The End of the Beginning
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9 Because of this, since the day we heard about you, we haven’t stopped praying for you and asking for you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
10 We’re praying this so that you can live lives that are worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way: by producing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God;
11 by being strengthened through his glorious might so that you endure everything and have patience;
12 and by giving thanks with joy to the Father. He made it so you could take part in the inheritance, in light granted to God’s holy people.
13 He rescued us from the control of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.
14 He set us free through the Son and forgave our sins.
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the one who is first over all creation,
16 Because all things were created by him: both in the heavens and on the earth, the things that are visible and the things that are invisible. Whether they are thrones or powers, or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
17 He existed before all things, and all things are held together in him.
18 He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the one who is firstborn from among the dead so that he might occupy the first place in everything.
19 Because all the fullness of God was pleased to live in him,
20 and he reconciled all things to himself through him— whether things on earth or in the heavens. He brought peace through the blood of his cross.
The End of the Beginning
The End of the Beginning
On of my favorite Southern Gospel singers in David Phelps. He was part of the Gaither Vocal Band and also a solo singer. He has a phenomenal voice.
One of the songs that he sang as a part of vocal band was a song with this title in it. The song tells the story of a man talking to another man while on a airplane flight to somewhere. The man is reading his Bible and talking to the other person. That person says he’s heard it all before.
Later in the song he tells the man about Jesus dying on the cross and he says its the end of the beginning and the man asks him how that could be true. He replies
I said, "I'll read it again but this time there's more, And I believe that this is true. His death wasn't the end, the beginning of life That's completed in you. Don't you see he did all this for you!"
Today is Christ the King Sunday. It is the last Sunday of the Christian calendar. Next Sunday we enter into the season of Advent leading us to the celebration of Christmas.
Next to Easter and Christmas, this is one of my favorite Sundays to preach and to celebrate. It is easy to think that we are just coming to the end of one church year and with Advent the starting all over again.
It is that, but it is way more than that. It is the end of the beginning. The Gospel message continues to be told and retold. Everytime the Gospel is proclaimed it is the end of the beginning. It is the end of the old way of living and the beginning of new life through Jesus.
As I read through this passage and tried to organize it in my mind I see the what and the why of Christianity. Into this church had crept false teaching and Paul is writing to counter the false teaching by bring to them a challenge of what it means to live as a child of God.
9 Because of this, since the day we heard about you, we haven’t stopped praying for you and asking for you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Paul writes there in verse nine that they have not stopped praying for the church. Paul wasn’t the founder of this church, it was most likely founded by Epaphras. It was Epaphras who came to Paul in Rome to tell him about the problems that the church was having with false teaching.
Isn’t it something to know that people are praying for you? I know that there are many of you that pray for me on a daily basis. Thank you, I can sense the power of your prayers at work in my life. Many of you are in church this morning because someone prayed for you for a very long time before you even darkened the doors of this building. I think back over my life knowing that people prayed for me.
My mom prayed for me as an infant. She prayed for me and gave me to God like the Prophet Samuel’s mother Hannah. I didn’t know about that until after I was already in full-time ministry. I had two of my grandmother’s sisters, Aunt Zula and Aunt Velma, who prayed for me. They would remind me from time to time that they were praying for me. I miss those two special ladies.
Prayer is important. It isn’t though some magic way of gaining God’s favor. It’s communication, and it involves us talking to God and then allowing God to speak to us. If all we do is talk but never listen we don’t grow in our relationship with God. God is not some cosmic Santa Claus that we constantly bring our wish list too.
Paul says that he never stops praying for them. If you tell someone that you’ll pray for them, don’t stop until the prayer is answered. Remind the person that you’re still praying for them. And here’s an idea, if in the course of a conversation you tell someone that you’ll pray for them, why not stop there and pray for them! You’ll show them that you are sincere in your intent to pray for them.
One of the big questions that Christians have is what is God’s will for their lives. Often times when bad things happen to people that you will hear someone say that it must have been God’s will. The curse of sin that we live under has caused the brokenness that we see in the world. It’s the cause of the genetic mutations that cause cancer and other diseases and birth defects.
God didn’t create the word that way. When He created man God created man is His image which was perfect. When someone is diagnosed with cancer, I don’t believe that is God’s will. When there is a tragic car accident and someone dies, I don’t believe that is God’s will. Death came into existence because of sin. Sin is the cause of the brokenness in life.
Certainly God doesn’t have a physical body like us. Jesus the Bible tells us took on the likeness of man, He became one of us.
Paul says that in his prayer that he hadn’t stopped praying for you and asking for you to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
How do we come to know God’s will in our lives? It’s by the Holy Spirit who fills us with wisdom and understanding. To have understanding is to be able to comprehend something. It’s the Holy Spirit that enables us.
We often miss what God is wanting to do because all we do is spend time talking to Him, we don’t spend any time asking God to speak to us. We don’t make any room in our busy schedules to allow the Holy Spirit to work within our lives. A false idea that many have is that they can do whatever they want and then when bad times come that they can go running to God in prayer and say a few words and God is going to make it all better.
Are we ever guilty of that? We go running to God and want him to solve the problem immediately by putting a band aide on it so that we can say it’s all better. I can tell you that is not the way God operates, He wants to have a daily relationship with you. Why? Why is that important to pray and seek God’s will? Paul answers that question in verses 10 and 11 these five outcomes of walking daily with God when he writes:
10 We’re praying this so that you can live lives that are worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way: by producing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God;
11 by being strengthened through his glorious might so that you endure everything and have patience;
Underline them in your Bible, they are import aspects of our daily walk with Jesus. We pray, we seek God’s will so that we can do these things.
· Live a life worthy of the Lord
· Please him in every way
· Producing fruit in every good work
· Growing in the knowledge of God
· Being strengthened by his glorious might
Those all begin with a verb, a word used to describe an action, they are actions that we take and which the Holy Spirit works through us.
That first one is a call to live holy lives. It is practical holiness, it is a personal holiness as well as a social holiness. We as Christians are called to be witnesses to Jesus. We’re not called to sit in our recliners and just relax until we get to heaven. If you live your life that way you might just be in for a rude awakening because that fire insurance that you bought into is not worth the paper it’s printed on.
We can’t be effective witnesses for Jesus if we’re not living a life that is worthy of the Lord.
We live in a society that’s all about me. Watch the news on Friday after the black Friday store sales and see the selfishness of people as the rush to get the bargain not caring who they hurt in the process. Paul says that we’re to please God in every way. That pleasing God is more than just showing up on a Sunday morning. It’s living the Christian faith daily. It’s seeking God’s will before making that next decision and asking if it is pleasing to God.
Paul says that we will be producing fruit in every good work. Jesus spoke about the Him being the vine and us, his followers being the branches. Jesus said:
John 15:1-2 “1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vineyard keeper. 2 He removes any of my branches that don’t produce fruit, and he trims any branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even more fruit.”
Jesus expectations for us are high yet they are very attainable. Every Christian is expected to bear fruit. What does that mean?
It means that as we live out our faith that the results of that daily living are going to be evident. Each of us is involved in the making of Disciples. Each of us is involved in being witnesses for Jesus. If you plant an apple tree and give it the right conditions we expect that we will harvest apples from it. If we plant a grape vine and give it all the right conditions that we expect that we’ll harvest grapes from it. In our Christian life we are a branch, a part of, a member of Jesus. Jesus expects us to product fruit. Paul talked about the fruit of righteousness in his letter to the Philippians.
What happens if we don’t produce? Jesus says that God the Father will cut those branches off that don’t bear fruit. The Father gives us time and opportunity to demonstrate that we are taking up our cross daily and following Jesus. There comes a point where the dead branches that aren’t producing fruit are cut off.
Paul’s next expectation is that we will be growing in knowledge of God. If you’ve been a Christian for one year then you should know more about God and His word today than you did one year ago.
If you’ve been a Christian for 10 years then you should know more about God and His word today than you did 10 years ago.
If you’ve been a Christian for 40 years or more then you should know more about God and His word than you did 40 years or more ago.
The point is that as we spend time in prayer and seeking God’s will then we are just naturally going to growing in our knowledge of God. It is your responsibility to spend time with God. If you don’t spend time with God than you cannot possibly grown in your relationship with Him.
The church provides opportunities for you to grow through Sunday School. If you don’t take advantage of these fantastic opportunities then you are short changing yourself. If the time of those opportunities doesn’t work for your schedule, just ask, we might be able to add other opportunities, we’ve got some great teachers and some of them aren’t currently teaching and they need a job!
Our District Superintendent spoke to the board yesterday about home Bible studies or a women’s prayer meeting. Would you like to start on of those as a way to reach people for the Kingdom? Invite your neighbors to your house for a Bible study.
The final aspect of spending time with God in prayer and seeking His will that Paul mentions there is that we will be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might.
That is what God the Holy Spirit does in us. Christianity is not a philosophy of life that we adopt, it’s not a religion. Christianity, being a follower of Jesus is a way of life. Becoming a Christian effects every aspect of our lives. The great thing is that the Holy Spirit works in and through us by his “glorious might”. Just think, God gives his power and might to strengthen us. God does that for us. Stop trying and allow the Holy Spirit to work in you.
The outcome of this life that we’re called to is as Paul says that we may have “great endurance and patience and giving joyful thanks to the Father.”
Why? Paul says because the Father has qualified you and I to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. Before we came to faith in Jesus we were living in darkness. We were in darkness oblivious to even our lostness. When we pray for non-Christians to become believers do you realize that they don’t even know they are lost, that there is a God who loves them and wants to have a personal relationship with them? They don’t see it, they are living in darkness just as we were.
But here is the exciting thing that Paul writes about in verses 13 and 13. Listen to this:
13 He rescued us from the control of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.
14 He set us free through the Son and forgave our sins.
Isn’t that exciting to think about? If you are a Christian then God has rescued you from darkness into the kingdom of Jesus. God loves us his creation with a love that is beyond comprehension and he sent his son Jesus who died for your sin and my sin and he defeated sin and death. He defeated the kingdom of darkness and he has rescued us from darkness and now we are a part of his kingdom.
One thing out of many that I don’t understand or get is the person who wants to claim to be a Christian and enjoy the benefits of being a Christian and the hope of heaven when they die. What I don’t get is why they also want to live with one foot in Christianity and the other in the world. Do you understand that? I sure don’t. In reality it can’t possibly work because you can’t be a part time Christian. That’s a person who wants to be a Christian on Sunday but to do whatever they want the rest of the week.
To live that way is to be stuck in between God and the world. God through Jesus has come to rescue them. They’ve had their eyes open and they see what God wants to do for them, but they like too much what they’ve been comfortable with. In reality they are still living in darkness, it still has a hold on their life.
Jesus has come to rescue them just as he has rescued us. It is in Jesus we are redeemed, we’ve had our sins forgiven. We have all the benefits of what Jesus has accomplished for us. We have the Holy Spirit to work in our lives transforming our lives. God is just asking us do you trust me. Do you trust me to do in your life what you cannot do for yourself?
Jesus is King over all. He has done everything that needed to be done to open the way for us to come into a relationship with God.
Where are you at this morning in your relationship with God? Have you had your eyes open to what God wants to do for you but just haven’t taken that step? Jesus came to rescue you from sin and darkness.
Are you still clinging to the world and yet trying to get your foot in the door of Christianity? It’s time to let go of the world and allow Jesus to bring you into that relationship that he longs to have with you. It’s time to trust God that He can do in you what you’re unable to accomplish yourself.
It is the end of the beginning.
It’s not to say that all your problems are going to magically disappear, but through the Holy Spirit will work in your life transforming you into the person that He has wanted you to be. Sometimes we make a mess of our lives and there are consequences to those messes but by the power of the Holy Spirit at work within you He will strengthen you by His glorious might.
The End of the Beginning
The End of the Beginning