Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

The Struggle Is Real

Colossians 2:1; 1 Timothy 6:12; Philippians 1:30; 2 Timothy 4:7; Ephesians 6:12; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5; 1 Corinthians 11:1

Paul starts off saying “For I want you to know” tying his next thoughts to everything that has come before.

Paul builds on what he has just said about laboring in the Word.

He writes that he is struggling for the Colossians, for the Laodiceans and for all those who he had not ministered to face to face.

This is the Greek word agon from which we get our English word agony.

It is also the name of the location where the Greeks would assemble for their Olympic games - where they would struggle and fight against one another in foot races and wrestling matches.

Paul is saying that he is literally in agony for the Colossians as well as all Christians that he had never met.

The idea of a physical struggle in connection with the Christian life was prominent in Paul’s writings.

Writing to his young protege Timothy, Paul tells him

He would write the church in Philippi

And at the end of his ministry he would again write Timothy

Each of those verses contain the same word - agon - for struggle that Paul uses in our text today.

It would seem that the concept behind agon is much different from our modern conception of agony.

My wife will tell you that when I get sick it is pure agony around the house because I’m pretty well useless - I just don’t function that well when I am ill.

But here Paul demonstrates that being in agony means, as Vines Expository Dictionary defines it, to engage in intense struggle, involving physical or non-physical force against strong opposition.

With the exception of Epaphras, Philemon and Onesimus Paul had never met any of these believers (as far as we know) and yet here he says that he is literally in agony for them.

When I think of this I think of the agony of a woman in childbirth.

Now I’ve never experienced it personally but I’ve heard the pain in childbirth is awful - but the struggle, the pain experienced is for a purpose, the healthy delivery of a baby.

Paul is saying that he is a deep struggle for these believers.

There is a special fraternity that we should all feel for believers around the world.

Do we agonize over the situation that many of our brothers and sisters find themselves in?

In North Korea nearly 50,000 Christians languish in work camps known as Kwan-li-so’s.

One woman’s story is chronicled on OpenDoorsUSA’s website.

She no longer has a name - she is referred to as Prisoner 42.

She “lives” in a box that is barely big enough for her to lie down in.

When she arrived at the prison they stripped her of her name, her clothes and shaved her whole body.

Every day they interrogate her as to whether or not she is a Christian.

Do we agonize for her?

Or the woman in another southeast Asian country who was threatened by her husband that he would kill her because she converted to Christianity.

Do we agonize for her?

What about those who are inside the church and are mistreated at the hands of “pastors”.

Our reaction to the stories coming from Houston but really from all across the country are agonizing us right now - but what about those in other nations?

Like the congregation in South Africa who’s “pastor” told them that if they ate grass they would be closer to God? Or the congregation in Brazil who’s leader - I can’t even dignify him with the name pastor - who did such unspeakable things that I can’t even find a way to tell you about them this morning.

Do we agonize for them?

And the question is - how? How did Paul agonize over these believers?

Like I said earlier we sometimes think of agony almost as a paralyzing condition - where we do a lot of fretting and hand-wringing but really feel powerless to do much else.

I can tell you with a fair degree of confidence that the Apostle Paul was not sitting in his house or cell in Rome simply fretting about the condition of the Colossians or the other churches that he mentioned.

Paul was a man of action and even limited as he was he took the action available to him - he prayed.

Paul recognized the significant fact that the struggle for the Colossians was not a physical one but a spiritual one and so it needed a spiritual solution.

To the Ephesian church he would write the wonderful passage regarding our spiritual armor and spiritual warfare.

He began that passage saying

To the Corinthians he would write

Thirty five times in his letters Paul mentions prayer and he frequently refers to the power of prayer.

He mentions it in every letter except Galatians and 2 Timothy.

He often will tell the churches that he is writing to that he is praying for them - for their knowledge, maturity and spiritual growth.

In Colossians he will write that Epaphras is “always wrestling for you in his prayers” - the word for wrestling is agonizomai or the verb form of agon the same word Paul used for struggle in our verses this morning.

Paul encouraged the recipients of his letters to imitate him as he imitates Christ.

Even now Christ is at the right hand of God interceding for us.

Paul doesn’t merely sit and fret about the situation in Colossae and other cities in which churches had been planted.

He accesses the only power that can effectively bring about relief or change in those areas where attacks were happening.

Even as Paul imitated Christ, we should imitate Paul.

There is a power in our prayers to influence God to move in ways that are beyond our understanding.

Now it’s not as if God is sitting in Heaven waiting for us to pray to alert Him or so that He can move.

A good illustration of this is the story of Peter in Acts 12.

After martyring James for the faith, Herod had Peter arrested and intended to bring him out and put on trial.

Peter was sleeping in his cell when he was awakened by an angel and led out through the locked prison gates and set free.

When he arrived at Mary’s home the believers were all inside praying - the text doesn’t tell us exactly what they were praying for but I think in context it is safe to assume they were praying for Peter’s release.

God wasn’t just sitting around in Heaven and had heard through these believer’s prayers that Peter was in jail and needed releasing but their prayers on his behalf seem to play some role in influencing God to move on his behalf.

Prayer is kind of like the laser guidance system that is employed to guide in munitions.

We can see the whole landscape from satellites and so we know there are buildings there and that activities may be taking place inside those buildings.

But it takes a special operator - a Navy SEAL or Army Ranger - to go in on the ground and target a specific building with a laser that guides in our weapons on target.

That soldier or sailor doesn’t have the power that the weapons do, he doesn’t have the ability to release the weapons.

All he can do is to highlight the building or target and wait for the power to arrive.

When we pray we are not alerting God to the need for His power or apprising Him of a situation - we are merely highlighting a situation and waiting for Him to release His power into correcting it.

This is how we can struggle like Paul did for believers we don’t know now and may never know this side of Heaven.

We have to be, like Paul was, a praying people.

Nothing Is Hidden

Colossians 2:2-3; Jeremiah 17:9; Psalm 53:1; Matthew 12:34-35; James 3:6; Ephesians 3:16;

We are a results oriented people.

We don’t often take on a task or struggle without at least some sort of an idea about what we want to accomplish.

Paul is going to explain to the Colossians what his struggle is for and what his expected or hoped for outcome will be.

He says that his desire is that their hearts are encouraged and that they would be joined together in love.

His first desire was that they would be encouraged - this is the Greek word parakaleo and it literally means to come alongside or to call alongside.

It can have many different meanings but in this context, because the Colossian believers were being beset by false teachers, the best translation is to strengthen.

Commentator William Barclay wrote about it this way “There was a Greek regiment which had lost heart and was utterly dejected.

The general sent a leader to talk to it to such purpose that courage was reborn and a body of dispirited men became fit again for heroic action.”

A more modern (a least sort of modern) example of this might be the example set at the First Battle of Bull Run during the Civil War.

The Confederate brigade of General Bernard Bee was being driven off the hills and streaming toward the rear when he looked up and seeing General Thomas Jackson and his brigade made the now famous pronouncement “There stands Jackson like a stonewall.

Rally behind the Virginians!” His troops rallied and the tide of the battle swung.

This is what parakaleo means here.

It is Paul’s prayer that the Church may be filled with that courage which can cope with any situation.

Paul specifically says that it is his desire that their hearts would be encouraged.

We are freshly on the other side of a holiday that is all about the hearts of individuals - and the modern idea that our heart is the seat of our emotions but it was not so in the days when Paul was writing.

He is not trying to influence the emotions of the Colossians but instead is referring to the inner man, the very center of their life.

The heart is a synonym for the mind.

Scripture consistently warns of the dangers of the heart - or of a heart left unchecked.

Each of these verses refer to the mind where thinking takes place rather than to the seat of emotions.

In the New Testament Christ said

While we can be guilty of speaking from emotions it is more often that what is in our minds drive not only our emotions but our words.

And this can be a dangerous thing.

But how do we develop the strength that Paul is referring to here?

Paul provides that answer in his letter to the Ephesians

The Spirit - the parakletos - is the source and developer of strength in the believer.

He is promised as a Counselor by Christ in John 14:16.

He comes alongside the believer as an encourager and a trainer to help develop Christians into the image of Christ.

His training methods are two fold -

The first is the Word of God brought into the life of the believer.

As we study and learn the Bible more the stronger we develop in our faith and our knowledge of what Christ desires from us.