He believed that to be filled with a deep and growing understanding of who Christ is, is of the utmost importance to the spiritual life of all believers. He said the same to the Philippians: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge (epignosis) and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”   
Warren Wiersbe used to tell the story of a preacher who said, “I didn’t never go to school. I’m just a igerant Christian, and I’m glad I is!” Wiersbe commented, “A man does not have to go to school to gain spiritual intelligence, but neither should he magnify his ‘igerance’.” Let us instead grow in knowledge of God as He reveals truth to us through the Word and develops in us a Christian mind.  
 
We tend to pray mostly for ourselves and others to have safety, health, comfort, and provision. It is certainly not wrong to pray for those things! Why not begin today to put a greater emphasis in prayer that we and others would be “filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” 
 
Let’s learn to pray like Paul. 

 
Paul wrote to the Colossian church, “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” Remember, Paul is in a Roman prison cell as he writes this letter and he is filled with rejoicing. Most people only rejoice when their circumstances improve, but Paul is rejoicing because Christ was being honored and believers were growing. I think a good question we could ourselves is this: What fills your conversation when life squeezes you? Hardships often reveal what matters most to us.  
  
Paul’s conversation was filled with faith, hope, and love. Some have called this the apostolic shorthand for real Christianity. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” You could ask a stranger, “Do you have Faith, Hope, and Love?” Or you could use shorthand and ask if they have FHL. They might think you are talking about a cable channel. Some of you might respond, “No, but I have NHL, and Go Canes!”  
 
Faith, hope, and love are essential to life, but you cannot find or purchase them online. You can’t make them in your shop. They are gifts from God. And Paul doesn’t leave any of these huge gifts from God dangling out there on their own. He clearly connects them to Christ. “We have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus,” he writes. I have heard people say,  “Well, as long as you have faith, you’re going to be ok.” But faith has no intrinsic value in itself. It is only as valid as the object in which it is placed. Our faith is in Christ alone. 
 
What about love? Paul praises the Colossians for the love they had for all the saints. Love is not a feeling or a merit badge or a skill that some have, and others do not. It is a gift from God and a clear testimony of faith at work in you. He said to the Galatians that working for salvation didn’t count for anything, “but only faith working through love.” If you meet a person who says he is a Christian and seems to believe all the right things but there is a lovelessness about him, a lack of warmth and charity toward people, his faith may be questionable at best. Because faith works itself out in love, first for God and second for our neighbor. It is fueled by a gratitude we have toward God that He has given us each day, each moment, to live for His glory and for the blessing of others. Every moment counts.  
 
I remember the story I heard years ago about a man named Ralph who was picked up at the airport to speak at an event that night. He was an EOD specialist in the Army, Explosive Ordnance Disposal. His job was to detect and to dispose of landmines or IEDs to protect the soldiers coming behind him. As they were walking through the airport Ralph stopped twice on the way to baggage claim. Once was to help a lady whose bags had fallen off the cart she was pushing. Then he stopped to help a little boy who was crying because he seemed to be lost. The man with Ralph finally said, “How do you do that?” “Do what?” Ralph asked. The man said, “Stop and help the lady and that boy. I mean, I didn’t even see them, I was just trying to get to baggage claim.” Ralph said, “I lost some good buddies to IEDs. I learned to live between the steps. Every moment matters.” How can we do that, live between the steps?  
 
We can do that, Paul said, “because of hope laid up for you in heaven.” Some believe Paul mentions hope last here because he wanted to remind the Colossians that their faith and their love sprung from their eternal hope. They had lived in bondage as pagans, without hope in the world, until they heard the gospel from Epaphras and Philemon, the wonderful news of forgiveness, the joy of salvation, and hope of heaven, who is Jesus. Paul wrote to Titus, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”  
 
We live and love between the steps because we have hope in Christ, a hope that cannot and will not disappoint.

Ben Sasse, former Senator from Nebraska, is dying with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. But he is fighting to stay alive as long as the Lord allows. He is writing, he is podcasting, and he is continuing to love his wife and his daughters of 24 and 22. And he has a son. He said in a recent podcast, “Our wonderful providential surprise is a decade younger…our boy is 14. And when you get a precise date on how soon you are going to die…(you might) go through the question of, if I can get into a clinical trial and a lot of what is going to happen in that hospital is kinda nasty, why do you want to do it? And I felt a duty to try to fight to live a little while longer (because) he needs a dad to slap him upside the head a little bit longer and give him some advice and wrestle through some questions. And help him recognize that he’s going to need to be a man earlier than those of us who were blessed to have a dad in our lives (for more years). So…I want to be a good dad for longer.”  Sobering. As the Bible says, “Man knows not his time.” And for Ben Sasse at just 53 years old, whose time is coming quickly, what he wants most, since he knows he is going to heaven, is to be a good dad for longer. 
 
We all want to be a good dad for longer, don’t we men? I would suggest we take up two responsibilities the priests in Israel had in the Old Testament. They went before God on behalf of the people. 
 
They did this first as worshipers. The priests were the worship leaders of Israel. Dads and Moms are the worship leaders of the family. Your family will learn to worship and learn to love to worship as they watch and imitate you. Let your children see you singing with all your hearts, worshiping the Lord like David did, “with all your might.” You don’t want them to have to look around and find someone else to imitate! Sadly, the pattern often seen even in healthy churches with healthy families is that the wife is the one fully engaged in worship, not the husband. It doesn’t have to be that way and it shouldn’t. As I like to say, “Real men worship really loud.” Or at least, real men worship with a real heart filled with real passion for the Lord. That takes courage. And it takes preparation.  
 
A priest had to do a lot of work to prepare to take his people into the presence of God. All those regulations and ordinances in Leviticus for priests? It was a physical picture of a spiritual reality. Taking people into worship means preparation and responsibility. How much preparation goes into getting your family ready to worship on Sunday morning? Dads, you can help prepare the hearts of your wife and children to worship corporately on Sunday by demonstrating worship all week in the family. Give God glory. Praise Him in front of your family. Lead devotions with an attitude that God is awesome! Do that all week. Then, come to church with expectation and talk about that on the way. Pray for the worship team as a family as you drive in. Pray for the elders as they prepare to lead and minister to the flock. Prepare to worship God, dads and moms, as the worship leaders for your family. 
 
The priest also went before God on behalf of the people of God, as an intercessor.  Hebrews 7 records that Jesus, who is our High Priest forever, always lives to make intercession for (us). If Christ is seated beside the Father as our High Priest, and He is, forever making intercession for His children, we also are given that great honor and privilege. Men, pray for your wife. Pray for your children. Bring them before the throne of grace every day, asking the Lord to bless them and to keep them. Get to know what your wife and children are struggling with and pray for them about that. It is certainly important to pray about the sin we see in our family. And if there is a spiritual attack going on, YOU have more authority than anyone else in the whole world to deal with it. You are the head of your home. When we still had children at home, I would ask every morning during family devotions, “What do we need to pray about?” It is great to give your children and wife the opportunity to tell you what concerns them, what is coming up that day or that week that they need the Lord’s help with. Now that it is just me and Cindy, I still ask that question: “What can I pray about for you today?”  
 
Paul mentions prayer in Ephesians 6 after he tells us to put on the armor of God. Our children used to stand up and recite that passage and “put on their armor” after family devotions: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. We wanted them to know that life in Christ is first in importance, and it is a battle we engage in daily. But what are we to do with the armor in place? Pray! Paul said, “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.”  
 
Men, hear this. Prayer with and for our wife and with and for our children is the most powerful tool God has given us for their good and for His glory.  

“I commend to you our sister Phoebe.” That’s how Paul started the end of his letter to the Romans. In Paul’s personal greetings, he mentioned 29 people and commended them for their work in the gospel. Phoebe was first. Then, “Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house.”  
 
Prisca, or Priscilla, and her husband Aquila were a key team ministering at many levels with Paul, including hosting a church in their home. In Romans 16 Paul refers to her with a shortened version of her name, maybe the one that close friends used. They were a wonderful couple who took Paul into their home as a fellow tentmaker when he went to Corinth. Later in the book of Acts we find them in Ephesus, where they had traveled with Paul, and there was an eloquent preacher named Apollos in the same city, who “knew only the baptism of John.” “When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained the way of God more accurately.” Notice that Priscilla is mentioned first, which many believe is evidence that she was the better teacher of the two, the one most equipped to help Apollos understand more fully the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. God used this couple to come alongside and disciple Apollos. After that, we are told Apollos went to Achaia and “he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.”  
 
In a 2010 article, “Women and the Spontaneous Expansion of the Early Church,” Jeff Reed wrote, “(Women) were vital to the progress of the gospel and the success of churches in the first 300 years.”  
 
We see that with Phoebe, who besides being a benefactor to Paul and many others, most likely delivered the letter Paul wrote to the Roman church.  We see it in Priscilla, whose exhortation of Apollos propelled the power of the Gospel to a different level in the first century.  
 
A few others Paul commended in include Mary. “Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you.” And these two women: “Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa.” And another, “Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord.” I love that. I could go through the list of names of women and young women in our church and insert their names in that sentence. And in this one: “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.” This unnamed sister and saint was like a mother to Paul. Just as many women in a healthy church are like mothers to younger women and younger men in the church, loving and encouraging and praying, sometimes exhorting or correcting. Their ministry is vital! In some cases today, their ministry is missing. 
 
I heard on the “World and Everything in It” podcast last week that there has been a silent exodus of seniors from church. Gallup reports that in the year 2000, about 60% of American seniors attended church every week. As of early 2026, that number is down to 37%. I want to say to the seniors, you are essential members of the body of Christ, and your role of mentoring and praying and encouragement is priceless. We need you, now more than ever. 
 
Spiritual mothers and grandmothers, you play a vital role in the health of family and church.  
Come join us. 

The answer is simple: whatever we are sowing, whatever we are cultivating, that is what’s growing. Paul said in Galatians, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Some see this as connected to his admonition before that, to pay the laborer (those who teach the Word) his wages. But others see it as a reference to walking in the Spirit. Both are important, but in addition to giving the laborer his wages, Paul is urging all of us to commit to sowing personal holiness. He calls us to sow to the Spirit and not to the flesh. John MacArthur said, “The Christian has only two fields in which he can sow, that of his own flesh, and that of the Spirit.” And the divine law of the harvest is this: you shall reap what you sow. Why are we surprised when we plant kale in the garden and Reese’s peanut butter cups don’t grow up instead? By the way, that would be awesome, if it were not impossible. But it doesn’t happen because we always reap what we sow. If I sow anger and defensiveness in the relationships I have with people I love, why should I be surprised if they are on edge when I enter the room? But if I make every effort to let someone know I care about the struggle they are going through, why am I surprised when they trust me enough to ask for counsel? And for prayer? 
 
The truth of Galatians 6 is simple. Those who sow repeatedly to satisfy their flesh, pandering to it, coddling it, should never be surprised that they are not reaping a harvest of holiness and victory over sin. John Stott wrote, “Every time we allow our mind to harbor a grudge, nurse a grievance, entertain an impure fancy, wallow in self-pity, we are sowing to the flesh. Every time we linger in bad company whose insidious influence we know we cannot resist…every time we look at sensual material, every time we take a risk that strains our self-control we are sowing, sowing, sowing, to the flesh.” 
 
A childhood accident caused poet Elizabeth Barrett to lead a life of semi-invalidism before she married Robert Browning in 1846. There's more to the story. In her youth, Elizabeth had been watched over by her tyrannical father. When she and Robert were married, their wedding was held in secret because of her father's disapproval. After the wedding the Brownings sailed for Italy, where they lived for the rest of their lives. But even though her parents had disowned her, Elizabeth never gave up on the relationship. Almost weekly she wrote them letters. Not once did they reply. After 10 years, she received a large box in the mail. Inside, Elizabeth found all of her letters; not one had been opened. Today those letters are among the most beautiful in classical English literature. But more importantly, had her parents only read a few of them, their relationship with Elizabeth might have been restored, and their own hearts might have been released from the bitter fruit of anger and bitterness. 
  
Sowing to the flesh produces a harvest that we do not want. Christians are subject to this as well, though it does not mean we lose our salvation. But we lose our joy and our strength and our peace. We lose a harvest of good fruit. Let us then, as Paul said, test our own work, and examine our own hearts. Let do the hard work of pulling out the weeds of pride and greed, bitterness and envy, defensiveness and self-pity, and put them in the burn pile.  
 
Then we may begin to cultivate love for our brother and sister, forgiveness and humility, peace and reconciliation, and watch those grow. 

In Galatians, Paul answers the question, “Why did Christ set us free?” For freedom Christ has set us free. That is an indicative, a settled truth. We have been set free by Christ. It is followed by an imperative, a command. “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” You are free in Christ. And in Christ, you are to remain free. That will take effort, but that effort is energized by the grace of the settled truth: Christ has set us free by grace. And the grace that redeems us also empowers and transforms us.  

In his book, Formed for Fellowship, Kyle Worley writes that he was a teenager percussionist in his high school band. But as he said, it wasn’t cool. He thought he would be like a drummer in a rock band. Instead, he was told to play the xylophone, a large one that Worley said was expensive so his parents borrowed one from a family friend. His parents then said, “Do not break this instrument.” So Worley wrote, “I broke it. On purpose. By throwing it across the yard to make my friends laugh.” He broke it in half and that night told his parents. They were upset, rightfully so, and told him he would likely have to pay to replace it. He went to bed that night frustrated and angsty. “I was so entitled and so immature that I was angry not only because I had to play such a dumb instrument, but now I was going to have to pay for it? How unfair was that? Never mind that it was entirely my fault.” Kyle woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep so he went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. There was a light on in the laundry room and when he peeked through the cracked door, he saw his father on his knees fixing the keyboard with glue. It was a picture of grace. He had made a mistake and something needed to be fixed. It was entirely his fault and yet, he was shown grace.  

As were the Galatians when Paul first came to them with the gospel. Then they fell into deception. Paul made his plea in his letter to the Galatians to reject the lie of the Judaizers who would steal their grace and replace it with works. The churches Paul planted had been led from Mt. Sinai’s laws to Calvary’s grace and now were headed back down south toward Sinai as fast as they could go!  

Why would anyone do this, having tasted the goodness of the grace of God? Here’s why: the default mode of the heart is set on self-justification. The Galatians, like so many Christians today, could not believe that Christ had done it all. They had grown accustomed to the yoke of slavery to pagan idolatry and their necks were itching for that yoke again. So they believed the lie and traded idolatry for biblical moralism which says, “I will keep the law and therefore make sure I am earning my way into God’s good favor.”  

The problem with that is two-fold. On the one hand, if you are going to be a Pharisee, you better be a perfect one. No slippage. Because no amount of obedience will make up for one single act of disobedience. I haven’t been pulled over on the highway in a long time, much to my wife’s surprise. But the last time I was pulled over, I didn’t try to make a plea to the highway patrolman that I am a faithful husband, that I pay my tithe and my taxes, and besides that, officer, I have been pretty good at obeying most of the traffic laws, most of the time! All of that would be irrelevant, and the patrolman would shake his head as he wrote me a ticket. That’s the problem with trying to keep the law in order to be saved. No one is a perfect Pharisee.
 
Ok, what about a combo deal, which is what the Judaizers were pushing? How about Christ plus the law? As Tim Keller said, you cannot add to Christ without subtracting Christ. Paul reminded the Galatians that Christ was either all their value, or He was without value. We cannot stand on grace if we are holding onto works. Peter argued this position at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 as he spoke to the apostles and elders. He said, “…why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the (Gentile) disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

The grace of the Lord Jesus saves us and brings us into freedom. “For freedom Christ has set us free.”  

Let’s ask ourselves this question: In what way am I not enjoying the freedom Christ purchased for me with His blood? Am I relying on rules rather than grace? Am I regularly returning to sinful habits? Am I holding onto unforgiveness for a perceived wrong? Am I constantly living under the burden of fear? Or guilt? Or is my freedom diminished for any other reason?  

The Lord would whisper to us, “You were called to freedom.” May we answer with, “Yes, Lord. And…Lord? Would you help me to lay this hindrance down today, and tomorrow, and walk in the freedom your grace supplies?”

In Luke’s gospel account, the women at the empty tomb were asked a question they could not answer. The angels said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” It’s a great question! But the truth is, they didn’t seek the living among the dead. They sought the dead. They were looking for a dead body.  

The angels asked a question that strikes at the very heart of where most people find themselves today. “Why are you spending time rummaging around death and the dead hoping that you will find life there somehow? Why would you go among the dead expecting to find fellowship there?” Or as Paul said, “What partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?”
 
It is an important question for us to ask ourselves today, isn’t it? Are we looking for the living among the dead? I have to assume you, dear reader, are looking for life as you go through your days. No one in his right mind is looking for death. You are all looking for life, you are all looking to live, you are all looking for purpose, you are all looking for meaning. So, why would you seek that in a graveyard? Why would you look for meaning and value and purpose for your life in those things which are meaningless and purposeless and will ultimately be destroyed? Why seek the living among the dead?  

Remember in John’s gospel when many of the followers of Jesus turned back and no longer walked with him? Why did they do that? He had told them that they could only live by feeding on Him. That He alone was the source of life, the bread of life that they could eat and never be hungry again. He was the bread come down from heaven, and He said, “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” In other words, there is only life eternal and the life you are desperately seeking in Him. You cannot find it anywhere else. After this, many of those who were walking with Him turned away and did not walk with Him any longer. Jesus turned to the twelve and asked if they wanted to go away as well. Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” Why seek the living among the dead? Jesus alone has the words of eternal life.  

At the empty tomb, the women were asked a question they could not answer. They were also given a treasure they could not contain. Mark’s gospel tells us the angel said, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you in Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”  
 
What is the message of the cross and the empty tomb? He is risen! At every cemetery on earth, you can find the graves of great philosophers and world leaders and religious holy men and gurus and teachers and shamans and priests and soothsayers and fortunetellers and cult leaders. And you can wipe the dust off their tombstones and say, “He is not alive. He is here!”

But the testimony of the angels 2000 years ago in a graveyard outside Jerusalem is the greatest proclamation of our faith: He is not here. He is risen! Why seek the dead among the living when you can walk with the living Christ among the dead?
 
David Mathis wrote, “Easter has become our annual dress rehearsal for that great coming day when our perishable bodies will put on the imperishable. When the mortal will finally put on immortality. When we will join in the triumphant song of the prophets and apostles, ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’”

You know what I really love about these first witnesses? They were terrified, Mark tells us they fled the scene and said nothing to anyone. They acted just as we would have. But wait. We know from the other gospels that they were able to overcome their fear and tell the disciples. They could not keep the news to themselves. The world had to know, so the women went and told the story. We must do the same. The world still needs to know. It needs to hear it from people like you and me, people who have seen the Lord, not face to face, not yet. But we have met Him, and His risen life has made us new.  

Go tell it! He is risen!

Remember that great old gospel song that started, “Would you be free from the burden of sin, there’s power in the blood, power in the blood, Would you o’er evil a victory win, there’s wonderful power in the blood!” Paul starts off this section with an even older hit. “There’s Power in the Law.” Have you heard this one? It goes like this. “Would you throw off all the freedom of grace, there’s power in the law, power in the law, You can be saved by your own steady pace, there’s back-slapping power in the law!”  Could be the next hit. Let’s face it, there are some good things about choosing to live under the law. First, there’s a list of rules to follow every moment of every day. Second, you can always give yourself praise for keeping the rules better than others. Well, there is that nasty truth that some keep it better than you, but just stuff that thought and move on. Finally, you can pat yourself on the back every day for your salvation, because clearly you did that yourself by keeping the rules. True?

No! Paul asks the Galatians, do you even listen to the law? Do you actually know what it says? In other words and to echo Jesus’ question to the Pharisees, “Have you not read? Have you not heard?” Did you not hear the fine print, the final clause of the contract in the law that seals your eternal destination? If you break one law, Jesus said, you are guilty of breaking them all. Period. Think of it this way. Under the law is what you do for God to make yourself right with Him. Under grace is what God did for you in His Son to make you right with Him. Under the law relies solely on your perfect performance. Under grace relies solely on Jesus’ perfect sacrifice. Under the law are fig leaves that cannot even begin to cover your sin. Under grace is the precious and imperishable blood of Jesus that completely washes your sin away.
 
Paul tells the Galatians what has been written, and goes back again to the time of Abraham as exhibit A. Back to the very Scriptures that the Judaizers claimed to stand on. They likely were telling the Galatians, “You say you are sons of Abraham because you believe in Christ, but you are not sons of Abraham unless you keep the law of Moses! All of it.” So Paul turns those tables over by reminding them that Abraham had two sons: one was born by a slave woman and one by a free woman. So there are two ways to be related to Abraham, a right way and a wrong way.

You remember the story. God told Abraham when he was 75 years old to leave his homeland and everything he had known and go to a place he knew nothing about. There, God promised, He would make Abraham a great nation. So he left Ur with his wife Sarah and they traveled 1200 miles to Canaan. There, God promised to give the land to Abraham’s offspring. But he had no offspring. And after Abraham and Sarah had lived in Canaan for ten years, they still had no children. In fact it would be 25 years between the promise and the fulfillment. So Sarah decided that though she still believed God, she needed to help God out with keeping His promise. She attempted to do that through a scheme of the flesh, by giving Hagar, her servant, to Abraham her husband so, as she put it, “I shall obtain children by her.” Abraham obviously also had issues that included not trusting God’s timing as well, so he doesn’t argue. He sleeps with Hagar, who gives birth to Ishmael. Then Hagar looks at Sarah with contempt, because Sarah is still childless. The family is in a total mess now because the whole act was born out of fear and unbelief. But God. But God was patient, and 14 years later, when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90 and still barren, God fulfilled his promise and Isaac was born. The son of promise.
 
Do you see in Galatians that Paul is teaching us there are two opposite approaches to God? One leads to death and one leads to life. We can try to come to Him through law or by grace. Through the flesh or by the Spirit. Through self-reliance or through divine dependence.

Would you be free? Stand on grace through faith.