Colossians 2:1-10 The Hidden Treasures of Wisdom & Knowledge

The speaker begins by discussing the focus on Christ in the book of Colossians, noting that there are 76 references to Jesus Christ in the book, not 53 as previously stated. He explains that Paul wrote this letter to the church at Colossae to address the heresy of Gnosticism and the philosophies of man that were being spread. The speaker also highlights the similarities between Colossians and Ephesians, noting that Paul was in prison for preaching that Gentiles could be saved without following Jewish traditions and laws. The speaker emphasizes the importance of unity in the church and the role of Satan in causing division. Well, good morning. You all doing good? Well, you look good. That's good. All right. Well, we're going to be in the second chapter of Colossians today, and I want to thank Brother Jack. He asked last week if he could have some time to finish up last week's lesson, but he finished it up last week. So I'm glad, because I don't have to give any time to him today. I'm really glad to be here today, because I woke up yesterday thinking it was Sunday. Now, it's really bad when you can't remember that you have a Saturday with nothing on it. We planned on Friday night for us to sleep late. At my age, I worked on about four and a half to five and a half hours of sleep all my life until I retired. Now I just wake up and smile and roll back over to bed and go to sleep. But I didn't. I had my alarm set for 6.30, woke up at 6.15, got up and took my shower, cleaned up, put my clothes on. Carol Ann was still asleep, and I thought, well, she usually gets up earlier than I do on Sunday, so I woke her up. I said, get up. I said, we've got to go to church. She said, honey, it's Saturday. So I guess I'm slipping a little bit. So if I say something twice or something you don't understand, just chalk it up to part of life that I'm in right now, okay? Now I do have to correct one thing. In your lesson notes, I made a mistake. It was what I thought at the time when I did the notes. I did the notes last Tuesday. The focus on Christ is the central focus of Colossians. There are 95 verses in Colossians. I put there that there are 53 references to Christ. And when I say references, what I mean is either His name, either the name Lord or Master or Him, in Him, by Him, for Him, through Him, and all of this. But I read through Colossians again and found some more. And what made it bad was every time I read it, I found some more. So actually, the number should not be 53, it should be 76. I say that because the whole focus of Colossians is on Jesus Christ. Paul is writing to the church at Colossae, and he knows that Hieropolis and Laodicea would also get this, and he talked about being sure they got to read it. They were confronted with the philosophies of man. By the way, it's just a little tidbit, but this is the only book in the New Testament that mentions the word philosophy. It's talking about the philosophy of man. So they're dealing with those, the Gnostic heresy that Jack described for us very well. The Gnostic heresy was one that supposedly had more enlightened wisdom, greater knowledge. They were going to show the people how they'd have a better understanding of God, and they denied the deity of Jesus Christ. It was a Gnosticy that was basically against Christ. So he is writing this in the midst of the heresy of Gnosticy, and they're being bombarded by not only all the things that occurred back then, but also by heresy and by the Gnostics and their claim for superior knowledge and their disrespect for Christ. So he focuses on Jesus Christ. I thought it was just interesting when I think I got the final count, at least I got the same count twice, so I assume that's right. Seventy-six times it focuses on Jesus Christ. The last verses of chapter 1 talk about how Paul was suffering for the church. In chapter 1 he said, I labor for this, right at the very end, striving, struggling is another translation of that. He says he was struggling for the church. Now what was he doing? What does that mean? The word struggle means striving. He was struggling. He was wrestling with them. He was hurting for them. What was he doing? He was praying for them. It's not explicit in this verse, but it is certainly implicit that he's talking about his prayers. For many of us, prayer is too easy. We pray for certain things, certain people, and words just kind of flow off our lips or our minds if we're praying just silently. Prayer is never easy. I keep thinking of David Brainerd. David Brainerd was Jonathan Edwards' son-in-law. He died when he was in his late twenties, I think. He had a burden for the Indians in New England. In his memoir, you ought to go online and just put in David Brainerd, B-R-A-I-N-A-R-D. He wrote about it. He wrote about in the wintertime how he would travel to different tribal areas to witness to the Indians and how he would pray and bleed in his prayer, struggle with his prayer for the people. Prayer for us is too simple. What the pastor talked about this morning was really struggling prayer. Here was Simon Peter in prison facing probably death, and the church was praying for him. He probably didn't have any sheet cake and coffee and donuts. They were praying, struggling. He had such deep love for these people, and he knew what they were facing. It was a heavy burden. He knew that the heresies that were beginning in the church would tear down what he had preached to them. He had a great burden for these people. There's a great similarity, by the way, between Colossians and Ephesians. More than any other, Paul wrote probably 13 of the New Testament books on the leadership of the Holy Spirit. The only other church that Colossi could be connected to through his ministry in a very deep way was Ephesians. He says things in both of those epistles that he doesn't say in any of the others. For instance, he describes the reasons why he was in prison in both epistles. Both churches were Gentile churches, and he welcomed them into the family of God. But in Ephesians 3.1, this is what he said, ìFor this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles.î In Colossians 4.3, he wrote, ìAt the same time pray also for me that God may open a door for us for the word to speak the mystery of Christ for which I am in prison.î Now, why was he in prison? He was not in prison because he preached the gospel alone. He was in prison because he insisted that Gentiles could be saved without having any restriction put upon them from Jewish tradition and laws. That was why he was in prison. And so in Ephesians and Colossians, that's where he explains why he was in prison. Acts 21, 27 through 31 begin to address this. Paul is preaching in the temple, and a riot broke out, which is not too unusual for the apostle Paul. It seems like he had caused riots nearly everywhere he went. But let me just read what Acts 21 says to you. ìWhen the seven days of the Jewish purification were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia saw him in the temple, and stirred up the whole crowd, and seized him, shouting, ìFellow Israelites, help! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this place!î For they had previously seen Trophimus, the Ephesian, in the city with him, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. What's more, he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place. He brought in those who were not Jews into the temple, which is strictly forbidden by Jewish law, and he did that because he was teaching that Gentiles could be saved just like Jews without all the restrictions that Judaism might place on it. The whole city was stirred up, and the people rushed together. They seized Paul, dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut as they were trying to kill him. Word went up to the commander of the regiment that all Jerusalem was in chaos. The Jewish people didn't like what Paul was preaching. It was not just that he was preaching the gospel, it was that he said the Gentiles could also be saved, and they didn't have to be circumcised, and they didn't have to observe special days and feasts and all of that. They could just be saved by faith just like Jews were. They didn't like that. They didn't feel like he had a right to live, and they wanted to kill him, and Acts tells us about that. But he preached and had such opposition they tried to kill him, and God spared him. There are at least 18 verses in Colossians and Ephesians that reveal a strong connection between these two churches. So we're looking at an epistle that is both closely tied to Ephesians. There are only two, these are the only two books, by the way, that Paul warns about people lying, Colossians and Ephesians, Ephesians 4.25, Colossians 3.9. Now you have to understand that lying was one of the prevailing sins in the area where the two churches were located. It was known to be among liars, and Paul forbade it strongly. It couldn't be tolerated. The devil is a liar, the father of lies, and you can't tolerate the presence of the devil in the church. We certainly need to deal with that and just think of how many times that the church is disrupted by what Satan is doing. Gateway Baptist Church, the pastor resigned recently. His son became the pastor, but there was such a division in the church that yesterday he resigned. It's just evidence of Satan's activity in a church. Gateway is a great church. Robert Morris spoke in our church in 1983. I've known him for forty-some odd years. Don't agree with everything. He's a great communicator, the Lord has used him in a great way. Now initially through his mistakes, his sins, the church is dealing with issues that never should have come up. But Satan is so persistent he's going to keep after it any dissension in the church. That's why Paul and the whole New Testament is emphasizing the need for unity. Because Satan is always in the midst of chaos and when you're in Christ there should be peace. That's why all the Epistles talk about grace and peace, because that's an important thing. I know sometimes we may feel like, as you listen to me, you may think I spend a lot of time on that. Well, that's the last thing Jesus prayed about, and we've almost totally ignored it in John 17. All the Apostles mention it. Every Epistle written mentions unity, and Satan is trying to tear up the church. That's what happened to Paul. It wasn't his imprisonment that broke his heart. It wasn't his separation and being in chains that broke his heart. It was the heresy that had come into the church at Colossae that broke his heart. We ought to be together. What he's saying is, Colossae was a center of man-made philosophy and man-made tradition and man-made ideas. The Gnostic false teachers talked about their supreme knowledge and all that they knew. We're going to help you become what you are. You'll understand things better if you just do what we say. That was a human philosophy altogether, and Paul knew that heresy always brings division. Churches never come together because of heresy. They split over heresy, as they should, and so unity, lying, that's the devil's work. That's why in Ephesians 4.27 he said, don't give Satan a foothold. Don't give him an opportunity in your life. Don't invite him in. The rest of chapter 4 in Ephesians deals with honesty and grieving the Holy Spirit and removing sins like bitterness and anger and wrath and malice and shouting and slander. Then he concludes the chapter by calling believers to be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another just as God and Christ has forgiven you. Why can we forgive other people? Because of what Christ has forgiven us. Who's going to throw the first stone? We're all sinners, and God never uses any of us because of us. Always in spite of us. We're living in a world which kind of makes heroes out of pastors and teachers. Jack, Terry, and Jimmy Draper are just two common people like you. Not superstars, not prima donnas. We're just people who have met Jesus and life was changed. In spite of us, he uses us. Couldn't tolerate lying. In both Colossians and Ephesians he talks about that, and so that's another tie that puts those two close together because of the existing conditions of the Colossian church. Paul warned the church, and by the way, understand that Heropolis and Laodicea and Colossae are kind of in a triangle. They're in the same general area, and he knows that they're going to get in. He knows those same elements are present in those churches, but he wanted to warn them of these dangerous elements of heresy that were coming, and by the way, that concern exists for all churches of all times, and is especially applicable to us today. Paul begins chapter 2 by revealing, but let me just read some of these verses to you, and then we'll kind of walk through them, and I'm going to watch the clock because I've got something I want to read to you that is going to knock your socks off, but I don't want to get so close I can't do it, so about a quarter till we'll try to wind toward that. This is what he said, I want you to know how greatly I am struggling for you. That's the same word that was translated in verse 29, that he was striving, suffering, struggling. I am struggling for you, for those in Laodicea and all who have not seen me in person. Now, that tells us two things. He'd never been to the church at Colossae, never been to the church at Laodicea, so he's addressing people that he's never met, and he said, I want their hearts to be encouraged, and then notice what he says, first encouraged, I want them to be encouraged, secondly, I want them to be loving, and they're joined together in love, and third, that they have complete understanding. He said, joined together in love so that they may have all riches of complete understanding and have knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That's kind of the title of our lesson this morning, the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. God's teachers will tell them, listen to us, and we'll give you wisdom and knowledge. Nearly everything Paul addresses here is part of the Gnostic heresy that he's dealing with. They talked about wisdom and knowledge coming from the Gnosticism, and he said, no, don't pay any attention to that. Wisdom and knowledge comes only from Christ, in Christ, and Jack talked about it last week, but in the 5th century B.C., Colossae was one of the great cities of the day. Trade routes went through Colossae, but by Paul's day, the trade routes had moved and came now through Laodicea, and Colossae was a smaller town and getting smaller all the time. Laodicea and Heropolis became the most important cities in the area, and it's in modern-day Turkey that we can see today. Though Paul had never been to Colossae, he had a real hand in the establishment of the church in Colossae. He served in Ephesus for three years. The founder of the church in Colossae was probably Epaphras. Epaphras had been in Ephesus and had been led to the Lord through the ministry of the Apostle Paul. When he returned to Colossae, he probably established the church there. The first chapter in verses 5-7 indicate that. A thriving church was founded in Colossae in this small town filled with unknown people, and they got a letter from the Apostle Paul. That's kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting because it just reminds all of us that there are no unimportant people in the kingdom of God. Everybody is somebody. Nobody is nobody. Into this small group in this city that's declining got a letter from the Apostle Paul. Amazing. The church, the three years that Paul was in Ephesus, by the way, were three remarkable years of evangelism. In fact, the most remarkable evangelistic report in the New Testament is of his three years in Ephesus. In Acts 8 at 1910, this was the report from Paul's ministry in Ephesus. All the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord. It didn't say they were all saved. They all heard the gospel. Now, just think about it. No television, no Internet, no church buildings, no trained clergy, no army of volunteers trained to do the job, no youth ministry, no choir ministry, and yet in the space of two years, every individual in the entire province of Asia heard the gospel. That's the most amazing evangelistic report you could possibly imagine. So Epaphras was saved during that time. As we go through the book of Colossians, the names that are mentioned help us to discover something about the church itself. We know there were at least two individuals from Colossae that were brought to Jesus at that time. Epaphras and Philemon, both of those are mentioned here. Dallas Epaphras was one of the key leaders and was instrumental in the founding of the church, according to verse 7 and 8 of chapter 1. He also had friends in Heropolis and Laodicea, according to Colossians 4, 12 and 13. Philemon had a church meeting in his home. He also mentions Apphia, Archippus, who were likely the wife and son of Philemon, and Archippus was the pastor of the church. The Colossian church was overwhelming Gentile in its membership, and the sins mentioned in Colossians 3, 5 to 10 were more associated with Gentiles than they were with Jews. Philemon was one of the leaders of the church at Colossae, and he had had a slave named Onesimus, and Onesimus went through Rome and had contact with Paul and got saved. And so Paul wrote a letter to Philemon, Brother Jack will probably cover that in one day, that he asked Philemon not to welcome him back as a slave, but to welcome him back as a brother. Treat him like you treat me, he said. And it's an amazing thing. And the letter that Paul sent to Philemon was sent about the same time that Epaphras arrived in Rome to ask Paul for help. The churches in the Philippian church that had a threat to them, and that same threat of heresy had come to the church at Colossae, and it was causing some serious problems. And so Paul wrote this letter to Colossae to urge them not to fall victim to heresy and to continue to stand for the truth of the gospel. Now, listen carefully to me. We need to understand that while the gospel has deep theological concepts, it's not rocket science. It's very simple. And what Paul is saying to the Colossians, you can sum it up in a word, in Christ solves everything. It doesn't matter what you're facing, it doesn't matter what your challenge is, it doesn't matter what disappointments you have, it doesn't matter what setbacks you have, it doesn't matter what heresy you may struggle with, Christ is the answer for all that. It's a one-size-fits-all when you come to Christ. You don't need anything else, Brother Jack, nothing but the blood of Jesus. That's all you need. You don't need anything else. And that's the message of Colossae. Dangerous heresies confronted the Church. It did contain elements of Gnosticism, and basically, as Brother Jack talked about last week, Gnosticism held that God is good, but matter is evil. And so Jesus Christ was not considered to be God in Gnosticism, but he was just one of a number of what they called emanations that were sent from God but weren't God. So they rejected Christ. He was just one more of the emanations. Gnosticism denied the true humanity of Jesus and proposed that they had a secret higher knowledge above scripture that you had to have for salvation. That included a lot of the Jewish rituals, it included circumcision, it included dietary laws and festivals and Sabbaths and asceticism. It also included mysticism and the worship of angels. It was a pretty slick package of religion that the Gnostics had put together. It was so important that Epaphras made the long trip to Rome just to talk to Paul about how to deal with it. That's why he came. And Paul wrote this letter to warn them about the heresy. Tychicus, who was taking the slave Onesimus back to his owner Philemon, brought the letter at the same time to the Colossian church. Epaphras stayed in Rome after Tychicus left with the letter to get further counsel from the Apostle Paul according to Colossians 4, verses 12 and 13. Paul knew what was happening and he knew that as a result of false teaching the church would be destroyed. And this was not an easy burden that he carried. He had ministered faithfully and untiring to them. He had preached the gospel and presented how people can be saved and that was what broke his heart that the heresy had come into challenge of everything he had preached to them about. He could put up with the loneliness of his imprisonment and the lack of food, but his heart was crushed when he heard that the Colossians were struggling and being attacked by heretical teaching. And his concern was not just for Colossae, but also for Laodicea, Heropolis, and all the churches because it is something that every church often deals with. Now Colossae was full of philosophers and false teachings, man-made philosophy had become a part of the church and the church everywhere ever since the first century has had to wrestle with the intrusion of heresy. That's why we read things like that we need to defend the faith once delivered for all. That's why when one generation establishes its commitment to the Lord and to the inerrant word of God, it doesn't mean that the next generation is not going to have to do the same thing. It's always there to deal with. And we don't really know all the details of this heresy. We do know from verses 8 through 23 some of the teachings of it. And Paul is just simply saying to them, you can't trust these folks. You can trust the full sufficiency of Christ and true wisdom and knowledge is found in him. That's what he says in verse 2. And he is struggling greatly for the church at Colossae and that includes deep passionate prayer for them. Paul knew that truth brings unity, comfort, assurance, while heresy brings distrust and distress. The church situation in the church then and now is different and in Paul's day the new faith was Christianity and the established religion was Judaism. He didn't want this new faith to go through one moment of dissension and disharmony over false doctrine. He wanted them to be joined together in love. Heresy always brings suspicion, questioning others, arguments, distrust. Paul didn't want the church to have to suffer that. If they were bound together in a mutual and abounding love, they would not embrace falsehood. And that's what he's trying to get across to them. He mentions in verse 2, mystery. He wanted to reveal to them the mystery and the mystery that is mentioned is Jesus Christ. Paul already had revealed that mystery in verse 27 of chapter 1 when he said, Christ in you the hope of glory. It already introduced that, but it runs, as I already said, all throughout this book the focus is on Jesus Christ and his total sufficiency. By the way, when you look at scripture, there are a lot of words that have been used to describe scripture legitimately. There is the word inspired, that's a good word. There's the word, what am I trying to say, inerrant, that's a good word. There are a lot of words to describe the word of God, and when we begin to doubt the word of God, then we lose the very spirit of Christ in us. Just remember, when we were saved, the Holy Spirit came to live in us. We don't think much about that, and you can see it in this chapter also. You have God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three persons, one God. Now that's beyond our imagination, so it's not something we understand, it's something we accept because God said it. You've heard people say, I used to say, God said it, I believe it, that settles it. No, the truth is, God says it and that settles it whether I believe it or not. It's settled that it is the word of God, but the heresies always attack the sufficiency of Christ. God is not only inerrant, he's not only infallible, his word is not only inspired, but is inerrant. It's not capable of producing error. The answer lies in Christ. How could we ever doubt what Christ has said and claim to be in Christ? Truthfully, liberalism at the surface, theologically, it would be very difficult for a true believer to be a liberal. Because liberalism, you have to deny things that Jesus and the word of God and Christian history all affirm as being real. But he says the mystery is Jesus Christ. You don't have to understand that, but he's sufficient. It's not Jesus and anything. It's not Jesus but anything. It's just Jesus, and that's what he's talking about. He wanted them to fully understand the fullness of the gospel and be encouraged by the fact that all the richness and truth they needed for salvation, sanctification, glorification, anything else, is found in Jesus Christ. It would be good for us periodically to stop and say, is Jesus more real to me today than he was this time last month? It's kind of interesting. Do you know that most of the people who are saved through someone else's witness, the witness that was given, it was by people who had just been saved. Far down the line, we lose the thrill of our salvation if we're not careful. It doesn't excite us anymore. I remember a day when I couldn't sing Amazing Grace without a tear. Oh, now I can belt it out, not giving much thought to what I'm singing. Familiarity breeds contempt. You become so familiar with the things of God that we often discard them without realizing it. My dad used to say, if you could be saved and not know it, you could lose it and never miss it. We get to where everything is formality. Prayer becomes a formality. Going to Sunday school becomes a...what's the word I was using? Everything we do in our worship of the Lord, it just becomes formal, habitual. It's like, just before I got in a car this morning, I rushed back in and gargled some mouthwash. Now, why did I do that? I didn't want you to smell my breath, but I had to do that. It's what I do. Brushing your teeth, remember, doesn't remove bad breath. I know that's a commercial, but it's true. You need a little help, so a little mouthwash will help you. We treat God like that. It's just kind of lack of...that's what we do. When I look back on my life, we went to church every Sunday, but we never debated it. It's just what we did. Carol Ann grew up the same way. We didn't get up on a Sunday morning and say, do you think we'll go to church today? No, it didn't even occur to us to think that. We just went to church. Now, that's a good thing, but it can become a bad thing if it takes the place of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus did not want you to believe something. He wanted you to believe in something and to believe in him. He's more concerned about who you are than what you do. He wants a relationship with each one of us. That's what makes Christianity different. There is no other world religion whose deity wants a relationship with somebody else. God wants a relationship with us. So Christianity is really not a religion, it's a relationship. Carol Ann and I have been married 68 years. I love her more today than I did when I married her. Does that say something deficient about the day I married her? No. I gave her my best love then, it's a whole lot different now. I hope my best love belongs to her. It's still important. I am a very patriotic person. Most of the churches I have pastored were near military installations. We were in San Antonio, which has the U.S. largest group of military bases in the country. There are six of them there. I went out to a ceremony at Lackland Air Force Base one day. I don't know what it was for, it was apparently maybe someone was retiring something. But I mean, we go out there and the band cranks up the Air Force song, six jets flew overhead at 300 feet. I thought, oh God, please don't let them give an invitation. I joined the Air Force. I mean, I just get excited about things like that. We need to realize that I want to sing Amazing Grace with a tear. I don't want to sing it like it was a pep talk or a favorite song. I want to sing it as one who has experienced Amazing Grace. It ought to be hard to sing, because the motion is there. If we remember what Christ did for us, Colossians has described in such detail what Christ did to provide salvation for us, and he took all the pressure off of us. You don't have to do anything to get this salvation. You don't have to create some new idea. You don't have to have some deeper knowledge. You just need to know Jesus. That's the message of Colossians. That's the mystery. And Paul wanted them to know that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were responsible for all the blessings that they had. God the Father loves them. God the Son died for them. God the Holy Spirit lives in them and seals them until the day of redemption. And that's Christian maturity. He describes it, we read in verse 2, encouragement, loving, abundance, and understanding. Understanding literally means to place together. It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You remember looking for the piece you can't find, but you finally find it. That's what understanding is. You finally get all the pieces together. Knowledge is the ability to grasp and defend what we understand. And all these terms were included in the Gnostic heresy. That's why it was so dangerous. Manly Beasley used to say, the greatest heresy is the one that sounds the most like the truth. I mean, if the devil came to us with some outlandish thing, you'd say, oh, you've got to be kidding. No, no. He comes sometimes dressed in a four-piece suit. I mean, he's slick. The Gnostics were the super-spiritual ones in their minds, and that was why it was very dangerous. Well, in him, verse 3, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, that's where we find all knowledge. In Ephesians 1, 9, and 10, Paul said, he made us to know the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth, in him. Paul did not want them to be deceived by the cunning and deceitful rhetoric of the Gnostics. He was unable to be with them, but his true concern was for them. He was in prison, but his heart was in Colossae. He grieved for the church. See, in verse 5, he said, you are well-ordered and strong-faith. Both those terms are military terms. They describe an effective rank of soldiers standing ready for battle. He kept them in his heart and prayers, even in his absence. This verse ends with the words, the strength of your faith in Christ is what he was so grateful for. The word strength speaks of a solid, steadfast faith, and there were many strengths in the church, but he spotlighted unshaken faith as being a characteristic that was so important. It was the steadfast faith because it was bound up in their love for Christ. So he says in verse 6, so then just as you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord continued to live in him. This is a very familiar way in the New Testament that the description of how we all live day by day, this is the way it is often mentioned, being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught and overflowing with gratitude. You are established in faith, you are rooted, built up in Christ, and you are grateful. Gratitude is a great attitude. If you ask me what is the one characteristic that will save your marriage, it is gratitude. I have told you many times, I take the trash out in the mornings, Carolyn says thank you. I buy her lunch, she says thank you for lunch. Gratitude is just a great attitude because it takes things off of yourself, and what God is saying is if you have been saved, your heart ought to be full of gratitude. There ought to be an overflowing gratitude in your heart if Christ is in you, and not only just present, he said overflowing. Their lived life pattern after his, since they have received Christ, they ought to walk worthy of Christ whom they have received. Someone has said that Jesus is Lord of all, or he is not Lord at all. Just put that in your mind, chew on it, and it will wake you up at night. He is the heart and soul of all doctrine. The prophets prophesied about Christ, the apostles preached about Christ alone. All truth originates in Christ, he is the truth, all hope originates in Christ, all ethical teaching is anchored in Christ, whatever we do, think, say, and all we do ought to bring honor and glory to Jesus Christ. Continue to live in him. It is not complicated. Live out your faith. Be what you say you are. They must not withhold their allegiance to him as Lord of their lives. We don't make him Lord, he is Lord. We receive him and welcome him as that. Now, I am going to stop there because I want to read you something out of Oswald Chambers. I don't know whether you ever read Oswald Chambers or not, but I want to read you what he wrote about July the 28th. Oh, that's today, isn't it? I thought it so significant I wanted to read it to you because I think it applies to us. The title is, After Obedience, What? The text is Mark 6, 45-52, and one of those verses says, Straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship and to go to the other side. We are apt to imagine that if Jesus Christ constrains us and we obey him, he will lead us to great success. We must never put our dreams of success as God's purpose for us. We must never let our dreams be what we suppose is God's purpose for us. His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have an idea that God has led us to a particular end, a desired goal. He has not. The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident. What we call the process, God calls the end. What is my dream of God's purpose? His purpose is that I depend on him and on his power now. If I can stay in the middle of the turmoil, calm and unperplexed, that's the end of the purpose of God. God is not working toward a particular finish. His end is the process, that I see him walking on the waves, no shore in sight, no success, no goal, just the absolute certainty that it's all right because I see him walking on the sea. It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God. God's end is to enable me to see that he can walk on the chaos of my life now. If we have a further end in view, we do not pay sufficient attention to the immediate present. If we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment of it comes as precious. Let me just get real personal. I've known Dawson Grenade for 40 years at least. He just can't seem to get well. He struggled. We've prayed for him last year. I'm sure it's not been an easy time for him, but Dawson, what this is saying is that God's purpose is not the end result, which is that you're well. His purpose is the process. His purpose is that in the middle of all the storm, you saw him walking on the water. In the midst of all the process, he was there. That's what we need to realize. I look at Linda. I've known Linda Cantwell for 50 years almost. Buried her first husband who was killed in a tragic accident when she was in our church in Dallas when we were there. We came here. She came out here deathly sick. She spent the better part of a year in ICU. We didn't know whether she'd live or die. She met Sam here. How long has it been? 50 years? Fortieth. Fortieth year. It was a long process. She's better now. She's well now, but that's not God's purpose. God's purpose was the process, how she got here. If we keep looking at the end as the purpose of God for our lives, we'll never be satisfied because the end never comes quickly. When the end does come, if we look carefully, we'll realize that God's purpose was the process, not the end. It would help us to view life like that. We're in Christ, and Colossians 3 talks about Christ as everything we need. He's all we need. We don't need anything else. My dad died when he was 52 years old, and he was working on a sermon. In the sermon, he had included the words to a hymn, Jesus is all I need. We sang that hymn at his funeral, but that's the bottom line. We don't need to know where the road ends. We need to enjoy the process and see him walking on the waves every day in our lives. That's what our faith is all about. It's not just accepting things to be true, because Jesus said, I am the truth. So truth is Jesus. When we know him, we'll be set free. The journey, the process, is where God meets us, not the end. Not as we look back and say, well, finally made it. No, no. The struggle itself, the pain itself, the uncertainty itself, that was God's purpose for you to see him walking on the water every day. How can we be casual about that? This is incredible. This is who he is, and we're in him. Over and over, Paul, 76 times in 95 verses, reminds us that the process is where we find God, not the conclusion. Oh, he's there, too. But we don't wait for him until we get to the conclusion. We walk with him, and like Simon Peter, we may walk with him on water, and if we believe, we won't sink. But when we do, he lifts us up. Colossians is the most Christ-centered writing in the New Testament, and it's one that gives us great assurance. But I like what Oswald Chambers says. God's purpose is not in the end, in the result. God's purpose is in the process. We learn things in the process that we need to know in order to get to the end. We need him every day. We need to see him walking on the water every day in our lives. Father, just thank you. We are in you, and in you there is life and grace. Lord, thank you that we don't have to wait until some conclusion some day and then see you in a different way. But Lord, we need to see you every day feeding the 5,000, walking on the water, turning the water into wine, every day performing your normal self in our lives, because you are sufficient. We praise you and we thank you in Jesus' name, amen.