The Consuming Passion

Series on Colossians

II The Man in Christ

C Concerns

Text: 4:2-6

Introduction

The consuming passion of Paul was the gospel. It not only issued in the salvation of men but above all the glorification of God, our Savior. As he reminds us in Romans 1:16 he was not “ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” The Colossian church along with every other church of Christ has a mission. In word, they are to evangelize. The disputes engendered by false teaching had a way of obscuring the mission and dampening the spirits of the people. The reason Paul vigorously combats the heresy infecting the church, the Christless teaching and ascetic morality of the “hollow and deceptive philosophy,” is that they threaten the church’s evangelistic mission. It does this two ways. First it undermines mission by encouraging useless debates, fomenting uncertainty, and sapping the energy of the congregation. Second it creates an unstable and unwelcome environment for new inquirers. For a man like Paul whose whole life was dedicated to getting the message out and at any cost this was intolerable. Furthermore there is an urgency arising from Jesus’ promised return. Since no man knew the day or the hour, It might be as close as their next breath. Our view of things is inevitable colored by the fact that two millennia have passed and now we get the idea we can relax our waiting and watching. This is a subtle and unconscious cynicism. Our legitimate concerns in prayer for the needs of our churches, and our neighbors and ourselves pale in the face of Jesus advice in the Lord’s prayer. In this manner pray, He says, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Most of the Apostles died in the service of this concern, not their will but God’s will. Jesus expresses that will in Matthew 28:18-20, Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Thus we see in this text the Apostle asking the church to join in this consuming passion by prayer, by proclamation, and by promulgation.

I Prayer

There are a multitude of exhortations to prayer in the ministry of Jesus and in the letters of the New Testament. We see how dependent the early church was on prayer in Acts 2:42 and 43, They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. Obviously their devotion to prayer brought results. An Orthodox Presbyterian minister once told our congregation that Christians revealed their true colors when a friend was in need and they could not visit, or minister or help in any other way, and they said, “Well, at least I can pray.” He reminded us that praying was not the least you could do, it was the most. The prayer called for by the Apostle here is characterized by three things, tenacity, thoughtfulness, and thankfulness.

A Tenacity

Paul writes in verse 2, Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. The Greek word translated “devote” means to endure steadfastly and stand ready to help. It takes endurance to pray as Paul commands. Success is not right around the corner. Jesus told us to persist in prayer. Successful people endure. Ray Kroc started McDonalds when he was 52. KFC was launched when Colonel Sanders was in his 60s. And the oldest person in history to receive a college degree was a grandmother with 41 grandchildren who graduated from college recently. How old was she? She was 101, the oldest person in history to receive a college degree. She followed her dream. God is too often viewed as a sort of cosmic automatic teller machine. If we punch in the right code, He’s obligated to deliver what we want. This leads to glib, self-centered , irreverent prayers. It is the opposite of devoting yourself to prayer.

B Thoughtfulness

Paul says watch in prayer. The name Gregory comes from this Greek word. When you are a sentry in the military the worst thing you can do is close your eyes and fall asleep. This is easy to do at night and we live in the night before the dawning of a new day. We are called to stand guard in prayer. This suggests that something valuable is to be protected and, often, lives are at stake. The penalty is being court-martialled and shot. It is the case here that lives are at stake spiritually, our own, fellow Christians and those who might come to Christ. In 1861 William Scott a Connecticut farm boy was found asleep at his sentry post for the Second Vermont Regiment. Though he was exhausted from replacing a sick friend in the rotation the night before, he was nevertheless sentenced to die. His whole regiment was disturbed by it. At the execution the order was read, and it turned out to be a pardon from Abraham Lincoln. Later, he wrote home, “Time is but short at the longest. We are certain death is like a thief which cometh in the night when we think not.” The next Spring he was killed in action in Virginia. Would we all had the thought that the time is short in prayer.

C Thankfulness

The final part of Paul’s exhortation to prayer emphasizes thankfulness. It is hard to conceive of someone snatched from the jaws of hell not being thankful, and I suppose all true Christians are thankful. However we need to say it, and express our thanksgiving in prayer. Psalm 118:19-21 reminds us, Open for me the gates of the righteous; I will enter and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord through which the righteous may enter. I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation. We dare not come to the Lord in prayer without giving of thanks. Five times in Colossians Paul commands us to give thanks for salvation and growth, and fellowship, and opportunities to serve, and here for answers to prayer. Thankfulness expresses expectancy. God has blessed and will continue to bless. Thankfulness assures both God and ourselves that we know who is in charge and from where blessings come.

II Proclamation

Now Paul proceeds to ask for specific prayer for that which is most dear to his heart. This is the man who says woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. So he writes in verses 3 and 4, And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Many of us receive missionary prayer letters, but I’ll wager that we don’t spend as much time in prayer as it took the missionary to write the letter. When Peter was in prison the church prayed for him and the prison doors miraculously opened. According to Acts 16 when Paul and Silas had been imprisoned in Philippi on the Apostle’s second missionary journey there was an earthquake and the prison doors sprang open. Here Paul is in chains again, but the open door that he asks for is not the prison door. It is an open door for the message of the gospel. The prison doors that shut Paul in would not contain the gospel for we read of Paul’s imprisonment in Acts 28:30 and 31, He stayed two full years in his own rented quarters, and was welcoming all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered. Actually the prolific ministry of Paul in prison is startling. He wrote many letters to churches and managed to confront many with the gospel of Christ including, Roman officials, Roman soldiers, members of Caesar’s household, and, members of the Jewish community. All of this is recorded in the book of Acts and in his letter to the church at Philippi. What he proclaimed was the mystery of Christ which was simply that Christ was the answer, the fulfillment of all the Scriptures, and God’s final revelation. He was the solution of the mystery. And I leave you to judge whether he was able to proclaim it clearly because you read and depend on his message for a large part of what you believe in your confession of Christ. The prayer was made and answered affirmatively.

III Promulgation

Paul also knew that he alone could not spread the message adequately. This would require the cooperation of the whole church in reaching out. Thus he writes in verses 5 and 6, Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. I Peter 3 gives similar advice in verses 15 and 16, But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. First of all, we are to use every opportunity. Many of us are not even looking for an opportunity. Paul Harvey said, “Too many Christians are no longer fishers of men but keepers of the aquarium.” Evangelist D.L. Moody used to tell about a picture that impressed him greatly. It portrayed a woman grasping a cross with both hands as she was being rescued from a stormy sea. He then related how that picture lost much of its impact for him when he saw another painting some time later. The second picture also depicted a woman being rescued from raging waters. But while clinging with one hand to a cross, her other hand was lifting another person out of the waves to safety. We who have been rescued from the penalty of our sins should be doing this. Recognizing that others around us are lost and perishing, we should not be so selfishly taken up with our own salvation that we forget about them. It is also true that the actions of believers have a powerful influence on non-Christians. We are called to be salt and light, and salt and light are both silent but powerful. Too much attention is given to what we say in witnessing and not nearly enough to what we do. Keith Miller, in his book, A Second Touch, tells of a business man who one night turned his life over to Jesus Christ. After struggling along without much assurance, the next morning he was late for his train. Hurrying, he bumped into a small boy with a puzzle, scattering the pieces across the sidewalk. Instead of rushing on, he stopped, stooped down and helped pick up the puzzle while the train moved out of the station. After he had finished, the little lad looked up into his face and asked, “Mister, are you Jesus?” Then said the man, “I realized that at least in some small way, Christ truly was in my heart.” Miller asks, “What witness of Christ shows through your life?” We know that the early church was an active witness for Christ they loved one another, helped one another and in Acts 8:1 and 4 we read that after the first Christian martyr, Stephen’s, death, On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria…Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. We tend to leave the message in the hands of preachers and evangelists, but Donald Barnhouse wrote, “There is a sense in which every Christian has an apostleship. We are all of us to be witnesses, no matter what our other calling, profession or labor. A generation ago there was a wealthy man in the midwest who was an outstanding Christian layman. People used to ask him what he did. He would reply, “I am a witness for Jesus Christ, but I pack pork to pay expenses.” Your apostleship differs in degree but not in kind from the apostleship that was given by God to Paul. Thus pray, proclaim and promulgate the gospel of eternal salvation.