Would you stand, please, for the reading of God's Word from Colossians chapter one as we continue to look through this little Epistle of the Apostle Paul to this small and out-of-the-way church in Colossi? I'm going to read chapter one beginning at verse nine. And so from the day we heard we have not ceased to pray for you asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully to please Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power according to His glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son in which we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. I want you to notice just the structure of the passage for just a moment before we go into it. It is a prayer, is evidently a prayer as you can see. Paul is saying, we have been praying for you Colossians. And then I would suggest you that there are two major outlines, two major subsets to the prayer that have been offered on behalf of Paul and his friends for the Colossian church. One is for knowledge and the other is for power. We're going to look at those two things in just a moment and see what the implications are for our lives. For knowledge and for power in the midst of life circumstances. Now who could deny, particularly in light of what we have seen and been a part of in our TV's newspapers in the last week? Who could deny that the matrix of our common humanity is very fragile? I mean, we are dealing with what could become the literally obliteration of an entire city. We are dealing with situations that a week ago, most of us as Americans would never thought could have happened on our own shores, that it would take so long that the circumstances could be so difficult as to take so long to provide resources for starving people and people dying of thirst.
There are many reasons for that and it's certainly not my point here to comment on those issues. But what I do want you to know, as Frank said earlier, is that our church is deeply committed as the church to helping our brothers and sisters in that area as a demonstration of our unity in the body of Christ. Our immediate response is going to be to give $100,000 immediately to the local relief efforts that we are in touch with. Secondly, we plan to give $200,000 directly to churches, like the church that Jeffrey Lancaster leads, that David mentions in that area, totally abolished. The church is gone completely. And there will probably be more than those $200,000 going for that purpose. Another $50,000 has been designated for desired street ministries, no leverage ministry with which we have had a lot of association over the years after which Mercy Street ministries in our own West Alice's pattern. Our longer term response, however, is more significant. The leaders of our church have determined that we will, by God's grace, adopt 250 families that are affected by this disaster in the Gulf region and that four PCPC families will be attached to each of those 250 families so that the burden is shared. That means we need a thousand families from this church to indicate your willingness to participate in smaller, large ways in this endeavor of helping families in that region. And we are asking you, as families, to consider your part in that and being one of those 1,000 families. We plan to ask you to fast and pray twice a week for the next several months on Tuesdays and Thursdays to skip lunch if you are physically able to do so, and to save your lunch money and commit it to these concerns. And to save and use your lunch time to pray for the concerns of people affected in these regions, some of which you find in the material that's been given to you this morning, to pray for those adopted families for the sick and the weary, the safety of those that are trying to help others. You see the list of names of people that are leaders in our church that are behind us. And you see I think the great calling that we have. If you want to give something even this morning to add to that $100,000 that has already been committed by people in our church this week, just people calling up, gave $100,000. If you would like to commit yourself to that additional, additional of those initial funds, as my daughter did last night, she called up and she said, I want to help hurricane relief with the tide from my summer earnings from her job. How do I do it? And we said write a check to PC PC and put on the memo line hurricane relief. And out on the hallway there are baskets with yellow ribbons on them. And that's where you may put those checks even this morning and they will be designated immediately for that purpose. How fragile, how fragile is life? How fragile is the matrixes and the associations in which we live together? Soren Kirkagard said as I quoted to you a few weeks ago that life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards. I don't completely agree with everything in his statement but I do think there is this at least that he helps us understand. We may understand our lives best by looking at our past and what has shaped us personally and corporately. But it only means something if it serves a larger end. And the larger end that it must serve is that we would use the knowledge we gained thereby to live wisely and strongly in the present circumstances in which we find ourselves. As families, as churches. Notice that Paul does this teaching, this teaching about knowledge and power. He does it in the context of a prayer. And it has been often said that the apostle Paul does his best teaching in the environment of prayers that he offers in the New Testament. How casually we say to one another, I will pray for you. I'll pray for you, Clanton. I'll pray for you, Susan. Do we really mean that? I sense Paul minutes when he said we have heard of you and we pray for you. I think I can summarize the content of Paul's prayer in one sentence. It is for the knowledge of God's will and the power to perform it. Now let's break that down into those two compartments, knowledge and power. Now you remember in the last few weeks when we've been talking about the idea of knowledge from the book of Colossians, we have been saying that there was a group of people who lived in Colossai who were really heretics. They were people whose understanding of the gospel had been distorted by what they called a higher knowledge. We call these people Nostics. And we said that they believe that there was a kind of a higher elite knowledge. It was good that you were a Christian, good start. But now we need to get on with it and really go deeper and higher and understand things in a kind of secretive way, an elite sort of intelligence. It's very interesting that in the face of this heresy, the word that the Apostle Paul uses for saying that we have been given knowledge in the Christian church is the word epinosis. And epi is a Greek prefix that means abundant, a lot, a whole lot of it. And so what he is really saying is that you have been given all the knowledge you need. You've been given full much. If you are a Christian believer, you have been given knowledge by virtue of your faith in Jesus. We try and make it so complicated. Even as Christians, we try and make this process of understanding how to live and grow in the Christian life more complicated than is warranted. You have been given knowledge of Christ, by grace which you exercise through faith. If that's true, you've been given what you need. And the point therefore is that by faith in Christ, we already have access to this knowing of God that we have to have in order to live our lives. Paul is saying you already have all you need. You just need to use it. And the idea here is that if you wait until you think you know everything there is to know about a decision you have to make, about how to help people that are in distress in the Gulf Coast area of our country, about how to raise children, about this decision or that. If you wait too long until you are looking for some secret or higher knowledge from God, you will never find out what you are supposed to do. He is saying that we are to operate on the basis of the knowledge that we have already been given and what is this knowledge. The knowledge and grasp of the will of God in our daily living, it's very practical, it's very concrete, it's very wholesome, it's life giving and above all it's personal. It comes by personally knowing God through Jesus. This is the knowledge we need. Now move on it friends. Act on it disciples. Stop sitting around waiting for God to write His will for you in the sky. Stop waiting for a secret letter that's going to tell you what to do with your lives. Operate on the basis of what you know about God now and He will lead you on step by step. Understanding the will of God is always connected with the command to follow God's will and do it. So we will not know what God's will is if we are not prepared to obey that portion of the will of God which we know now. This isn't esoteric knowledge, it isn't overly spiritual, it isn't the secret knowledge of the Nostics. The point is not to focus on outcomes, not to focus on having it all figured out, but focus on obedience today. Can you figure out how you could be one family of a thousand families in our church that will have to give up some time to care for 200 in family, 250 displaced families from the Gulf area? No, none of you can figure that out right now giving your schedules your time, but do it. If you believe it to be God's will, do it. Leave the outcome to Him and obey Him on the basis of what you know by faith in Him now. You see it is the practical knowledge of the will of God that is given to us. It is how we fit into God's plans, not how God fits into our plans. This is really you see what Solomon prayed for, isn't it, in his famous prayer in 1 Kings, chapter 3, where he is just because become king and he is overwhelmed with the responsibility. And this is how he prays. At Gibbian the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night and said, ask what I shall give you. And now O Lord said Solomon, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David, my father. Although I am but a little child, I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant there for an understanding mind to govern your people that I may discern between good and evil for who is able to govern this your great people. And when he asks for an understanding mind, it is very helpful to know that the literal translation of that is a hearing heart. Literally, he is asking for a heart that hears the wisdom of God. This is why Paul speaks of the knowledge that we must have as spiritual wisdom and understanding, because it is wisdom that comes from God, from his truth, from his word. Mediated by spirit, through friends and acquaintances and circumstances, yes, but through the word by the spirit of God. And Paul says there are three facets to this wisdom. The first is that you know how to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. Like Paul's favorite word, as you know, for speaking of our behavior and our conduct. Our first thought when we hear that, that you might walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, means to us that we ought to walk to behave in a way that I am worth God's favor. But see how subtly the white devil of my own goodness sneaks in the back door as a way I see myself as somehow deserving God's worthiness. He is not saying that at all. And we see this when we look at the next facet of this that we are to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord pleasing to Christ. When you love someone, you study them. You study how to please them, what their likes are, what their dislikes are. So the man who loves the young woman, he knows all about what she loves and doesn't love, likes and doesn't like. So it is we need to study God's pleasures the only way to avoid pleasing yourself or very dangerously the Bible says pleasing others is to put the stress on seeking to please Christ to the fullest. So we are to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please him. But the author of Hebrews tells us in 11 chapter 6 that without faith it is impossible to please him. So wisdom is connected to faith. That's Paul's point. You can have no wisdom about how to live this life amidst all the choices, all the difficulties, all the uncertainties and all the opportunities. You can have no wisdom without faith in God's Christ. So look at King Jehosephat, for example, as one of the supreme examples of this in the whole of our Bible. It says in 2 Chronicles chapter 20 verse 1, after this the Moabites and Ammonites and with them some of the neonites came against Jehosephat for battle. Jehosephat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem in the house of the Lord before the new court and said, Oh Lord, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over the kingdoms of the nations in your hand our power and might so that none is able to withstand you. Oh our God, will you not execute judgment on them for we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us? We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you. That's it. We don't know what to do. In life circumstances we do not know how to put it all together. Wisdom is connected with faith. Faith is looking at the Lord. We don't know what to do, but our eyes are upon you Lord. You will show us what to do. And this then attaches to this third facet of this kind of wisdom. It continually bears fruit and increases in good works. And here again we deal with what we talked about last week, the root and the fruit of it all. The root of the bad teaching that the people in Colossi have been receiving means that they are isolated. They each think they have the insider's knowledge. They're kind of isolated from one another. They have no real community, but the real fruit of real wisdom that has its eyes on God. Bears the fruit of common love and common concern or to use the term we use last week. Friendship you will never find a disciple who is alone. You will always find disciples with friends. You will always find God's people together thinking through the implications of their faithfulness. And aware of God's gracious acts to them, leading them in turn to gracious and to just acts. Think again of Solomon. Right after Solomon prayed this prayer for wisdom, what happens? He's presented with this conundrum of conundrums. Very famously, isn't it? Two women. They live in the same house. They both have babies at the same age. Infants. One mother rolls over on a child in the middle of the night and suffocates her child. She wakes up, realizes her child is dead and switches her dead child with her companions' live child. So in the morning, she wakes up to a live child and her companion now has the dead child. The mother with the now dead baby goes to Solomon and says, this is not right. That is my baby. She switched the babies in the middle of the night and what does Solomon do? He just brings me a sword and I'll cut the baby in half so you can each have a half. And of course, what happens? The mother of the true baby says, oh, no, don't do that. Give her the baby because she is concerned to preserve the life of the child. Interestingly enough, this passage ends with this verse. First Kings, chapter 3, verse 28, and all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered and they stood in all of the king because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice. Do you see what the wisdom of God is like? It is practical. It is down to earth. It always looks in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is always done in community, never in an isolated esoteric. I know the answer in you don't kind of way. And it always is just. The issue is not knowledge but knowledge that leads to community. Knowledge that leads to bearing fruit together as God's people. Knowledge that leads to justice and love. Special spiritual insight usually leads to conceit. You know what I mean? Those Christians seem to tell you that they have got some insight. Believe me, I have been telling that. I have got an insight for you, pastor. I know exactly what you should do. Barbara will remember that I had one young woman tell me that the insight God had given her was that we should marry. She and I should marry. I was already engaged to Barbara. It was an interesting time. Spiritual insight that is isolated leads to conceit but the knowledge of Christ leads to love and to wisdom that is shared in community. And expressed in justice and love. St. Teresa of Abel in the 16th century saying with the beauty of that sort of wonderful mysticism that surrounded her life. A custom yourself continually to make many acts of love for they kindle and melt the soul. And speaking of great women named Teresa, Mother Teresa said something similar. Do small things with great love. That's it. That's it. That's wisdom. It's doing small things with great love. It's not doing prominent things. It's not doing big things. It's doing hidden things. Just as Paul hidden in a prison in Rome writes to a hidden people that nobody hardly knows in Colossian that he would never visit in a little out of the way and least prominent town. It's doing small things. Acts of love and justice that display the wisdom of God. Church, that's what we're called to. Right now. In this situation with this hurricane and in all kinds of other ways in the hurricanes in our personal lives. Quickly, I told you there are two things. Wisdom, the second is power. Just quickly on power. In the Old Testament, God is El Shaddai, which means the powerful one, the sovereign creator, the redeemer who rescues Israel from Egypt. That same power now is at work right here in this room, this morning in the church, saving people who hear the word of God, redeeming them out of the slavery and bondage of Egypt by means of the gospel. But what do you think of when you think of power? When you think of spiritual power, what do you think of? I hesitate to say it, but I can't resist. I think of Benny Hinn, and I think of him standing up there and zap and somebody falls over. I don't believe it. I simply don't believe it. That's not power biblically. Do you know how power biblically is defined in the book of Colossians? Right in this letter, the Paul gives us. He says power is defined this way. May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks as you share in the inheritance of the saints in life. What a different definition of power that is. Endurance and patience, so completely contrary to the Greek idea of power that was exhibited in this ancient, monastic world, the word endurance literally means to wait. It means to hold your position, to hold on to God in a hard place. And patience means self-restraint with the people that cross you. So Paul is saying that what is needed to live in the world that is inundated by its crises and its panics is the settled conviction that endurance and patience bring, that God is at work, that God is doing what God alone can do. And since he has already done the biggest thing in the gospel, will he not also do everything else we need? Put it this way. Endurance is what the Lord and the gospel bring in living with an apparently impossible situation. And patience is what the Lord and the gospel bring in living with an apparently impossible person. So what is the impossible situation in your life? What's the situation you can't figure out? Where do you need wisdom? Don't expect to be zapped with it. But endure, hold your ground, keep your eyes on the Lord in faith, and you will find the wisdom of God unfolding before you. Not that person you can't stand, avoid them, ignore them, run away from them. No, move toward them in patience, asking for God's grace of wisdom how to care for them in that moment. And these things happen. Paul says we joyously give thanks. We learn how to laugh at impossible situations and impossible people. Now, I'm not suggesting we laugh at the tragedy that's going on in the Gulf Coast, but I am saying that so many of the ups and downs of our lives would go so much better with a little chuckle. There would go so much better if we didn't take ourselves so seriously. Some of you know that I have a friend in Houston who is a Jesuit priest who recently complimented me by saying that I knew more about the Bible than any Jesuit priest he had ever known. To which I responded, yes, but you, my friend, know more about joy than most Protestant ministers I have ever known. When we pray joyfully with thanksgiving, you see, according to Apostle Paul, that you've actually been removed from one authority to another, from the domain of darkness to the Kingdom of God's Son, which Paul calls the inheritance of light. Every human being either lives in darkness or light, and the deepest thing about you, the deepest hidden truth about you, is that if you are united with Christ in His death and His resurrection, then you have come through the darkness and into the light. And that the core of your being, you knighted to Him, you are free from the domain of darkness, and the touchstone of your identity is that you are in the light and you are walking in the light. And boldly, you can move into your life, not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow, not knowing every answer, not knowing all the wisdom you need to know, but knowing what you need to know today to live in faith before Him. So in impossible situations, remember Paul's admonition in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, but we have this treasure in jars of clay, he says, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair. Paul was stone, do you know that he was stone? I don't know, but you would only take one good stoning to get me out of the game, impossible situations. But he hangs in there, why? Because he's living in the domain of light, not darkness, and how about impossible people? Well, right in our text, Colossians 3, verses 12, and following, which I'll use in a wedding sermon, I'm using in Austin, Texas tonight, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So also must you forgive, and above all these things, put on love, which binds everything together in Christian harmony. You see the emphasis on community that runs through all this? No such thing as an isolated Christian. No such thing as a disciple in the know. No such thing as a spiritually elite person who's got it together. We are all crumbums, and we all need each other to make crumb cake. And yet when we come together as a community, the light dawns, the darkness dispels. And we experience Paul says here at the end, what, redemption? We're saved out of the dark domain by the purchase made for us by Jesus, and forgiveness. Forgiveness is the experience of liberation from sin's guilt, the experience of, hear me now, the experience of liberation from sin's guilt. What gives joy is not living under sin's authority anymore. Most Christians have a theology of forgiveness, but not a very good experience of it. Isn't it wonderful this life for which Paul is praying for the Colossians and for us? When you live your life hidden with Christ, a life hidden with his dying, hidden with his resurrection, that which is in some ways hidden about you, nevertheless is the source of light in your life. And what is now hidden will one day be perfectly plain to you, to everyone. Paul's prayer is for the knowledge of God's will and the power to perform it. You have both. Now by God's grace, and for God's sake, use them both.