1. "When we're talking about something important, like the message that you're relying on to save your soul for all eternity, well then that human tendency to be drawn to the new and untested, the promised improvement, rather than sticking with what's proven and tested, but maybe not as shiny—that tendency becomes very serious and giving into the tendency just may well prove disastrous."

2. "The hope of heaven is a powerful motivator for Christians, too, but it works in a massively different way. It's not a carrot that we're desperately trying to earn, but it's a secure confidence knowing that it's already laid up for us. And because of that, Christians live differently. They live motivated by a secure hope."

3. "A confident heavenly future leads to a generous, worldly present. That's one of the reasons that Christians labor to be heavenly minded."

4. "If all your hopes are just in this world and you think this world is all there is, then your stuff is all you have and it's all you're ever going to have, at least for a little while. But Christians think about their stuff in this world differently."

5. "It's not that Christians care less about this world, they just know that they have better stuff and that it's not in this world. And believing that frees up Christians to do stuff in this world."

6. "Christians, because of their hope in heaven, have a vastly expanded moral landscape. They don't just care about things in the narrow confines of 70 or 80 years of life. They care about people's eternity."

7. "The power of the gospel is not in the sort of cultural fit between the gospel and any particular culture. The power of the gospel is in the gospel. And that's why it bears fruit in every language, in every culture, among every ethnicity, in every circumstance of life, throughout all of time."

8. "We don't ever get over the gospel and move on to something deeper. To grow as a Christian fundamentally means growing experimentally in your own experience in understanding the very same gospel message that saved you."

9. "Skepticism is kind of like a surgeon's scalpel. It can do a lot of good in separating truth from error, but once you've done that, if you just keep using it, that's gonna be disastrous. Distrust is not the same as discernment."

10. "As humans, we're attracted to impressive falsehoods more than we are to simple, unextraordinary truths. Don't fall prey to that."

Observation Questions

1. In Colossians 1:1-2, how does Paul identify himself, and how does he describe the recipients of this letter?

2. According to Colossians 1:3-5, what three things does Paul mention as reasons for his thanksgiving when he prays for the Colossians, and what does he say is the source or cause of their faith and love?

3. In Colossians 1:5-6, how does Paul describe the gospel, and what does he say it is doing "in the whole world" as well as among the Colossians?

4. What specific phrase in verse 5 does Paul use to describe where the Colossians' hope is located, and what does this suggest about the security of that hope?

5. According to Colossians 1:7, from whom did the Colossians learn the gospel, and what two descriptions does Paul give of this person?

6. In Colossians 1:8, what has Epaphras made known to Paul about the Colossians?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why do you think Paul emphasizes that the hope of heaven is "laid up" for the Colossians (v. 5), rather than describing it as something they are working toward? How does this shape our understanding of Christian motivation for obedience?

2. Paul references the gospel multiple times in verses 5-7, using phrases like "the word of truth," "the grace of God in truth," and describing it as "bearing fruit and increasing." What does this repetition suggest about Paul's concern for the Colossians and his strategy for addressing it?

3. How does Paul's description of the gospel "bearing fruit and increasing" throughout "the whole world" (v. 6) serve as an argument for the Colossians to hold firmly to the message they first received rather than seeking something new?

4. Why would Paul take time to commend Epaphras as a "beloved fellow servant" and "faithful minister of Christ" (v. 7)? What does this tell us about the relationship between trusting the message and trusting the messenger?

5. Based on the structure of verses 3-8, how does Paul connect the Colossians' present visible fruit (faith, love) back to the gospel message they originally heard? What does this suggest about the ongoing role of the gospel in Christian growth?

Application Questions

1. The sermon described how a secure hope in heaven frees Christians to live generously in the present. In what specific area of your life—time, money, possessions, or comfort—do you find yourself holding on tightly because your hope feels more attached to this world than to heaven? What would it look like to loosen your grip this week?

2. Paul reminds the Colossians that they don't need something "new and improved" beyond the gospel. What voices, books, podcasts, or teachings are you currently listening to that might be subtly suggesting you need something beyond the simple gospel message to grow spiritually? How can you evaluate whether these sources are helping you go deeper into the gospel or distracting you from it?

3. The sermon challenged listeners to talk about heaven with other Christians as a way of cultivating heavenly-mindedness. When was the last time you encouraged a struggling believer by pointing them to the hope laid up for them in heaven? Who in your life needs that kind of encouragement this week, and how might you offer it?

4. Paul commended Epaphras as a faithful messenger worthy of trust. How do you currently evaluate whether to trust a teacher or teaching? What practical steps can you take to prioritize the voices of faithful, proven teachers you know personally over unknown voices on the internet or in popular books?

5. The sermon noted that Christians care about people's eternal destiny, not just their earthly circumstances. Is there someone in your life—a neighbor, coworker, or family member—with whom you have built a relationship but have never shared the gospel? What is one step you could take this week to move that relationship toward a spiritual conversation?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Colossians 2:6-15 — This passage continues Paul's argument by warning against being taken captive by hollow philosophy and emphasizing the fullness believers have in Christ alone.

2. Hebrews 10:32-39 — This passage, referenced in the sermon, describes Christians who joyfully accepted suffering because of their confidence in a better and lasting possession, illustrating how heavenly hope transforms earthly living.

3. Colossians 3:1-4 — Paul explicitly calls believers to set their minds on things above, where Christ is, providing the practical command that flows from the secure hope described in chapter 1.

4. Ephesians 1:3-14 — This parallel passage from Paul describes the spiritual blessings believers have in Christ, including the inheritance that is secured by the Holy Spirit as a guarantee.

5. 1 Peter 1:3-9 — Peter describes the living hope believers have through Christ's resurrection and the inheritance kept in heaven, showing how this hope sustains faith through trials.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Human Tendency Toward "New and Improved" Can Be Spiritually Dangerous

II. Hope in Heaven (Colossians 1:3-5)

III. Remember the Gospel (Colossians 1:5-7)

IV. Trust What's Faithful (Colossians 1:7-8)

V. God's Simple Gospel Plan Produces Glorious Results

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Detailed Sermon Outline

It was one of those kind of cute moments when both the sort of relative innocence of children and their serious gullibility was on full display. I was on vacation with my extended family, and my five-year-old niece had picked out a breakfast cereal she wanted to eat, kind of as an appetizer, before we had our real breakfast. And only on vacation, lest you judge me or my family, we let the kids eat the most grotesque sugar-sweetened cereals you can imagine. So she had picked out a particularly wonderful cereal that she wanted to eat, and she was holding it really tightly. And I asked her, I said, well, you know, that's the cereal you want to eat?

Why are you so excited about that cereal? And she looked up at me with like absolute seriousness, and these eyes that seemed kind of shocked that I didn't understand why she would pick this particular cereal.

And with her five-year-old innocence, she looked up and said, Uncle Andy, this cereal is new and improved. And, well, you know, she might have been a little disappointed if she'd figured out, in that case, new and improved simply meant that rainbow unicorn mushrooms, mushrooms, sorry, marshmallows, thankfully, had been added to the sort of pantheon of rainbow-colored kind of tasteless, pressed, freeze-dried marshmallow sugar bombs that were making up, I think, the majority of that package of cereal. But as funny as that is, and as cute as I thought that was, she was doing something that was pretty essentially human at that minute. I think new and improved may be the most frequently used words in in all of advertising or marketing. And marketers aren't stupid.

They know that people other than five-year-olds, because five-year-olds don't actually buy the cereal, you know, other people will actually be moved by that. Now, you know, it's silly when we're drawn to something by the words new and improved, when we're talking about a breakfast cereal. But when we're talking about something important, like, say, the message that you're relying on to save your soul for all eternity, well then that human tendency to be drawn to the new and untested, the promised improvement, rather than sticking with what's proven and tested, but maybe not as shiny, Well, that tendency becomes very serious and giving into the tendency just may well prove disastrous. Well, that danger of the unexamined drift from what's old and proven to what's new and maybe more exciting, that's actually, I think, what motivated the apostle Paul to write the letter that we're gonna be thinking about this morning as we turn to Paul's letter to the Colossians. You'll be helped if you follow along.

It's in the pew Bibles right there on page 983. Paul's letter to the Colossians. We're gonna start out looking at the first eight verses. Now while you turn there, let me just give you a little background. Colossae was a town of no particular massive significance.

It was in what was in part of the Roman Empire, it's now in Western Turkey. And it had been a pretty big city, but then the Roman superhighway of the day had bypassed Colossae and gone over to a town you may have heard of called Laodicea. It lays just a little bit farther over to the west. So Colossae wasn't a terribly important place, but Paul was concerned about it because a friend of his, apparently, a guy named Epaphras, had taken the gospel to Colossae and some people had believed it and there was a church there. But Paul, again, I think through a message from his friend Epaphras, Paul knew that the Christians in Colossae were starting to be tempted to leave the teaching that had actually saved them, that they'd believed, and to be led by some false teachers to begin to believe they needed something in addition to the gospel, something else to sort of reach a new higher level with God.

Paul recognized the disastrous trajectory of that and so he writes this letter to them. Now, we're not gonna read the whole letter. It's not very long. You could sit down and read it this afternoon if you wanted. One thing you'd find is that Paul doesn't actually give a lot of detail about what the false teaching is that he's refuting.

The book isn't like a point by point refutation of whatever the false teachers were teaching. He gives us some hints In chapter two, in verses eight to 23, Paul spells out some of the contours of this false teaching that the Christians in Colossae were being tempted by. He says that it was a hollow and deceptive philosophy, that it depended on human traditions more than the gospel. It advocated special holy days and special practices and secret knowledge, and it put too much emphasis on angels and special visions, and not enough on the simple message from the Bible that they believed at first. But Paul doesn't, again, he doesn't spend his time just critiquing that message.

In the letter to the Colossians, Paul spends his time reminding them of what they had first heard and how they'd heard it and why they should hold on to it for dear life. Well, Paul begins that in the first eight verses. That's what we're going to look at together this morning. So if you want to look down at your Bible, Colossians chapter 1, starting there at the very beginning, we read: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. Grace to you, and peace from God our Father.

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 you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing— as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

Now Paul doesn't start out this letter with sort of a direct frontal attack on the Colossian Christians, on their tendency to drift away from the gospel, he starts off actually very gently reminding them of his love for them, his thanks for them, and the message that they had received. And so as we look at this passage this morning, my hope is that we'll think about the message that we received if you're here today as a Christian and that you'll grow in your confidence in it. In particular, I think there's three things that stand out when we look at these eight verses. Paul encourages the Colossian Christians to hope in heaven, number two, to remember the gospel, and number three, to trust what's faithful. That'll be the outline for this sermon.

So if you're taking notes, points one, two, and three: one, hope in heaven; Two, remember the gospel. And number three, trust what's faithful. And again, I hope as we think about these things, we'll be helped to display the sort of grace motivated obedience that brings glory to God and makes us even more confident in the hope that's laid up for us. So first, number one, hope in heaven. Now, if you read for Verses 3 to 5, I don't think that particular emphasis is maybe the first thing that would strike people when they look at this passage.

Paul does a lot of talking about his thanks for them, about their faith, about the love that they have. And I think he means all of that. But notice what he says is behind the sort of root of their hope. Let's read it again. He says, 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 the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. I think Paul's trying to remind the Colossian Christians that all the good fruit they've seen in their life, the faith in Christ, the love that they have for other Christians, it flows from one thing in particular, the fact that they know that there's a hope laid up for them in heaven.

Well now, that particular hope isn't totally unique. The hope in heaven or something like it is intrinsic to most of the religions that you'll hear about in the world. In Islam, there's a more physical, sensual paradise And Muslims work to earn merit, the wab, they might call it in Arabic, in order to get enough merit so that they can get to heaven. Heaven for them is a powerful motivator. In Hinduism, in a more impersonal sort of way, the principles of karma work out in some way so that that people who do the right things will accumulate something that will help them to sort of move up the ladder of enlightenment with each subsequent incarnation.

And that hope of something good is, I assume, a powerful motivator for Hindus. In Mormonism, it's a little bit different. In Mormonism, the hope of heaven, well, there's actually three heavens, but the hope of the highest, best heaven, it works kind of like an assumed mortgage. And I don't want to insult, if you're here as a Mormon, I took this from a book published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so this is their illustration. It's like when you have a mortgage, maybe you pay the mortgage to a mortgage company that you don't really like.

Maybe they keep losing your checks, they keep sending you collection notices, and then this nice mortgage company comes in and they buy out your mortgage. So you still have to pay off the mortgage, but you send the checks to them now rather than the bad mortgage company that you didn't like. Well, in Mormonism, that's how they get the hope of heaven. They're still earning it. They're just sending the checks to God now through good works.

But in the hope that now they've got a more favorable debt holder that will eventually say they've paid off the debt and they'll be able to get to heaven. And I think that's a powerful motivator. In all of these three examples, the hope of heaven is kind of like a carrot. It's held out there. And the followers of these religions, they do things in the hope that they'll earn enough to get the promises of heaven.

Now, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, that may be basically a description of how you think about Christianity. But I can tell you from the Bible that it couldn't be more different. The hope of heaven is a powerful motivator for Christians, too, but it works in a massively different way.

Maybe a kind of sad illustration will help you to understand that. If you've ever worked around children, and I in one of my previous careers was briefly a public school teacher, and one of the things that you'll encounter is among the kids you work with, there'll be kids who don't really believe that their parents love them. Sadly, there's some kids that don't believe that anybody loves them.

And sometimes those can be among the most eager and desperate kids to try to get approval from other adults. Because their parent, sadly, maybe because they're angry or they're fickle or they're just too busy to care about their kid, they never communicate to their child that they love them or that their love is secure or they communicate that their love is completely conditioned on how they perform that particular day. Well, those kids may be really eager for a while, but if you've worked around kids a lot, you know that those are often the kids that eventually end up in bitterness and rebellion and anger because of the dashed hopes as they keep trying to earn love that they never quite get. Contrast that with kids that are secure in in the love of their parents. A kid that is still a kid, still does stupid stuff, sorry kids, still does childish stuff, but they know they're confident that their parent loves them.

And whatever they do, their obedience, their respect, their hard work, it's coming from a different place. It's coming from a desire to please someone that they know loves them no matter what. Well, that's an imperfect picture. You can poke all sorts of holes in it as you can with any picture that involves fallen, simple human beings like us. But that's a picture of the way Christians hope in heaven.

It's not a carrot that we're desperately trying to earn, but it's a secure confidence knowing that it's already, as Paul wrote in his letter, laid up for us. And because of that, Christians live differently. They live motivated by a secure hope. Christians know that this heavenly hope is laid up for them because of what God's done, and it does affect how they live, but it does it in a totally different way.

Now, to really understand that, I should probably pause and I've been talking about this hope that Christians have in heaven, but the question we need to ask is how does somebody have that kind of hope? You might be able to understand how if you had a hope of eternal fellowship with God in heaven and you knew without a shadow of a doubt that that hope was secure, that it had been it had been secured for you apart from your own performance. I think you can understand how that would affect how you live, but you may not understand how you'd get that kind of hope. Well, that message of how you get that kind of hope is what Christians refer to when we talk about the gospel, which just means the good news about Jesus. And the gospel message the one that Paul's encouraging the Colossians to hold onto, the message is simply this: that there is a God, that he exists, that he created everything, that he's a perfectly good God, and that everything he made was and is good, and that he's holy, that everything he does is right, but that human beings, in our first parents, Adam and Eve, and all of us since then, have rebelled against that God.

We've tried to live as if we're God. We've tried to live by our own rules. We've tried to live without reference to him or what he may have said, what he may desire. And so because of that, human beings objectively deserve God's punishment. And because God's a good and a just God, he'll do that.

He's not the kind of judge that perverts justice. He's the kind of judge that always does what is right. Well, thus far that doesn't sound like very good news. If you, like me, know yourself to be a sinner who's done that, who's rebelled against God. But the reason Christians call this the gospel, the good news, is that it keeps going.

That this God who is so holy and just and will punish sin actually sent His own Son into the world to be born as a human being and to live a perfect life, the life that none of us have ever lived, and that that Son, Jesus, willingly died. And in doing that, He bore the punishment that God rightly intended to pour out on all of our sins. And then Jesus, after he was crucified, he was raised from the dead to show that the sacrifice he made was actually sufficient. It actually worked. God raised him from the dead.

And then the Bible commands everyone everywhere to turn away from their sins and to trust in Christ. And when we do that, God gives Jesus's righteousness to us.

And Jesus takes away our sins. And because we're made righteous in Jesus, then we who were fallen and sinful human beings, and we are still, we now have a righteousness with which we can approach a perfect and a holy God, and we can be with Him forever. That's what Christians mean by heaven, being with God in fellowship with Him for all eternity. Well, that's the good news that Paul was reminding these Colossians of. That's the message that they heard from this guy Epaphras 2,000 years ago.

That's the reason that they have this hope in heaven. And because that hope is secured not by their performance, finally, but by Jesus's performance and his righteousness, then they can say, like Paul does, that their hope is laid up for them. It's waiting for them. It's already purchased. And again, that affects the way Christians live.

In the Bible, we even read about that. In another letter in the Bible, in the book of Hebrews, the writer of that talks about some Christians who extravagantly loved people, even at great personal loss, because of this hope. This is what he says. He says, writing to these Christians, he says, For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better and lasting possession and an abiding one.

Friends, a confident heavenly future leads to a generous, worldly present. That's one of the reasons that Christians labor to be heavenly minded. I realize you can't talk about this topic about hoping in heaven and probably not have somebody think of the old saying about people that are so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good. I don't know I've ever met anybody like that. I've certainly met people that are so worldly minded that they're no good for anybody except maybe themselves.

Now that makes sense. I can understand that. Because if you're worldly minded, if your hope is not in heaven but just in this world, then every other person is a potential competitor for the stuff that you want in this world. And if all your hopes are just in this world and you think this world is all there is, then your stuff is all you have and it's all you're ever going to have, at least for a little while.

But Christians think about their stuff in this world differently. An old preacher named Matthew Henry hundreds of years ago wrote this. He said, The more we fix our hopes on the reward of the other world, the more free shall we be in doing good with our earthly treasure. The Apostle Paul says it even better just a little later in this letter. In chapter three he says, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. To put it as simply as possible, the way the Christian hope of heaven works out is like somebody at the office maybe kind of fighting over the last donut. I'm not going to fight you as much as I like donuts. I'm not going to fight you for the last donut on the way out of the office. If I know there's a fantastic meal waiting for me at home.

It's not that Christians care less about this world, they just know that they have better stuff and that it's not in this world. And believing that frees up Christians to do stuff in this world. If you're here and you're not a Christian, you may actually believe that stuff about people being so heavenly minded that they're no earthly good.

If you think that, I would commend you just Google Christians giving charity. I think that'll work. I think I tried that. What you'll find is as long as they've kept statistics, they've found that Christians for some reason give to charities in this world at rates that are vastly greater than secular minded people. Who say they only care about this world.

I leave you to figure out why. I think the reasons are pretty obvious.

But I don't have to Google something to see examples of that. One of the privileges of having been a pastor in this church for about 20 years now is over and over getting to see how this principle of heavenly mindedness plays itself out in the lives of you guys that are the members of this church. I get to know lots of things that you probably don't want other people to know, not because you're embarrassed of them, but because you just don't want other people to know the good things you're doing. But I know about so many of you guys that are fostering at-risk kids, taking homeless people to shelters, volunteering at homeless shelters, giving rides to elderly people, caring for members of the church, when they're in sudden need, being involved with your neighbors, helping the single mom that lives down the street from you. And best of all, I see you guys doing something that only Christians would do.

And that's caring for people beyond the narrow scope of this world. You do that, but you care about people's eternal destiny. One writer said that Christians, because of their hope in heaven, they have a vastly expanded moral landscape. They don't just care about things in the narrow confines of 70 or 80 years of life. They care about people's eternity.

And so I see you guys sharing the gospel with people, meeting up with people at work to study through the gospel, inconveniencing yourselves when you don't really get anything out of it personally, in order to help other people. Begin to have the same hope in heaven that you have. Friends, all of that flows out of being heavenly minded, of thinking about the hope that we have in heaven, and letting that put the stuff that we have in this life, our time, our job, our money, into a totally different context. Well, you may feel like you're not very heavenly minded. Well, if you're a Christian here today, I encourage you to try to cultivate that.

It's something that I think Christians today in this particular cultural moment in North America are not particularly good at in the span of history. But there's some simple things you can do. Just think more about the promises that are held out to us in the gospel in heaven. That may sound really simple, but when you think about the gospel, think about what it is that God has saved you to. And then I encourage you, talk about heaven with each other.

If you wonder how much you really hope in heaven, maybe here's a good test. When was the last time you were talking to someone who was struggling in this life, another Christian, And when was the last time you tried to encourage another Christian? By reminding them of what God has in store for them in heaven. You may have tried to encourage them by saying, well, maybe God will fix your circumstances or maybe people will help you out or maybe it won't last very long. But when was the last time you encouraged somebody by just reminding them that we actually have a secure hope laid up for us in heaven?

Now, I understand there's ways you could do that that would be insensitive and inappropriate when people are suffering. But is it never appropriate?

Christians are heavenly minded people and the world is much better off because of it. We need to move to our second point and these will be briefer. The second thing that Paul reminds them of is their need to remember that gospel message. To focus in on it. How did they get this hope laid up in heaven?

Well, because they believe that same gospel that I rehearsed for you guys just a few minutes ago. And Paul keeps writing about that. If you look down at kind of the middle of verse five, we read this. Paul reminds him of this, the hope of heaven, you've heard before in the word of truth. The gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world, it's bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.

Paul's reminding them that this isn't a new message that they heard, it's the same one they heard from Epaphras. And he's wanting to hone them in on that gospel message particularly. And I think we can tell that he's trying to do that because just in those those short two verses that I read to you, Paul references the gospel about a half a dozen times. Did you notice that? Let's go back and look at it.

Starting there where it says of this there in verse five. Of this you've heard before in the word of truth. What is the word of truth? He tells us in the next phrase, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world it, the gospel, is bearing fruit and increasing as it, the gospel, also does among you since the day you heard it, the gospel, and understood the grace of God, meaning the gospel. Now, I think Paul's trying to alert these guys that the false teachers that they were being tempted to believe, they were giving lip service, I think, to the gospel and saying, oh yeah, yeah, we believe this.

But then they kind of toss the gospel over their shoulder and say, but what you really need is this other teaching. Now, if you're gonna have all the stuff that you want, if you're gonna have all the blessings that you want, if you're gonna sort of go to the next level with God, you need something else in addition to the gospel. And Paul, I think, is reminding them that, no, They just need the gospel and the implications of it from God's Word. That's what they need to mature. And he actually marshals two arguments for why they should stick with that simple gospel message they heard.

Two arguments. The first one is this. He says that the gospel that came to them is the same message that's transforming the world. You should write that down. The gospel that came to them is the same message that's transforming the world.

They may be being distracted by this other teaching that they're hearing. Paul wants to remind them, no, that the gospel that you heard is the one and only universal gospel. Friend, that's a good thing for us to be reminded of too. I think that there can be a tendency sometimes to think that if the message of the gospel, that message that I just told you about God's holiness and man's sinfulness and God's judgment on sin and Christ's substitutionary sacrifice and the command to repent and believe in Christ, there can be a tendency to think that that message doesn't particularly fit well with our specific cultural moment.

And I think people begin to think, does this gospel really work? One of the privileges of my life and the work that I do as a pastor in this church is I get to travel a lot, not just for fun, but to go visit especially missionaries that we've sent out from this church. And in the process, I get to meet Christians in every culture you can imagine, under every circumstance you can imagine. And one of the things that I see is the gospel that we believe here is bearing fruit and increasing all over the world. I could tell you person after person.

I can think of the Arab young woman in the United Arab Emirates that heard the same gospel that I told you this morning, and she believed it. And because of that, she's been willing to risk the even violent objection and disapproval of her Muslim father because she believes that gospel. I can think about the Turkish guy that I know who was a former atheist and got kicked out of his house and ended up sleeping on the floor in the church for some years because his family rejected him when he believed the gospel. But you know what? He still believed the gospel because he saw that it was the true message of salvation.

I can think about an Indian church that crams together in a little place surrounded by disapproving neighbors and persecuted by a Hindu nationalist government. And they still keep meeting together because the gospel that they believed is bearing fruit in their lives. And that's why it's increasing over the whole world. And when you think about stuff like that, you begin to realize that the power of the gospel is not in the sort of cultural fit between the gospel and any particular culture. The power of the gospel is in the gospel.

And that's why it bears fruit in every language, in every culture, among every ethnicity, in every circumstance of life, throughout all of time. We need to remember that. That'll help us to hold on to the gospel and to keep our confidence in it. It's the one and only saving message everywhere. Secondly, Paul Marshall's another argument.

He says, not only is the gospel bearing fruit and increasing throughout the whole world, but he says this, he says, the gospel that came to them is still transforming them.

Just as it has since the day they first understood God's grace. The gospel that came to them is still transforming them, just as it has since the day they first understood God's grace. Friends, we don't ever get over the gospel and move on to something deeper. That's what the false teachers were saying. They seem to be saying, from what I can tell, that this gospel is great, but what you really need is fill in the blank.

Paul says, no, the gospel that you heard is bearing fruit in you, and it's what you need. Now, when you say this to someone, I understand this can be kind of confusing, because what I'm not saying is that all you need as a Christian is the simple summary of the gospel that I rehearsed for you guys earlier in this sermon. When Christians talk about the gospel, they're talking about really the sort of grand storyline of the whole Bible. But what they're saying is that you don't need some additional secret knowledge, you don't need some special hidden spiritual truth. What you need is to understand that central storyline of the Bible.

About God and His holiness, about man's sinfulness, about Christ's sacrifice, and about the response of repentance and faith. And then as we diligently study the Bible and we keep learning and we expand our understanding, we're not really expanding its breadth so much as we're expanding its depth as we drill down more and more for your whole life. As a Christian, into understanding more of what it means that God is holy, more of what it means that he's all powerful, more of what it means that he's trustworthy, more of what it means that you're sinful. And I think as you grow in that, you'll find that you understand your own sin better and you'll be paralyzed by it less. You begin to understand more of what it means that Christ died for sinners.

And what an amazing thing that is. You'll understand more of what it means to repent of sin, what it means to trust that Jesus really is all that you need and that God's promises are really sufficient. You can spend your whole life working on that. That's what I think Paul means. To grow as a Christian fundamentally means growing experimentally in your own experience in understanding the very same gospel message that saved you.

But whatever else you learn about theology, if it's not feeding that sort of foundational appreciation for what God did in Christ, then it's not gospel growth. It's just growth in knowledge. So remember the gospel message and hold on to it. There's nothing else that you need between now and heaven. Third, Paul wants to remind the Colossians to trust what's faithful.

Paul does that in this letter by essentially putting his sort of seal of approval on the message that they received from that guy Epaphras. And then he does something else that may kind of surprise people. He also puts his seal of approval on the messenger.

On Epaphras himself. Paul reminds them that they need to both trust the faithful message that they received and they need to trust the faithful messenger that brought it to them. Let's look at each of those real quick. Paul wants them first to trust the faithful message. Paul is taking his authority as an apostle, as somebody who saw the risen Jesus, and somebody that God used to finally and for all time complete his revelation of himself in the Bible.

Paul was one of the people that had that special authority. And Paul exercises that authority to say that the gospel that they received from Epaphras is the real deal. He says that when he says that they should believe all these things about the gospel. And you notice he says, Just as you received it, from Epaphras. So Paul says the message you received was a faithful transmission of the message about Christ.

Well, Paul wants them to test that message by test it by his own approval in the same way that we would test a message, not by calling up an apostle. God was done with that when he completed the Scriptures. But in one sense, we want to go back just like the Colossians are and give reference to the teaching of the apostles in the Bible and see if the message that we receive actually squares with what we read recorded by the apostles in the Bible. If it does that, what Paul is telling the Colossians is then stick with it. Don't look for something else.

Don't try to find a different message. It doesn't need to be updated, it doesn't need to be adjusted, it doesn't need to be improved, it doesn't need to be expanded. You don't need something else to go to the next level with God. Keep focused on the trustworthy message. And then he tells them to do something else that I think might be even a little bit harder for us, particularly if you're from North America, because of the sort of cultural attitudes that we have toward authority.

He tells them to trust the faithful messenger, the one who brought the message to them, Epaphras. He says Epaphras was faithful in the message that he gave them and that he's faithful in life. Later on in the letter, Paul commends Epaphras even more. In chapter 4, we read this about Epaphras. Paul says, as he's kind of listing greetings from people that were apparently with him at the time, He says, Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

For I bear witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis. Now, I think that's a harder message for us to hear from the Bible because frankly, I think like the day of the Colossians, we're surrounded by men and women who claim to believe the gospel and who demand respect and authority for the message they're teaching that may not be faithful or they may be living lives that aren't consistent with the message that they teach. I fear that one of the things that a lot of especially younger Christians do in response to that is to just kind of turn into a reflective skeptic, just as a reflex. You just reflectively don't believe anything that you hear. Well, that's actually not wise.

That's not going to serve you very well. Skepticism can be a useful tool but it's a dangerous tool. Skepticism is kind of like a surgeon's scalpel. It can do a lot of good in separating truth from error, but once you've done that, if you just keep using it, that's gonna be disastrous. You wanna use your discernment to figure out if a message is true from the Bible and to figure out if the messenger that's teaching you is teaching you a true message and living in a way that's imperfect but consistent with what's being taught.

And once you've done that, you need to set down the scalpel. Distrust is not the same as discernment. Paul seems to be concerned that these Colossians would stop listening to Epaphras, not because of anything in Epaphras, but just because they've been drawn off to other teaching and maybe teachers that were trying to undermine their confidence in the one that had first taught them the gospel. Of course, one of the ironies that I see in all this as a pastor is that there's a tendency for the person who's least willing to trust someone who's teaching them. You know, if you're a member of a local church, we're talking about pastors here, like like me, if you have a faithful pastor in your church where you are or if you're a member of this church, Paul's encouraging you to trust the pastors that teach you.

But again, the ironic tendency I see is folks that are least willing to trust a faithful pastor are often the first people to trust some new book they picked up.

Or a blog post that they read, or some YouTube video that they watch. Paul's telling the Colossians, Trust the people that you know. Trust Epaphras. He's shown himself faithful, presumably over years. The message he taught you was faithful.

His life has been faithful. You should trust him and not pay attention to these other teachers. Well, I think that's Paul's message for us today, too. If we're sitting under faithful teaching from the Bible, you should be very slow to trust teaching that would contradict it. That's from somebody that you don't even know.

You don't know their life. You don't know if they live up to what they're teaching. You don't know what fruit that teaching is bearing in their own life or in their families. And especially, as a little bit of a sidebar, especially if you're listening to other teachers, be very careful about teachers who just kind of discover new biblical insights that fit their own desires. You know, the landscape today is full of people who purport to be teaching from the Bible, but what they're saying in essence is all the Christians for the last 2,000 years misunderstood misunderstood this thing that I really want to do that Christians have historically understood to be sin, and I have discovered that actually it's okay.

Or be careful about people who discover that the Bible, in their mind, perfectly fits with this specific cultural moment so that so that you don't have to worry about, you know, discomfort or persecution or misunderstanding. But they say, no, if you understand the Bible the way I understand it, your understanding will fit perfectly with the spirit of this age. And it'll be. It'll be without conflict, without challenge, without controversy. It'll be perfectly comfortable, like the plush silky lining of a coffin.

Friends, be very careful about listening to unknown messengers. Listen to people that you know that have proven themselves faithful over time. This is a great message for kids too. If you're here, you're a kid or a teenager, If you have parents that have been generally faithful to you, they've fed you, they've given you a place to live, they've cared for you, maybe they bring you to church, why would you trust some friend at school that you barely even know rather than listening to what your parents say who have loved you for your whole life? That just doesn't make any sense.

And if you're a church member, if you've been a member of this or some other church and you found the pastors there to be generally faithful, not perfect, but generally their lives seem to be at least trying to live up to what they preach, then why would you trust some book by somebody you've never met or some blog post or some YouTube video or something that one of your friends tells you?

Paul's encouraging the Colossians, and I think through them he's encouraging us, to trust faithful messengers, to be very careful who you trust, be ruthlessly biblical in evaluating the message and the messenger. But then if they prove faithful and they prove faithful over time, then trust them. And make distrust kind of have the burden of proof on it.

Well, we should conclude. This passage is clearly about the gospel, about its centrality, about its power, about its unchanging nature and its sufficiency. But there's one other thing in our passage that's worth noting, and it's actually sort of built into the very structure of our passage. If you read through this passage, one thing you might have noticed is that sort of chronologically in time and history, Paul writes this passage backwards. Did you notice that?

He starts with his thanks and praise to God for the fruit that he sees in the lives of these Colossian Christians. And then he works his way back to the very beginning, at least humanly speaking, about how they heard the gospel message in the first place. And I think part of what Paul's trying to do in that is to try to disabuse them of their attraction to false messages that are very impressive. And he's trying to help them understand that the message that saved them and the way that it came to them was actually pretty simple.

Kind of ordinary. In fact, kind of unextraordinary. There was just this guy named Epaphras who seemed to have heard and believed the gospel. And he did what I think is kind of natural. He went back to share the message that had brought him joy and hope with people that he knew and loved back apparently in the town of Colossae where he was from.

And he tells this message in his hometown. And he does it faithfully and accurately. And some of the people there understand the reality of God's grace and they believe it. And the gospel starts bearing fruit among them and they gather together and there's a church now in Colossae. And this church is exhibiting this confident hope in the hope that's laid up for them in heaven.

And it frees them up to live differently than the people around them. And they start visibly living differently with faith and trust in Christ and with an extravagant love for the other Christians and people around them. And their transformed lives make enough of a story that an old apostle, Paul, who's probably in prison in Rome, like a thousand miles away, he hears about what's going on in Colossae and he praises God and he gives God glory. For the transformation that's happened. And God who made all of this happen ultimately receives the glory that he deserves.

But Paul wants him to understand all of that started because this guy named Epaphras heard and believed the gospel and then went and told it to people that he cared about. Paul wants to remind them that God's gospel plan is glorious, but it's not very complicated.

Don't let the simplicity of how God's transforming the world make you lose your appreciation for it. As humans, we're attracted to impressive falsehoods more than we are to simple, unextraordinary truths.

Don't fall prey to that. In a few minutes, we're gonna have some people get up to be baptized. And you know what? I haven't read any of their testimonies, but I'm pretty sure what they're gonna say. They're gonna say that they heard the gospel message as a result of someone's faithfulness.

And God calls them to believe it.

And the faithful message is bearing fruit in their lives and it's changed them so much so that they're going to stand up in front of all of you and tell you about it in a few minutes. Friends, God's gospel plan is very simple. It relies, humanly speaking, just on our faithfulness. The results are glorious. Faithfulness is kind of like a string of pearls.

Each one of them is pretty, but when you put them all together, then it's beautiful. Don't you want to be part of that chain?

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the way that you have shown yourself faithful in your gospel, in the ones that brought it to us, in the way it continues to bear fruit among us. And Lord, we pray that you would help us to hold fast to the simple, sound gospel and simple, sound biblical teaching that's done all of this for us and will keep us until we're safely home in heaven. Lord, we pray that you would do that, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.