Change Has Come Series

Change Has Come

Series: Jesus ...Changes Everything (Colossians)

Brad Bailey – April 16, 2023

Intro

I want to begin by asking each of us to personally consider a question.

Who is your god? What is your god?

While I know that we gather here around the living God revealed in the Scriptures... and in His presence... it is the living God who wants us to realize that...

Our “god” is whoever or whatever has the greatest authority over our lives.

The answer is reflected in what governs and guides us….

And God knows, quite literally, that there is a lot of competition.

God knows that there are “powers and principalities” ... that humankind has allowed to rule life as we know it.

And this is why Jesus came announcing that the Kingdom of God was at hand. A kingdom is a sphere of authority...and it is the sphere of God which Christ was bringing back into our world.

Last week we commemorated the events which declared something no one had grasped. God defeated death and opened up new life.

And this changes everything. And now ...like those who were the first to discover the risen Christ... they know that change has come...but they wonder how.

That is what we engage as we begin a new series today... allowing God to speak to us from the Biblical Book of Colossians.

A quick background to what this Biblical Book represents...

After the resurrection of Christ... the scope of what was at hand filled those first lives... they couldn’t be contained...and hundreds were accepting the news...and claiming him as their Lord.

And then comes a remarkable conversion...that of a religious leader named “Saul, who was also called Paul.” [1]

Paul was the one God chose to send into the wider world... particularly the Roman ruled world that had come to rule over a vast portion of the known world. Rome had extended it’s reign into Asia... it what is now modern day Turkey...and the major city of Ephesus was now it’s major center.

Paul had gone to Ephesus...where he had mentored a man named Epaphras (Ep-af-RAS)...who had gone to Colossae and shared about Christ...and from which this local gathering of lives had begun. [2]

So Paul had never directly met those in Colossae... but as something of the spiritual father in the Gospel message ... he takes this opportunity to write to them.

It is believed to have been written in about 60 AD... which is about 30 years after the death and resurrection of Christ... and the news has been spreading about Christ...and more are claiming him as their Lord.

In fact, most believe that Paul is now in Rome itself...and in prison... and he took this opportunity to speak directly by way of this letter.

Colossians 1:1-2

This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Timothy. 2 We are writing to God’s holy people in the city of Colosse, who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ.

May God our Father give you grace and peace.

With these words... Paul introduces himself... and his apprentice Timothy

Paul is clear on what he represents… ‘an apostle of Christ Jesus.’

Paul has been called to go spread the news of the risen Christ. [2b]

He is not the apostle of a new religion...but of that which fulfilled what no religion can settle.

He is an apostle of Christ...the one who proved more powerful than all the false powers of this world… more than hate and violence and more than the self righteous can ever provide.

Greets them with a blessing of grace and peace. (vs.2 - ‘May God our Father give you grace and peace.’) These are precisely what neither Rome nor the religious establishment had brought to the lives they ruled.

Grace - freedom that is bestowed from beyond ourselves

Peace – true restoration of relationship… not simply personal inner feelings but true peace between all (shalom)

We do well to stop...and realize these are what God has to bless us with...and to receive these... grace...and peace. And to realize that these are what we are to bear yp share with others.

He continues ....affirming all that he has heard about them.

Colossians 1:3-8

3 We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, 5 which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.

8 This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.