[0:00] We're going to be continuing our teaching, preaching through the book of Colossians. Seth taught last week on Colossians 2, 1 through 6.
[0:11] I'm going to pick up where he left off, 6 through 15. So if you guys want to open your Bibles up to Colossians chapter 2, if you've got them. And we'll look at the text here.
[0:26] But before I read through 6 through 15, I kind of wanted to give a little bit of a review, kind of backdrop.
[0:42] So Paul in Colossians is writing this letter likely to believers that he's never even met before. Epaphras is likely the one who planted the church.
[0:54] He preached the gospel. And then a group of people formed into what would be the church at Colossae. And then Paul writes two letters, one to the Colossians here, which is the letter to the Colossians.
[1:10] And then one to Philemon, which is going to the church at Colossae. And you can really feel as you read him that his heart is for these people.
[1:21] And I think that's a crazy thing because he likely has never even seen them. He says in verse 1 that he has a struggle and he wants to see them, to come to them face to face, that their hearts might be encouraged.
[1:37] So from the get-go, he's affectionately aimed towards them, that their hearts may be built up and encouraged.
[1:49] He says that they might be knit together in love. And I was reading that and thinking like, man, I don't know if I've ever felt that way or been directed with an affection like that towards someone I've never met.
[2:02] And he's trusting Epaphras, who planted and preached, you know, and cultivated this group of people that they're being built up.
[2:12] He's hearing about them and their faith. And his heart's starting to get in it with them. So he's writing this letter from that place, which is a good backdrop to what we're about to read in 6 through 15.
[2:28] And in Philemon, which is also a letter that will go to the church at Colossae. It's to Philemon, but Philemon is at the church at Colossae.
[2:39] He says that he's sending Onesimus, and with him he's sending his very heart. So again, he's not really, he hasn't seen these people face to face, but he's sending Onesimus.
[2:55] And with Onesimus, he's sending his very heart. You know, that's a very apostolic kind of thing to say. He's poured into Onesimus. He said that he's become his father. He was once useless, but now he's useful to you.
[3:07] So you can hear Paul's earnestness to this church. He's encouraged by what he hears about them. And he writes this from that place.
[3:19] That's the backdrop. So Paul is zealous for them. Let's get this square here. So before we go into the text, I'm going to pray.
[3:37] And I was praying specifically for this time last night and this morning that you guys would be refreshed. That you would be built up.
[3:48] That something would happen and be stirred up in you guys. Like in Philemon, he says that Philemon was used to refresh the saints.
[3:59] And so I pray and was praying that this morning something like that would happen today. So I'm going to pray and then we'll go into the text. I'll read it. And then hopefully my aim is to walk through it, explain certain things.
[4:14] And at the very end, I've got some points, but we can do that together as we go. So, Lord, I pray that you would fill me with your spirit to speak right now.
[4:27] Pray, Lord, that you would refresh us in your presence today. Pray, Lord, that this text, Lord, as we walk through it, you would shine, Lord, your gospel.
[4:41] Pray, Lord, and equip us, Lord, for what we need to do, how we need to walk. In Jesus' name. Amen. Okay.
[4:53] So Colossians 2, verses 6 and starting. It says, It says,
[6:32] I love this passage. When Seth assigned it to me, it was kind of hilarious because that was like hours before he sent the text.
[6:46] I was in this passage loving it. So I was like, oh, this works out pretty good. But there's so much here.
[6:57] There's so much gospel kind of fundamentals in here that we're going to hear about. But me in particular, especially last night as I was preparing, I was really getting affected and drawn back to the basic principles of the gospel, which Paul, I think, is trying to encourage the church at Colossae with to keep.
[7:21] Keep this at the forefront of your minds. Keep this as something that you're standing on. So before we start working through the text, I'd like to point out something.
[7:34] In most of your Bibles, if you have an ESV, they put a title, a headline that says, Alive in Christ. If you have different translations, you probably won't see it or maybe it's a different title or something.
[7:48] But I particularly love this title because it describes what a Christian actually is at its core.
[8:02] Someone who is alive, someone who is living. And there is, you know, you go through, you know, your Christian walk and you hear that all the time.
[8:17] But how many of us have, you know, gone to meetings and gatherings and been around other Christians and felt maybe dead, you know, or a sense of dullness, gone into different churches and had this lingering feeling.
[8:36] And the truth is that a Christian is someone who is alive. That is somebody who is alive with the life force, not of their own, but is living with someone else's life force.
[8:49] And so I really felt the resonance of this title, Alive in Christ, fleshed out through this text. I think it's appropriate.
[9:01] And Seth actually spoke last week about how a Christian is someone who has Jesus living in them. And that is felt as we read this.
[9:11] So I made a note of this. I stumbled across an article a day or two ago on LinkedIn.
[9:24] I never go on LinkedIn because I'm not really a professional or have no need to be on LinkedIn. But I read this guy's article, which caught my eye. It said, titled, Are you living or being lived?
[9:40] And I decided to read a little bit of what he meant by that. But what he was saying is essentially like, do you have your own goals? Are you self-motivated? Are you self-disciplined?
[9:50] Or are you just trying to accomplish your company's goals and work for somebody else? Because if you are, my friend, you're being lived. You know, kind of a negative.
[10:02] Like, you need to get your own goals. Although there's some truth to that, I couldn't help but feel like in the inverse, as a Christian, we are a people who are being lived.
[10:16] Because our goals are now subordinated when we come to Christ. They're subjected to the king's goals.
[10:27] And we're being lived actually through God. And our life, we don't live anymore, Paul says, but we live by faith. And so I felt like maybe I should write an article called Living by Being Lived in response.
[10:41] But then I was like, that's whatever. So, alive in Christ, living in Christ, being lived, seeing that, is what the aim is.
[10:54] And as we walk through this, I think noticing Paul's aliveness to this church, even though he hasn't even seen them, can be felt.
[11:06] So, we want to start in verse 6. We'll start to work through how Paul speaks to them. It says, Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
[11:29] So, two things right away. Just as they received Christ Jesus the Lord, he tells them to walk in him. Okay? Don't walk by yourself, walk in Christ.
[11:40] And then he says how to do that. And he's got a couple distinctives. One, you need to walk rooted and built up.
[11:52] Okay? And this language is the language of like a tree being rooted. And think about being built up, the language of a house or a structure, right?
[12:05] Okay? And if you think about being rooted, immediately what I went to is being secure. It's a secure foundation underneath you.
[12:17] And so, he says you've got to have some roots that can support the upper weight of the tree, the trunk going up. Okay? So, he wants them, just as they receive Christ, to walk in a way that's like that.
[12:29] That's like rooted and being built up. Having pieces that fit together correctly, not disjointed and kind of supported halfly, you know.
[12:41] But rooted and built up and established in the faith. Like, you know, established in the faith, I immediately just think not tossed.
[12:53] You know? Not shifting. Like, we had a really bad storm a couple weeks ago. We had a lot of rain recently. But we had a storm where a ton of trees came down.
[13:06] And most of them were diseased and hollowed out. And it was pretty easy to tell why they came down. But during the storm, you would look outside and you see all these trees bending and bowing.
[13:19] And then they would just, you know, stay up there. And it's like, well, these guys are solid. Something about this tree is different than the tree that just crashed through my neighbor's roof. You know? And because the roots go down deep.
[13:33] I heard somewhere that the roots of a tree are as deep as like how high the tree is. Which I thought, man, that's crazy. Not only that, but it says something about the necessity for what is underneath us.
[13:52] And it's got to be something that's secure. It's got to be something that's established. And so as we are doing this church plant, we're at the beginning stages.
[14:07] Sometimes it can feel like we're just a little sprout out of the ground. You know, not really fully established by any means yet. And a lot of times we need something like a little stake to hold us up, you know, by us.
[14:20] And I think that this truth or these truths that Paul is laying out are those things that we're going to hold fast to. That's going to be the thing that makes it solid. So he wants them to be rooted and built up and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
[14:39] So he kind of ends it and tags it with this phrase, abounding in thanksgiving, which is important for us to know because it's easy to grow weary in giving thanks.
[14:55] And it's even more easy to grumble when there's many things to grumble about. You know, sometimes it feels like there's nothing to be thankful for, which is just really just a lie, you know.
[15:08] And when we're tempted, we can remember Paul speaking to the Colossians, not just telling them to be thankful, but to abound in it.
[15:20] You know, not grumbling when we get frustrated about, you know, how someone's bad at facilitating family or group things or, you know, grumbling about whatever in our life is just inconvenient, you know.
[15:37] But constantly abounding, Godward, you know, not looking at our circumstances or other people by the flesh, but being thankful. Paul says to abound in it.
[15:54] With that, in verse 8, kind of leads them into a little bit of a warning or telling them to guard against something.
[16:10] He says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
[16:25] So although Paul is speaking to believers, he's, or believers that are standing firm in their faith, he's still giving them a sober warning. He says, watch out for the things that will sneak in, like this strange philosophy or a type of empty deceit, something that might be appealing, but its end is just emptiness.
[16:48] It's not going to, it won't help you, won't aid you. And I think the thing about, you know, this particular church and this group of people, I don't think like, okay, we're like really susceptible by these things or to like philosophy, you know, attacks or human tradition maybe.
[17:12] But the thing about how one can be led astray is you're led. You don't all of a sudden fall away or fall astray.
[17:26] You're slowly led. Things can lead us. So Paul is warning, don't be led by different things like philosophies, humanistic ideas.
[17:37] And we see how non-humanistic it gets way down in verse 13 through 15 when he kind of goes through the gospel in detail.
[17:49] But he wants them to guard against it. And, you know, the thing about Satan is he's really crafty.
[18:00] You know, in Genesis, he says that the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field. And I think in Timothy it says that he disguises himself as an angel of light.
[18:11] So there's going to be things that look one way, that appear beautiful, but they're full of darkness, you know. And in a church, we have to be on guard against those things.
[18:25] Because there are many churches who are following different things, different philosophies in conjunction with the gospel.
[18:38] But actually, it's distorting the gospel, and it isn't that at all. It's being twisted. And so Paul's warning against that. He's saying don't be led astray by it.
[18:50] You know, it seems like sometimes that when you talk about the philosophies, the empty deceit, the human tradition, it exposes them right away.
[19:05] It brings them right out. And you're just like, oh, yeah, that's wrong. You know, like if I got up here and I was just like, you guys, adultery, that's not really that bad. You know, or like divorce is a viable option if any problems come up in the marriage.
[19:20] Like you guys would be like, I need to talk to Sam. He's off his rocker, right? It's like right in your face. That's wrong, right? But if you put a little music to it, you know, make it sound beautiful, we'll listen to it.
[19:35] You know, don't we do that? We turn the radio on, and all of a sudden you listen to the lyrics, and you're like, I think this is Satan's music. You know, like trying to speak to me, you know.
[19:50] He's crafty, and he wants to sneak in anywhere he can, and we have to be on guard against it. So Paul warns against that. In Proverbs 4, 23, it says, keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
[20:06] Jesus himself says to watch out that no one deceives you. In Mark 13, 5, so we've got to guard against the things and not grow lax, you know.
[20:21] I think it's another proverb that says a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty comes upon you, you know. A little relaxation, and all of a sudden, you know, after a while, you're in a place that you never thought you would be.
[20:34] Going down to verse 9, 9 through 10, it says, for in him, that's in Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
[20:50] I read that, and I'm like, what an incredible statement. Like, the entire fullness of God dwells bodily.
[21:00] You know, that's, I mean, it'd be one thing to see that, you know, if you were one of his disciples. And maybe some of us, at some points, have a little bit of longing, like, man, I wish I could see the, you know, the fullness of deity dwelling in Jesus.
[21:20] Well, there's a little bit of an encouragement here after that. It says, I lost my place. Where are we at? It says, and you have been filled in him.
[21:38] So it says, for in him the fullness of deity dwells bodily. And then it says, and you have been filled in him. So the guy, so the guy, so he's been filled with the whole fullness of deity bodily.
[21:55] And then we also have been filled in him who is full. It's like a trifecta of fullness. What does it actually mean to believe that?
[22:08] You know, what does it actually mean to believe that the same spirit who raised Christ from the dead dwells in us? You know, that's what Paul is portraying. He's saying, all of God dwelt in Jesus, and you have been filled in him.
[22:22] You know, that for sure encouraged me when I read it. Because I'd mosey on through my day thinking, like, I'm just a normal Joe Schmo. You know, but not only in that respect.
[22:38] God's fullness, his spirit has been given to me. You know, the one who has been full completely from the Father has filled me. That's powerful.
[22:51] And so oftentimes we can forget the inheritance we've been given. The immeasurable riches of his grace, the Bible says, that has been granted to us in Christ Jesus.
[23:05] And remembering that God looked upon us with mercy and didn't just spare us, but he filled us also.
[23:17] We've been filled in him. Verse 11. It says, In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.
[23:57] So Paul is saying that in him you were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, by putting off the body, essentially saying that actually it's true that you have actual power to say no to the flesh now.
[24:12] To cut off the flesh, whereas before you didn't, you were a slave to it. No power at all. Even if you tried to, you could only use more flesh to try and crucify the flesh, which would never work.
[24:27] So Paul says, In him you have been given power to cut off the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. And in what way do you get this power?
[24:38] It says, Having been buried with him, going down underneath the ground with him, and rising up through death, rising up to life, you now have power to say no to sin.
[24:52] In Philippians 3 it says, or Paul says, We are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and put no confidence in the flesh.
[25:05] He says we Christians are the circumcision. It means we actually have the power. All you people who look like you do, don't. Because you haven't come to Christ.
[25:19] You haven't been buried with him, and have been also raised to receive power to say no to sin. He says that we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and put no confidence in the flesh.
[25:34] No confidence. This word confidence, I was thinking about this in relationship to faith. I watched a debate earlier this week, and this atheist was pretty heated against these Christian guys talking.
[25:55] And the Christian guys were asking him, Do you have confidence in your view? Like, this is your view. God, no God, you know, only materialism.
[26:06] And he's like, well, yeah, of course. He's like, well, then you have faith. And he's like, that's not what faith is. You know, faith is something else, like you Christians believe.
[26:17] At the very end of the debate, the Christian was giving his closing statement, and he defined confidence, which has its root in Latin that actually confide, meaning with faith.
[26:34] So when we talk about faith, it's helpful to think in terms of confidence. You know, Hebrews 11 says that faith is the assurance, synonym to confidence.
[26:50] So in Philippians 3, Paul says that we worship by the Spirit of God and put no confidence in the flesh. No faith in the flesh. You know, we put faith in the flesh, we'll die.
[27:01] And so when we have confidence in God, through the gospel, we have power to say no to sin. Titus 2, 11 through 12 says, for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people, and it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions.
[27:24] So this is the grace of God appears and gives us confidence to say no, but no confidence in the flesh. And Paul drives that home here in the last verses of the text, when he kind of goes in, starting in verse 13, explaining how a Christian went from death to life.
[27:55] And it's really kind of the precipice or the peak of what it means to truly be a Christian. It's really what we're standing on.
[28:05] Here at the end of his couple verses here, he divulges into the roots underneath us, how I talked about earlier, a tree being built up. You know, as Christchurch grows and Lord willing, we see more people saved.
[28:22] We want to save them into not just a kind of tree above ground, but also show them what the roots are beneath the tree and how to be built up into a house.
[28:36] And if we ourselves are not aware of those roots, trusting in those roots, leaning on those things, then we shouldn't believe that anyone would be caught up into that either.
[28:49] We need to be fit together as being built up. You know, I think about being built up and I work in many different houses, a lot of new construction houses, and there's all the structure exposed and you're just looking around, seeing like, okay, if that wasn't there, you know, that's a problem.
[29:13] You know, everything fits into its place and works together. So for us to be built up, we have to fit together rightly and also fellowship on the same truth.
[29:26] Look at the same roots. And so Paul in this last line gets the fundamentals of that.
[29:39] This is the line between whether you have a dead church or a living church. Whenever Aidy and I travel, especially long distances, we see a bunch of different churches off the side of the highway with a bunch of different names, different kinds of buildings.
[29:59] And I always wondered to myself, I'm like, is this a dead church or a living church? You know, nobody didn't know, but there's a lot of them out there.
[30:10] And the ones that are alive are the ones that have their lampstands burning. You know, they're continually being filled with this truth that Paul is speaking to the church at Colossae about that has heard Epaphras pouring into them.
[30:27] And it needs to be the same confidence that we have at Christchurch that will make us alive in the world. And so I'm going to read this, but before I do, I want to give a quick note.
[30:48] A lot of times when we read passages of Scripture, especially like big truth gospel passages, it can be easy to just gloss them over and treat them as kind of every other verse and vowel.
[31:02] It's like, oh yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, it's good. It's like, oh yeah, gospel. Yeah, got it. Move along, you know. But if you guys can, I want you to focus as I read this, maybe in a different way, and receive the words that Paul is speaking to the church at Colossae as a past tense sealed promise over your life.
[31:26] Meaning something that's more of like a declaration, like this is true over your life and believe it. Because a lot of times we just read the Bible in a way that, you know, is for the next guy, or maybe that will apply to us at some point, rather than looking to God to be filled then, when we read it.
[31:52] And so, read it as something that's been sealed. Ephesians 4 verse 30 says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
[32:06] You know, that's a heavy thing. You know, you've been sealed up. You've been snatched up from hell. And God has sealed you for a specific day that is already fixed.
[32:17] So, this is a declaration of the solidity of that seal, the solidity of the roots underneath us, of the truth that we're reading through.
[32:31] And as I read this, believe that. So, in verse, starting in 13, it says, And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
[33:06] This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and the authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.
[33:19] So, this is just like hardcore, this is how God safely brought you out of death and into life. You were dead at one point.
[33:32] That's a pretty controversial thing to say nowadays, although I think in former days it probably wasn't. Many people don't want to hear that they were dead or are dead, you know, having no hope and without God.
[33:45] You know, that's what Ephesians says. It says that at one time you were dead. Didn't have any hope. You know? And then God did something. God made you alive.
[33:57] All of a sudden you were just brought to life and you're like, where the heck am I? All because of someone else. And so, when he says we're dead, it directly confronts, remember those philosophies that Paul was born against?
[34:11] It directly confronts humanism, you know, which has an optimistic view on man and says that man is just, you know, kind of sick in his sins. He's really, deep down, he's good.
[34:26] And all he needs is just a little bit of help from God, a little bit of medicine for the illness. And, you know, Scripture directly confronts these philosophies and says that man is not sick in his sins.
[34:40] Man is spiritually dead in his sins. And if it is not for God to raise the dead man to life, then he would be dead forever. And we need to realize that.
[34:53] We need to realize that we were once that. We were once dead in our sins. And had it not been for God's resurrection power, that we would be still dead. So we were dead in our trespasses.
[35:11] We broke the law. We were dead in the uncircumcision of our flesh, meaning we had no power to keep the law. We had no power to say no to sin. Excuse me. We only could sin more.
[35:23] We can only take more flesh and patch it on to kind of save ourselves and it will never do. And so it says, while we were dead in that, God made us alive together with him.
[35:36] By what means? The means of having forgiven us those things. So God demanded righteous atonement for our sins.
[35:49] And instead, in substitute, he forgives us our sins, wipes the slate clean, and cancels the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
[36:05] That's one of the most awesome parts of this passage. I love how he speaks in legal terms. He calls it legal demands. You know, we had a debt.
[36:20] I'm sure many of you guys have had debt before of some kind. And the worst is when you forget about it and all of a sudden you remember it. And you're just like, oh, that debt.
[36:33] You know, it's the record that haunts you. Record of debt. You know, Paul says, the record of the debt that stood against us. We remember it and it's just like haunting us. And so, it has legal demands that go to a courtroom and stand before a judge.
[36:52] And in Christ Jesus, God met these demands by living a perfect life. The demands we fell incredibly short to meet, God himself met them and then paid the penalty for us breaking the demands that he asked of us and satisfy them on the cross.
[37:15] And in what way did he meet these demands? It says, this he set aside nailing it to the cross. So, it was satisfied with nailing.
[37:26] It was satisfied with his own body being torn apart and during the agonies of hell for us, the cross we should have been up on, Jesus was up on for our sins.
[37:41] Our sins were nailed to him it says that this he set aside. You know, setting aside, I always think of David and Bathsheba and after that whole fiasco Nathan comes to him and says you know, that there are consequences basically for your sin, David.
[38:03] But then Nathan says a peculiar thing, he says, but the Lord has put your sin away. And if I was David I'd be like, wait, what? my sin's been put away?
[38:14] You know, you kind of hear that when Paul says this he set aside. You know, and in Hebrews it says at the end of the age one day he will put away sin for good.
[38:27] And so he did this by nailing it to the cross and also tricking the rulers and the authorities. He triumphed over them in him.
[38:42] It's kind of an interesting phrase that I haven't really thought about much. It says by triumphing over them in him. I would, if I were going to say I think I would just say by triumphing you know, himself.
[38:56] But we know that there's there's multiple people at work here. There's God the Father working through Jesus. So God shows his love for the world by sending his son to triumph.
[39:12] You know, God the Father works that through the son and the son accomplishes it. Seeing kind of the effectiveness of the Trinity there. And so we were dead, we had a debt, it was met and satisfied with Jesus being nailed to the cross.
[39:30] Romans 8.3 says that he condemns sin in the flesh. If you break it down that's your sin in his flesh being condemned which is you know, oftentimes what we can miss which is a fundamental gospel truth that our sin has been taken away.
[39:54] The sting of death is removed and that one day we will stand before God blameless the Bible says. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says that for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
[40:15] 1 Peter 2.24 says that he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. So the Lord triumphed over these authorities and substituted himself in our place to raise us to life.
[40:39] So when we think about the gospel when we think about relating to one another maybe sometimes the things that we don't have a ton in common about it's good to constantly be reflecting on what's underneath us you know that really binds us together that really gives nutrient to the trunk of this tree that's above us you know and it's the gospel it's that God did something that still stands today and seals us and so um it's in the third chapter of Colossians if we haven't got to yet uh Paul says that we're hiding in Christ we've been hidden we've been caught away from uh the uh threat of this world and from hell we're snatched up and we're hidden in
[41:41] Christ which is which is a safe place for us to be so that the uh the sting of death the haunting of death the haunting of hell won't affect us as we walk through this life and look forward to the very end in eternity a lot of times one way to solve the issue of kind of just a drudgery in our Christian life is by looking to the rewards at the end looking at the very uh face of God one day which we will see you know with our eyes of faith and uh believing that one day we'll we'll meet him um I was reminded of that when I when I heard uh Dietrich Bonhoeffer's last words when he was caught and uh he was actually in prison for a handful of time uh by the Nazi Gestapo and then eventually he was hung to death but his last words right before his Nazi executioner delivered him over uh in
[42:48] Flossenburg Germany was this is the end he says for me the beginning of life you know man that would be so cool to say that to uh you know your executioner you know for you this might seem like the end of me but for me it's just the beginning you know that's a that's a picture of eternity you know that's somebody who who's looking past this life and uh getting their eyes set on eternity so um do we have confidence in these gospel truths you know do we have confidence in what God has done for us in Christ you know to support us are we trusting in that is our faith in that and um that's what Paul's speaking to the church at Belasi about encouraging Epaphras he's speaking to Philemon and saying um you know hold fast to these these fundamental things and so um to wrap it up just a couple points of exhortation that I was thinking about for Christ church um to not grow weary in doing good to keep our heads up and just hold fast to the truth you know if if we're going to be a church that has a burning lamp stand you know we got to have these roots we can't just jump on to other things um when these roots aren't established you know cultivating that among each other you know in regular life and um and putting our hearts in it you know just like
[44:29] Paul again like maybe didn't even know these people at Colossi his heart was already for them wanting them to be knit together you know how often do we go throughout our day uh you know thinking about the other people in this room uh and how we need to be more or could be more knit together wanting that you know like Paul and we know each other you know Paul didn't even do these people likely so that's one thing and then uh it's gonna sound classic and basic but resting in the finished work of the cross is gonna be the thing that will sustain each one of us individually and when we come together it's gonna be the thing that we all fellowship around is that rest I don't know if you guys have any friends or I'm sure you do at some point where you know they carry a presence about them that you love being around it's like almost like a fire that you draw near to and get warned walk away warned by you know in
[45:36] Acts it says that the members of the council recognized that Peter and John had been with Jesus you know something about them so if we're not resting in the finished work not only will we ourselves suffer but we can't even give to other people we need to be filled!
[45:51] up we! need to there's not a ton right now that's big ticket rebuke items among us but there is always a need to encourage each other to be knit together and to be thankful if there's anything that we're not thankful enough or maybe worse maybe we're just grumbling about stupid things the way that someone's gifted or not gifted how so and so is whatever you guys know your own grumbling tendencies but but to abound in thanksgiving that's what he says be grateful you know and so in closing
[47:08] I wanted to give a little bit of a benediction from Hebrews 10 which says or sorry 13 Hebrews 13 20 which says now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus the great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant equip you with every good that you may do his will working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory!
[47:43] forever!