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Colossians

Christ In The Commonplace

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September 3, 2023
Colossians 4:8-17
Steven Lee
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Work & Vocation

Identity in Christ

Friendship & Community

Transcript

0:12Well good morning. We come now to the final sermon in our Colossians series. My name's Steven, if you are a visitor. Here, let me just lend my voice in welcoming you here joining us for this Labor Day weekend. Would you join me now as we pray and ask God for help? Father in heaven, help us to see what you would like us to see from your word this morning. We thank you that every word is inspired and we thank you that it was written and recorded for our good, so that we might be mature, that we might be fully assured in your will. So do that work among us for your glory and for the sake of your name, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

1:03So much of our lives are mundane. If you think about a normal week, a normal day, you probably do many of the same things every single day. Not particularly remarkable or extraordinary. Life is composed of millions of ordinary, unremarkable moments. I did a little bit of research and so they calculate it out. If you live for 80 years, you'll have spent 26 of those years sleeping and an additional seven years trying to get to sleep or in bed. That's a total of 33 years of your life, of your 80, if you live to 80, that you're sleeping. If you work, you'll have spent an average of 13 years at work.

1:55You'll have spent 11 years staring at some sort of screen, a tv, a tablet, or a phone. You'll have spent 4.5 years eating three years on vacation traveling. And if you spend an average of 45 minutes in the bathroom every day, you'll have spent 529 days in the bathroom. Some of you it's twice as much. So much of life is routine. Humdrum, monotonous, unremarkable. We take out the trash, we change the diapers, we cook a meal, we, we clean up, we write emails, so on and so forth, right? And occasionally something out of the ordinary comes up. But the vast majority of our lives is just that humdrum, monotonous. Well, Paul's closing greetings in our passage here this morning shows us that Christ matters in the mundane.

2:52When you heard Daniel read this this morning, you might've thought, I, I wonder what we're gonna mine out of this passage where we just get these final closing greetings where he names a bunch of people and says, tell these people I said hi. And these people say hi. And, and, and we're wondering what is this passage about? These verses seem perfunctory, maybe even unimportant. And yet Paul reveals, I think through our passage that Jesus matters in all of life. Jesus matters in the mundane because that's where we live most of our lives. Jesus doesn't just matter when, when, when someone says, did you confess Christ or not?

3:37W w with a a sword to the throat. Mo, most of us will never be in that situation. Christ matters in the mundane moments of life. Now, I, I just wanna review for us, because we are coming to the last sermon in Colossians, let me just, uh, rehearse for us some of the Alps of Colossians that we've seen. So verse chapter one, verse six, the gospel is bearing fruit and increasing in the entire world. And at Colossae chapter one, verse 14, believers are being transferred out of the domain of darkness into God's marvelous light into the kingdom of Christ where we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

4:20This is amazing what Paul has told the Colossians chapter one verse 16, all things were created through Christ and for Christ and in Him, all things hold together. Chapter one verse 20, Jesus is reconciling to himself all things by the blood of his cross. Chapter two verse 14, we have a record of debt where our sins are listed and Jesus has canceled it by nailing it to the cross. Chapter three, verse one and two and three, believers have been raised with Christ. We've died with Christ, we've been raised with Christ, and now our lives are hidden with Christ and we are now his chosen ones holy and beloved.

5:09So that the peace of Christ would rule our hearts and the word of Christ would indwell us. So those are sort of the high mountain peaks of Colossians glorious that we've been able to study that this summer. But Christ is also Lord, not only when we're just scaling the Alps, but Jesus is Lord when we walk through the valleys and the plains as well. Jesus is Lord in the lowlands. And when we're mired in the pit, Jesus is Lord, when we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, is he not? So the main point of our passage this morning that I hope to show as we just walk right through it verse by verse, is that Christ is at work in the crevices of life.

6:00In every believer. Christ is at work in the crevices of life. I think what this passage reveals is that Christ is at work in all the ordinary things and what we have as an example of what it looks like for Jesus to not only be preeminent in all things, but he's preeminent in all the monotonous things of life as well. It's worth noting that the writing of the book of Colossians was a costly endeavor. It would've been expensive. Today we can kind of send all manners of communication. You know, text doesn't cost you anything. You can send some emails, doesn't cost you anything or or whatever else it may be.

6:45But letter writing in Paul's day required a scribe, perhaps several drafts, preparation laboring over each word, expensive Parchman and ink. And so every word is important. Not a single one of them is throwaway even in this section. So what I wanna do is now look at the five elements of Paul's final greeting. Five things. They all start with the letter C 'cause I like my alliterations. So the first one is couriers. We see his couriers, these messengers that he sends verses seven to nine. Why don't you look with me in your Bible as I read it. Just once again, take a kiss will tell you all about my activities.

7:27He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. And with him, Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother who is one of you, they will tell you of everything that has taken place here. So he's sending ticus and Onesimus to carry this letter to the Colossians and he commends them. And you can see how he describes both of them. Now, Onesimus is the runaway slave that we see also in the book of Philemon. We talked about that several weeks ago. Cus is also mentioned at the end of the book of Ephesians.

8:12Ephesians chapter six, verse 21. And so it's very likely and many scholars speculate that the book of Ephesians, the letter to the Colossians as well as Philemon were being transported by these two men to bring them to their final destination. Ephesus and Colossae were about 120 miles apart. And Paul sends in the very letters that they're carrying commendations for them. So when they get there, they'll be received and they'll know that these are from Paul. Now they're not just postal carriers in those days, obviously no u p Ss, no FedEx, but they're trust, trusted ministers of the gospel. See that? See that in verse nine?

8:55They're to tell the Colossians of everything that has taken place. 'cause that would be of concern to the Colossians that when they come, you know Paul's written a lot to instruct them, but they wanna know how's Paul, how's he doing? And these are not just couriers, but they're actually messengers to say, yeah, let me tell you about how Paul's doing. Let me tell you how they're fairing. Let me tell you how the gospel's going out. Now notice that in all of these details we see and we're reminded of the historical reliability of these letters. This is not a fable or a fairytale, but this is a letter, a very real letter from history inspired by the Holy Spirit written to the Colossians and now preserved for us through the sovereign hand of God.

9:45It's amazing that we've been able to study this letter. It's the very words of Paul and it's the very words of God for our edification. And it's just good to be reminded of that whenever you pick up your Bible. It's not just a man made book. This was written by men but inspired by the Spirit and it's the very words of God. Now the second thing we should note is that Paul commends these men, he calls them beloved and faithful fellow servants and slaves. What he's saying is that they're completely trustworthy, which is pretty remarkable. And, and the fact that we don't hardly know anything about cus he's just mentioned a handful of times in the Bible. And then the other person is Onesimus.

10:34He's a runaway slave. And he's saying, trust these two men, they'll tell you exactly what's going on. And I think it's a reminder for us this morning that the kingdom advances through the labors of millions of unnamed faithful saints. They will go down in church history as nobodies, and yet the labors of faithful saints will ring through eternity. We get to serve Christ in the great things and in the small things. But most of us will not be put up to some pylon and say confess, deny Christ or be burned. Most of us will just live our normal lives die in our old age faithfully laboring. And we can be encouraged that God uses those labors, even the unheralded delivery of these letters to churches reap eternal fruit in the kingdom. Imagine with me, what if ticket kiss was on the road and him and ESUs are getting kind of cold and they say, you know, let's start a fire but we don't have anything.

11:45How about that? Letter to the Colossians. Let, let's burn that one. You know, Ephesians is probably a little bit more important anyways, right? A a and they burn it and then we that it's lost. But no, they faithfully carry out the mission. God is working in the small and unromantic things we do in obedience to Christ This morning, uh, I wonder how many of us ha have, uh, sacred secular divide in our minds. You know, the things we do at, at church or the sacred things like prayer and reading the Bible and serving at church. Those are the really important things. Evangelism, but, but the secular things like going to work and changing diapers and cooking a meal, well, uh, those are things we just have to do.

12:32And yet we see that even the delivery of a letter is important in Christ's kingdom. Christ is Lord. In our work, in our family time, as we tend our gardens and as repair our homes, the lordship of Jesus extends to every aspect of life. You guys know one Corinthians 10 31, whether we eat or whether we drink or whatever we do, we do all for the glory of God. Momentary things done for Christ, we will have eternal rewards. This means that we can change diapers to the glory of God and we can cook a meal to the glory of God. You can pick up that extra shift at work for the glory of God. You can even send emails, I know remarkable emails.

13:24You can even send emails to the glory of God. God uses these very normal things so that we might advance his kingdom, raise our families, bless others. Christ is at work in the crevices of life. We see that through the life of these two couriers. Now I want to transition to our second one, which is his co-laborers. We see that in verses 10 to 15. Aris Tous, my fellow believer, my fellow prisoner greets you and mark the cousin of Barnabas concerning whom you have received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him and Jesus who is called justice. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God. And they have been a comfort to me, a riss 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.

14:22For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Leo Deia in Opolis, Luke the beloved physician greets you as does Demis give my greetings to the brothers at Leo Deia and to NFA and the church in her house. What we get in this section are six individuals and then two groups. And what unifies this whole section are the sending of greetings. These six individuals through Paul are sending greetings. And then Paul himself is sending greetings to these two groups. And what we should notice is that Paul is not a lone ranger. He has a team, he has a fellowship, he has a community around him that he labors with and alongside.

15:03And what we're gonna do is just look at each of these six names to see what we might discern. Aris Itus is one of the companions, Cott travelers with Paul shows up in Acts 19, shows up in Acts 20, acts 27. And he says here that he's a fellow prisoner. I think this means very literally that he's in prison with Paul and, and most likely he kind of went into prison voluntarily so that he could actually keep Paul Company and care for him. He also appears in the letter to Philemon, which confirms this close relationship between the two letters. Mark is the cousin of Barnabas. He's the same mark that caused Paul and Barnabas, if you'll remember from Acts 15 in our series, in Acts, it, it's what caused Paul and Barnabas to be so kind of, uh, to have such a dispute that Paul said, I don't wanna bring Mark with us.

15:57And Barnabas says, no, no, no, I wanna still bring Mark. And it caused them to go their separate ways. It created such a crisis and rift between them. And now he's mentioned here in Colossians, he also shows up in Philemon 24. And in two Timothy four 11, let me read for you what two Timothy four 11 says about Mark. Paul says, he is very useful to me for ministry. Now just take a moment and reflect on the life of Mark with me. Mark's life is a living picture of God's grace at work. He abandons Paul and he causes one of the most prominent splits in church history, the one we go to when we have disputes within the church because we see, okay, even Paul and Barnabas needed to agree to disagree and yet he comes back, he co-laborers with Paul.

16:53Paul writes and says, marks really useful to me, send him to me. And then he's the one who writes the gospel of Mark. He's the author of Jesus' biography. It, it's really an incredible comeback story and, and I think what this should do for us this morning is it reminds us that God's not yet done. Maybe you're where Mark was when he first abandoned Paul. Maybe you are spiritually floundering this morning. Be encouraged that God is not yet done. God is working in the low lens and in the valleys and in the mundane moments of life so that we would indeed become more faithful and more fruitful. I don't know if Mark would've written such a good gospel and been so useful had he not failed on the front end and seen the preciousness of Christ and received the welcome of his Beth fellow brothers. Once again, if you've abandoned Christ and you're here this morning, what you need to hear is that God is not yet done.

18:12Look to him once again. Third person we see is Jesus who is called justice. And he's mentioned ever so briefly, we really don't get any information about him. But what we see in verse 11 is that him, along with Aris Tous and Mark, these three men, he says, are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God. And they have been a comfort to me. What this means is that these three men, when it says they are of the circumcision, it means that they are Jewish Christians who are laboring for the kingdom of call the kingdom of God with Paul. So Paul's team has both Jews and Gentiles. And if we remember from Ephesians, Christ has torn down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile so that together the part of the body of Christ and they're on the same team.

19:02It also highlights that there are very few Jewish Christians that are co-laboring with Paul in gospel ministry, which is part of his anguish. In his letter to the Romans, the fourth person we see is a apris. He's mentioned earlier in Colossians one, and he's says that he's one of you, meaning that he's from that community, he's from Colossae, and he says that he's a servant of Christ Jesus. He's greeting you, he's struggling on your behalf in his prayers. What this means is that Epaphras is engaged in intercessory prayer for the Colossians. And most likely he's the church planter that planted the Colossian church, shared the gospel in that region as well as in Leo Desia and Opolis.

19:46And you see that in verse 13. He's worked hard for you and for those in those two places. So Leo Desia was an important city, just 12 miles west of Colossus. And Opolis is 15 miles northwest of Colossae. So APAs probably founded all three of these churches. He's been there kind of traveling pastor and, and what Paul says is he sends his greetings, but he's still fighting for you in prayer for your maturity, says that you might stand, mature and fully assured in all the will of God, he's wrestling for them in prayer. And so the question for us this morning, are we like Apris? Who are the people that we are wrestling for struggling on their behalf in prayer?

20:38Do we let prayer infuse every aspect of life? If Christ is at work in the crevices, in every believer, do we just go about our day forgetting about God and and then we pick up our Bible, dust it off and bring it to church on Sunday or or is Christ at the forefront of our minds every day? And every time we walk into a room and we say, Lord, open doors for the gospel to be made clear and and we're talking to someone. And in the back of our mind we're thinking, Lord, open an opportunity that I might encourage them in the Lord, make them mature in Christ. Do you pray for the fullness of Christ to fill those around you, for your spouse, for your parents, for your children, for your grandchildren, your roommates, for your friends, for those in your small group, may we be like ariss that struggle in prayer for others.

21:37Prayer is one of those ways that help us redeem all the things that we do. How do we eat and drink and do all things for the glory of God with thanksgiving in prayer, asking God to use it for his glory and for his purposes. The next person we see, the fifth person we see is Luke. He's described as the beloved physician. He's also mentioned again in Philemon and second Timothy. Luke traveled with Paul on several occasions. He's also the author of the Gospel of Luke and Acts nearly one fourth of the New Testament. And then lastly, we come to Demis, well, we don't get any elaboration, but his name also shows up in second Timothy four 10.

22:21And it's not for good reason. It says this second Timothy four 10, for Demis in love with this present world has deserted me and gone to Thessalonika. Second Timothy was probably written three or four years after Colossians. And so this gives us a little bit of a snapshot of Deus and it serves as a warning. He later abandons Paul abandons the mission abandons Christ. And Paul says that he's in love with this present world. And so it's a warning for us. Are we seeking the things of Christ? Are we putting off? What is earthly? Are we putting on our new identity that is in Christ?

23:03This phrase in love with the present world, it's a good articulation of the attitude, the perspective of one that gets slowly drawn away. Do we just long for and love the respect of others? Do? Do we shy away from standing with Christ at work or at school just just a little bit ashamed because we want others to not think of us as weird. Do we wanna be accepted? Do we love the praise of our culture? It's a warning for us to take to heart this morning, God's at work, but it's not gonna be probably where you stand at a pylon and you confess Christ or you deny Christ and you get burned. But it's gonna be in your workplace in the lunchroom at the water cooler.

23:55And someone says, what'd you do this weekend? And it's an opportunity to say, I went to church, got to worship with my church family. Do you ever go to church? Would you ever wanna come with me? Can I tell you about the things that I love and value there? It's gonna be those opportunities when people say, well, what makes you tick? It's an open door for you to share of your faith in Christ. Now in verse 15, we get these greetings that Paul gives and he gives greetings to the brothers in Leo Desia. Now the question that comes to mind is this, I if Paul's writing a letter to Leo Desia, why does he tell the Colossians to greet the brothers in Leo Desia?

24:40And then why doesn't he tell them to greet the believers at Opolis when he mentioned that other church as well? We don't know exactly. Uh, we don't have all the details we could maybe speculate that Paul wanted to encourage in inter church fellowship. It could be that the church at MFAs house, who's probably a widow that hosts the church in her home, maybe that's at Opolis. So he's kinda Leo Deia. And then the church at Opolis, we don't know entirely. But what we can learn from this list of co-laborers is that Paul commends what is truly commendable. He's commending the grace of God at work in his coworkers and in these fellow laborers.

25:26And so the question for us this morning is, who would speak of you that way? Who would say about you? Oh, let, let me tell you about Mary, or let me tell you about Bob, or let me tell you about John. He's a faithful brother. He's always struggling on your behalf. In his prayers, do we surround ourselves with fellow believers that are engaged in making much of Christ? And are we those people ourselves? If Paul were to describe us, would he describe us like Ariss or Demis? Later in two Timothy, we're to let Jesus be Lord of our life and let the gospel infuse every aspect of life so that Christ would be at work in all the crevices and in every moment of every believer.

26:21Now look with me at verse 16, we're gonna transition. We get couriers, co-labs, and now we get the command. When this letter has been read among you have it also read in the Church of the Laodecians and see that you read the letter from Leo Desia. Now Paul gives the command for the Colossians to do a letter swap, right? Make sure that's read over there. And you guys read the letter that they received. I think this shows us a number of things. It shows the importance that Paul and the church placed on his letters. This is not just a throwaway note, but this is something that is instruction from an apostle for the upbuilding of the church. And there's several things that we can note.

27:04Paul wrote Colossians expecting that it would be copied, it would be passed around, and it would be read by other congregations that he wrote this letter, even though it was dealing with very specific issues in Colossae, that it would have relevance and value for the broader church. And this makes our study of this letter so remarkable, doesn't it? Paul wrote, not just with the Colossians in view, but with the church, church of all time in view. And when we read it, we don't just read it a as something, it was written for them, but it was written for us. The other thing we can see is that Paul wrote, knowing that his letters were the authoritative word.

27:55Now how do we see that? What what makes us think that? Well, we, we know that the risen and ascended Christ appointed apostles and those apostles spoke for Jesus. And I want to show you one verse where Paul very self-consciously writes as though he is writing commandments from Jesus. It's in one Corinthians 14, 37 and 38. So one Corinthians 14, 37 and 38, this is Paul writing and he's just given instructions. And then he says, if anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord's commandment. So the very things that Paul has written in First Corinthians, he's saying, those are the Lord's commandment, not just my words, not just my opinions, but the very commands of the Lord.

28:53So Paul is writing very self-consciously as, as an apostle of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. I'm writing with authority for the upbuilding of the church. And so we see this pattern, don't we? That the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, speaks through his apostles as they write things down inspired by the Holy Spirit recorded and preserved for us so that we can have confidence in our Bibles, we can have rock solid confidence in God's word. And and there are a million ways that people will want us to feel embarrassed about God's word today. Well, did you know, you know, you can't mix, uh, materials right in, in the Old Testament. You're, you're wearing polyester and cotton mixed together. And, and, and we can understand that the scriptures are written for our good and there's ways to make light and make sense of all that is written here. Now, one of the questions that arise is, where's the letter to the lay Des? He says, read that letter in Colossae. So where's that letter?

30:01Is it just lost to us? I think it's most likely Ephesians, which was a circulated letter. If you turn with me to Ephesians, if you have a paper, paper Bible that's like with the pages and everything, and if you have an e S V, you can see a little subscript, a little footnote there. And it says some manuscripts say, saints, who are also faithful omitting in Ephesus. So it doesn't include in Ephesus. And, and if you are familiar with the book of Ephesians, you know, the first three chapters can have the indicative. And the last three have the imperative, though they're all intermixed and, and it's a little bit more general.

30:43It's not as specific in terms of addressing one particular issue. And I think Ephesians, the book of Ephesians was written as a circulated letter and it very likely maybe a copy was sent to Leo Desia and another copy was sent to Ephesus. And so I think this letter is the letter to the Ephesians. Others think maybe it's Philemon, maybe it's lost. Again, those are all speculation. But what we can see is that Christ is at work. Imagine the scribes who, who took a copy of Colossians, copied it all so it could be sent to Leo Deia and the people in Leo Deia who took that letter and copied a copy and sent it to Colossians, uh, Colossae.

31:24And we don't know the names of any of those people, but God was at work in all of it so that we have many manuscripts floating about out there and we can have full confidence. We have the accurate words of God. The fourth thing we saw, couriers, co-laborers, we had a command. Now we come to a charge verse 17 and to say to our kipa, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord. So Paul gives this charge to our kiis. He's also mentioned in the book of Philemon. And we don't know what he's charging him to do other than to fulfill the ministry. Maybe it was preaching, maybe discipling, young converts.

32:08But again, we don't know. And it can be a little bit frustrating when we don't know the details of what Paul is referring to. And yet we see that the truth of this verse remains, it can be applied broadly to all of us. We have all received a ministry from the Lord and we to glorify God and to treasure Christ by carrying out what he's called us to. We are to be faithful to fulfill our ministry and calling. And then now we come to verse 18. Here we get the conclusion. Paul, I Paul write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains grace, be with you. So Paul concludes with the signature where he says, I write this greeting with my own hand. So likely the rest of us, the rest of the letter was written by a scribe.

32:57And now he kind of scribbles that last sentence there. And this final prayer request is to remember his chains. What does that mean? Well, earlier we, we looked at this last week, he said, pray for me as I'm in prison, that there would be an open door for me to speak the truth of the gospel. And so now he's saying, call the mind and pray for me in the midst of my imprisonment, pray that I would stand firm, pray that I would be bold, pray that I would be courageous. What does this show us? Even Paul, even super apostle Paul who wrote these letters and most of the New Testament, even Paul needed prayer, needed encouragement like we all do.

33:42And then lastly, he concludes Grace be with you in closing his letter. This is a common closing for Paul's letter. He opened with the grace of God and at the very beginning of the letter, and now he closes grace be with you. And, and it just highlights how Paul thought about all of life and his letter, it begins with grace. It closes with grace. Our lives are bookended by grace. He said, may grace come to you as you read this letter. And now may grace go with you as you walk away from this letter having heard the truth that's in this book. It's a prayer blessing that reveals his love for the colossian church.

34:27That the grace of the Lord Jesus is at work in these Colossians. So we come now maybe to the end here. We've seen the example of Paul and his co-laborers in the gospel. We've seen these living examples of humility and self-sacrifice, love partnership in the gospel. We've seen individuals who are laboring not for their own fame and glory, but for the fame of Jesus. And as Colossians has made clear throughout the book, it's been all about Christ. Don't be deceived by all this false teaching and food and festivals and angels and visions. Don't get pulled away from those things. Remember, it's all about Christ and all that you need.

35:17You've already received in Jesus, you've died with him, you've been raised with him, you've been seated with him in the heavenly places you can take off that which belongs to the old self. You can now be clothed in Christ. You can put on Christ because you've been brought into, into union with Christ. That's the glorious truth of the book of Colossians. So when you go about very monotonous, mundane, everyday things, remember your foundational identity is those who have been chosen, holy and beloved brought into union with Christ himself. You don't just go out there all on your own as if you were kind of walking on a bridge and, and, and just all alone on a plank.

36:12But Christ goes with us wherever we go. What does this look like in we, we have a sermon review meeting where we talk about last week and we talk about this week and and we were kind of pondering this and we were riffing, um, where this is happening in the North church. And I have this long list of people who are serving in, in all these obscure places here in the church, people who've been in the nursery for 20 years and people who make meals for funerals and, and people who have painted the building and all of these other things. Uh, but as I reflect on it, those are all kinda church stuff. Church things.

36:49And, and what I wanna highlight is not just that, not just the things that take place within these four walls every day, every moment of your life is an opportunity for you to exercise and believe and to live in light of the very lordship of Jesus. When you study, say, Lord, help me to do this work for the glory of Christ. When you go to work, give me open doors for the gospel. Give me a testimony that would speak of Jesus when you're stuck at home, changing the umpteenth diaper, wiping a snotty nose, cooking a meal, feeling like is any of this worth it? You can do so for Jesus and it's worth it.

37:41It resounds, it builds up. It's strengthens others. It's for Christ. As I was working through this sermon, one of the things that I did was just pause when it talked about ariss, how he struggles on behalf of the Colossians and just praying for them, called to mine. And I just paused and I just prayed for everyone that I can remember that I've ever shared the gospel with. And I just thought, Lord, I would love to see them mature, fully assured of God's will in their life. And I wonder if we're actively doing that. You've shared the gospel with unbelievers. You have coworkers where you've said, yeah, I I'm a Christian. I'd love to talk with you someday about that.

38:30You have family who know you're a believer, who, who don't want anything to do with it. And we have opportunity in all of our life, in all of the crevices, in all of the casual conversations, in every moment in prayer as we fall asleep to bed to pray that God would be gloriously glorified in and through us for the advance of his church. Christ is Lord, not just when you walk into this building, not just when we have our hands raised singing here in these services, but Christ is Lord over all of life. And it matters that we follow him and obey him, and that we treasure him in all of those ways.

39:19So be reminded here this morning that Christ is at work in every moment, in every single believer for his glory, for his honor. And he's doing that in and through us. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we wanna live that out more fully. We wanna be those who submit to delight in the Lordship of Christ and see your fingerprints at work in every moment of our lives, especially in the hard things, in the suffering, when we're mired in the pit, when we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus is Lord. And oh, that is such good news for us. So help us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Colossians 4:8-17

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