Thanksgiving for the Work of Christ

[0:00] We're looking at Colossians chapter 1, verses 1 through 8, really focusing in verses 3 through 8. Read the text, then we'll pray, and then we'll hit the ground running.

[0:17] Beginning in verse 1, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father.

[0:32] We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God and truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bondservant who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf, and he also informed us of your love in the Spirit.

[1:20] Now that felt like a mouthful, didn't it? Just as we go to pray, just know Paul wrote exactly like that.

[1:31] This was all one sentence, and he just gushed with all of this truth about who God is and what he's done, and as we pray, let us pray that we would have a heart that loves the work of Christ, that loves the work of Christ.

[1:49] Let's pray. Father, thank you for the privilege it is to look at your word. Thank you for the privilege it is to preach your word, and I pray, Father, that for your glory and our good, that you would help us to understand what your word says.

[2:03] We need the truth. We need to see it. And I pray that you would open our eyes to it. You would comfort us. You would challenge us.

[2:15] You would convict us. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Have you ever doubted yourself? Yeah, I think everybody all of a sudden is just like, boom.

[2:30] Yeah, doubted myself. And maybe even doubted yourself on something you should not have doubted yourself on. Do you know what I'm talking about?

[2:41] Like that sort of thing that you've got the expertise in. You know about the animals. You know about education.

[2:53] You know about medicine. You know about banking. You know about law. I mean, there's so many things that many of you have expertise in.

[3:05] And have you ever had the moment where in that expertise, somebody said something for just a moment maybe. It made you sort of doubt yourself. I think that's a little bit what's going on here with the Colossians.

[3:19] It's a little bit like Michelle and I, we had some friends. We went to go see a movie called Patterns of Evidence. Patterns of Evidence. It's a movie that I highly recommend to you.

[3:30] It's about the Exodus and the archaeological evidence for it. But we went to this restaurant after the movie was over. And we were sitting in Denny's. And us and our friends were sitting there.

[3:42] And we decided what we were going to order. And then we stopped for a moment to pray. And over my shoulder, on the other side of the restaurant, a very loud, boisterous, drunken man, who had been mouthing off ever since we had gotten into the restaurant, saw us praying and began to tell his friend, I know more about the Bible than all these Christians.

[4:06] I've never met a Christian who knows anything about the Bible. And just on and on. And there was a moment at which I wanted, because listen, I don't like confrontation, but I don't usually run from it.

[4:20] But I also don't enjoy it. So I sat there just really trying to decide, what am I going to do in this moment? But there also came a moment at which I began to doubt myself.

[4:33] And I thought, you know, I know a lot about the Bible. I know probably more about the Bible than you might think I know, because I've read so much. I mean, there's so much there that I know.

[4:44] But like in that moment, I thought to myself, what if he asked me something I don't know? Because I don't know everything. And I can just imagine the experience of these Colossians.

[4:59] You have to understand, they were Gentile Christians. They were Gentile Christians. And if all of a sudden you had a bunch of people who were Jews, who were showing up for your services, and now wanting to teach and telling you, you don't really know everything there is to know.

[5:23] You've got Jesus. That's great. That's a good start. But there's more to know. You can just imagine that that moment of doubt.

[5:37] I mean, and the Colossians, they're not just doubting themselves. They're probably doubting their pastor. Has our pastor told us the truth? If these guys are telling us that there's more to know, then why hasn't our pastor told us the truth?

[5:53] So this is why Paul's writing this letter. And as he's doing this, he begins right here with thanksgiving, and he runs after three things that he thanks God for.

[6:08] Okay? Now, I'm going to take a drink. Now, let's just walk through this real quickly. I'm going to tell you the three things he's thankful for, and then I'm going to preach the sermon, okay?

[6:23] Number one, he's thankful to God that the Colossians are really Christians. And he's going to tell them, I've heard of your conversion.

[6:34] I've heard of your faith. I've heard of your love, okay? So that's the first thing. He's thankful they are really Christians. And wouldn't that be comforting to them to hear from the Apostle Paul?

[6:46] No matter what you've been told by all these false teachers, I, as Paul the Apostle, a minister of Christ, by the will of God, I'm telling you I'm thankful for your conversion. Then he thanks God for the gospel.

[7:01] Right? Because the gospel, they are really Christians because they've heard the gospel. And it's the same gospel that's preached in all the world. There's not two gospels.

[7:12] There's not one for the Jews and one for the Gentiles. There's one gospel for all people. And so he's thankful for that. He's thankful for how it's being preached around the world.

[7:23] But then he's also thankful for Epaphras. He's thankful for Epaphras because he's a faithful minister, he says. He's faithfully preached to this congregation.

[7:37] And so as we look at that and these three things that Paul's thankful for, I want us to take and turn these into two broad areas for us to look at.

[7:48] Okay? Because if you're thinking to yourself, if you've ever had someone come to you and they've made you doubt whether or not you're a Christian because maybe they've said something, maybe they've done something that makes you go like, how do I know I'm a Christian?

[8:02] Then point one is for you because Paul's thankful that Christ saves his people. And so we want to look at when somebody's saved, how do we know it? What are the marks that comes out?

[8:13] That's what Paul talks about there. And in the second point, he's really concerned with the work of Christ in the church and how Christ prospers the gospel.

[8:24] And he does that through this preaching of the word and this faithful minister. So we're going to put those two together and we're going to have two big points. You understand where we're going? Okay, let's dive in. The first then is that he's thankful that Christ saves his people, verses basically three through five.

[8:42] Paul says he's heard about them and he's heard about their faith, verse four. He's heard about their love they have for all the saints, verse four. And because of the hope laid up for them in heaven, verse five.

[8:57] Now, here's why this is important. Paul mentions faith, hope, and love. And he mentions that in a lot of his writings. I mean, we could marshal out probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10 verses to see this.

[9:13] Let me just give you two. First Thessalonians chapter one, verse three. He's doing the same thing for them. He's thanking God for them. And he says, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, your labor of love, your steadfastness of hope.

[9:31] Right? But then to the Corinthians in first Corinthians chapter 13, because one of the problems of the Corinthian church is you had people who were going like, well, I've got a better spiritual gift than you do.

[9:44] You are nothing. Right? And Paul is basically saying, listen, spiritual gifts are not the point. Love is the point. And he says there in chapter 13, verse 13. Now, faith, hope, love, abide these three.

[9:57] But the greatest of these is love. So what you have here is you have three virtues. You have three fruits. You have three evidences of a person's true conversion.

[10:16] They have faith, love, and hope. So let's just walk through that then. Paul says your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith, faith, theologically defined, is a conviction of the truths of the gospel.

[10:34] To have faith in Christ is to believe who Christ is. You can't doubt that he is who he is. In other words, you must believe that Jesus came in the flesh.

[10:48] You must believe that Jesus is God. You must believe that Jesus is the Son of God. You must believe in the Trinity. You must believe that the Father sent his Son.

[11:01] You must believe that Jesus died on the cross. You must believe that Jesus rose from the grave. You must believe that Jesus ascended to the Father. You must believe that Jesus is coming back one day.

[11:13] To not believe any of those things is to not be a Christian. You can't believe wrong things about Jesus and also love Jesus.

[11:25] You cannot believe wrong things about Jesus and also be a Christian. You must believe the right things about him. But faith is not just a conviction of the truth.

[11:38] It's a commitment to the Christ of the gospel. When you have faith in Christ, you are entrusting yourself to him.

[11:49] You are entrusting your eternity to him. Your soul, your mind, your heart, your everything. You are entrusting it to him.

[12:02] You're entrusting that his death counts for you. That's what it is to have faith in Christ.

[12:14] But he goes on. He talks about love for all the saints. Love for all the saints. If you are a Christian, you have been truly saved.

[12:33] You have trusted in Christ for your salvation. If you were to die right now, you know you would go to heaven right now. Then you are a saint.

[12:49] You don't become a saint because you've done some super natural Avengers type ordeal. And everybody all of a sudden goes like, oh, Saint Brady.

[13:01] You know, I know. No, no, no, no, no. I'm a saint. You're a saint. We're a saint. We're all saints. Why? Because we're covered in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

[13:12] Don't let anybody try to tell you. I mean, they might talk about somebody in history like Saint Francis. It's not because he is not a saint because he's done something extraordinary. If he's a saint, he's a saint because he's trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[13:27] You are a saint. Because it wouldn't make any sense for Paul to tell the Colossians, you love all the saints. If it's the other.

[13:41] Right? He's saying you love the body. You love all Christians. You love all the Christians there in your church.

[13:52] You love all the Christians in the other churches because you know they exist and you have this relationship with them. The fruit of true salvation is a love for all the saints.

[14:04] And it's specifically targeted at people who love Jesus but who might say to themselves, I'm not sure about the church.

[14:18] I mean, I've had a lot of people over the years that I've been in ministry who have told me to my face. I can't believe that they say these things to me. But okay. Like, you know, you have lost people out there who might cuss in front of me and they find out I'm a pastor and then they're very apologetic.

[14:32] But then I've got people who tell me that they're Christians. They love Jesus. They just can't stand the church. And I'm going like, do you have no shame in what you just said? I mean, do you understand who the church is?

[14:48] Look what Paul writes about the church in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 25. Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.

[15:00] The church is the bride of Christ. The church is Jesus' wife. If you tell me you like me but you don't want to have anything to do with my wife, we're not going to be friends for very long.

[15:17] And yet so many people want to have faith in Jesus and they say they follow Jesus. They say they love the church or love Jesus and love his word but they don't want to have anything to do with the church.

[15:31] And I say whatever ridiculous word I can come up with. That is just ridiculous. You cannot bifurcate. You cannot cut off.

[15:42] You cannot separate Jesus from his church. They are his. He loves them. He gave his life for them. Now I know.

[15:53] I know that for some people the issue is they've been hurt by church people. And that's why they don't really like the church.

[16:04] And I get that. But can I just tell you something that's true that nobody is willing to say? The truth is is that there are a lot of church people who are just stinking mean.

[16:18] And I believe that that means that those church people who are stinking mean are probably not saved. And they need Jesus.

[16:35] And if you've been hurt by church people, I'm sorry. But sometimes what happens is we let lost people come in and act like church people when in truth we need to be sure that they're Christians before they join.

[16:51] But it doesn't. All of that doesn't negate and say, therefore, you don't have to love the church. I mean, some of my kids are mean. But I still have to love them.

[17:05] You know what I'm saying? And so if you love Jesus, then you need to love the church of Jesus Christ. The last marker is then hope.

[17:18] And when Paul talks about hope here, we've got to think about this a little bit because this gets a little thick in here. So I'm going to see if I can start kind of up here and get us into it. There's two basic ideas about hope.

[17:31] There's actually three, but I'm just going to talk about two of them. There's two basic ideas about the idea of hope. One is the idea that I can feel hope. There's a feeling of hope to some degree.

[17:43] But then there's what you would call an object of hope. Right? When I feel hope, that's something subjective. That's something internal. That's something inside of me.

[17:54] Right? I have this feeling of hope, an expectation of something. An object of hope is something that's outside of me. And I'm placing my feelings of hope on the object of hope.

[18:06] But that object of hope is something that I really can't control. I just have to wait around for it. Right? So we could say about the football game. We could say, I hope we win the football game Friday night.

[18:17] And we would have a feeling of that hope. But then we could say, and fill in your favorite football player name you want to, like Brian Hill. We could say, my hope, you know, Brian Hill is our hope.

[18:30] He doesn't play football for us, I promise. But anyway. He doesn't do anything untoward on the sidelines with the flags. Okay, so it's all good. But you see what I'm saying? That person becomes the object of hope.

[18:43] So as Paul's talking about hope here, he's not talking about their subjective feelings about hope.

[18:53] But he's talking about an object of hope. That he knows they have a hope outside of them, laid up in heaven for them.

[19:05] Okay? That's what he says. You have a hope laid up in heaven for you. That laid up in heaven. It's similar to what Paul talks about. When he talks about, he knows that there is laid up for him a crown of righteousness.

[19:20] Right? He says, in the future, one place, I have both a feeling of, but also a knowledge of, that something external to me exists somewhere else.

[19:31] And in the future, I'm going to get that thing. And for Paul, it's this crown of righteousness. But now here in the Colossians, he's saying, you have a hope laid up for you.

[19:43] It's in the future. And you know it's there. And then he says this. It's so strange. He says that it's because of the hope. Look at your verse five.

[19:53] Because of the hope. It's because of that, that the faith and the love exist. Now, how did they, how did they, how did that work?

[20:07] Well, that basically works like this. That a true Christian knows that there is waiting for them a day when they will be with the Lord forever. It's a treasure that is sent on ahead.

[20:19] It is the inheritance of the saints. Verse 12 tells us. It is that for which the Holy Spirit is the down payment of. And Christians know they have that future.

[20:33] And the knowledge of that future then increases and builds faith and love. So, because Paul is thankful for the Colossians.

[20:48] He's thankful for their salvation. He's thankful that they bear the marks of this faith and this hope and this love. He wants them to know that this is one of the most important things they could even think about.

[21:04] And so he's thankful to God for this. He wants them to have confidence that they really are Christians.

[21:14] He doesn't want them to doubt. He doesn't want these false teachers to cause them to stray and go off into something else. He wants them to understand you really are saved. And because of that, I think that this becomes a place of application for us to say, you ought to examine yourself to see if you are truly a Christian.

[21:37] And how do you do that? You do it by looking at your faith, your love, and your hope. Number one, do you believe the right things about Jesus?

[21:52] Do you believe he's really God? Do you believe in the Trinity? Do you believe that Jesus came and took on flesh and was 100% God, 100% man? Do you believe he died on the cross? Do you believe he rose from the grave?

[22:03] Do you believe? I mean, I'm not saying do you believe these things like you believe... I'm going to get in trouble. You know, these other things.

[22:14] I'm just going to say it. It's not like a Santa Claus and it's not like an Easter Bunny kind of a belief, right? It's not something we just sort of make believe. But this is something...

[22:25] It's such a strong belief that it's almost like saying if I take a hammer and smack my hand, I know it's going to hurt. It's that real. Do you believe that Jesus really is who he said he is?

[22:39] And then do you trust him? If so, then you have this marker of faith that says you're a real Christian. Right? Secondly, is there a growing love for Christian people?

[22:55] Is there a growing love for Christian people? Do you love Christians who don't have the same skin color? Do you love Christians who don't parent like you do?

[23:06] Do you love Christians more than you love your own blood relatives? Jesus says, unless you hate your father, mother, sister, brother, you cannot be my disciple.

[23:21] Blood is never thicker than faith. Faith is always thicker than blood. Do you love Christians more than you love your club buddies or your coffee buddies?

[23:36] Do you love Christians even though they're flawed? Even though they commit sin? Even though they're annoying sometimes to be around? Do you love Christians?

[23:46] Are you committed to a group of Christians? Are you saying these Christians, they're flawed, they have problems, but they're my Christian brothers and sisters. These are the ones I'm committed to you.

[23:57] Do you have a growing love for Christians? Because if you do, you've got a mark of true salvation and faith.

[24:10] And then is there this growing longing for that hope that's laid up for you? Do you have this assurance that the future with God is there?

[24:25] Are you growing in that assurance every day? See, this is what I would tell you to do. I would tell you to ask yourself those questions. To test yourself, to see if you're in the faith, to see if you're really a Christian or not.

[24:38] And if not, then I would say to you, repent of your sin and turn to Christ. Because one day he's coming back in judgment and all, all evildoers will suffer in the lake of fire.

[24:50] But this is not only something you can do to test yourself. This is something you can do to test your family. Look at your kids.

[25:01] You want to know if your kids are really saved? The last thing that you should ever do, maybe you should never do this, is open up a Bible and look for a date in the front of the Bible.

[25:13] I was taught when I was a kid that the way to have assurance of your salvation is that the day you're saved, open it up, write it on the front, and any time you begin to doubt, open the Bible and look at it. There's nothing in the Bible anywhere that says to do that.

[25:30] There's nothing that says to do that. My kids, when they were like, you know, Dad, am I really your kid? Like, they didn't go looking for their birth certificates. They just asked me, am I your kid?

[25:41] And I said, yes. You can look at your own family. You can look at your kids. You can look at your wife. You can look at your husband.

[25:52] And you can examine and say, do you have the faith? Do you have the love? Do you have the hope? You can look at your friends. You can look at your co-workers. Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ's blood and righteousness.

[26:12] Is there evidence in your life that you're a Christian, that your children are Christians, that your grandchildren are Christians? If not, don't sit there and go, whoa, oh, no, oh, no.

[26:27] I'm not sure if my son's a Christian because he doesn't love the church. It's like, well, don't fret. But now you know what to pray. Now you know how to share the gospel.

[26:37] Well, that's Christ. Paul being thankful for the work of Christ and saving his people.

[26:48] Let's talk secondly then about how Christ prospers his gospel. This is something that Paul's thankful for. And I want to give you five statements about this. And I started to write it out for you, but I just decided that it was way too complicated to write it out.

[27:02] So I'm just going to tell you what I'm going to do is there's five truths from verse five through verse eight that are true right there in the text. I think you can see it. I'll try to help you see it. And then I'm going to wrap this up.

[27:12] Okay. So in verse five, this is the first statement. The gospel was preached to the Colossians, and that's how they know about their hope.

[27:24] Okay. The gospel is preached to the Colossians, and that's how they know about their hope. Verse five says, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel.

[27:36] So you know about this hope, of which refers to the hope laid up in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel. That means that until the preaching of the gospel happens, a person cannot know the truth.

[27:52] Truth and gospel are bound together. Until the preaching of the gospel, a person doesn't know the truth of the hope they have. You don't hear the truth about the hope we have from anything except the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[28:08] And these Colossians don't have to worry that they weren't told the whole truth because they have the word of truth, the gospel. Second statement.

[28:22] This gospel is the same gospel that's preached in the rest of the world. Okay. Verse six, which has come to you, the which means the gospel, which has come to you just as in all the world.

[28:40] So one of the things that Colossians were probably being told is that, listen, you've only heard a part of the truth. You only know a portion of it. That's why I'm so thankful for where we are in history because we have Bibles galore.

[28:54] You know, like if you want, you can have a Bible from every kind of translation theory there is. You can even purchase for yourself all kinds of copies of Greek and Hebrew Testaments if you want to.

[29:05] And you don't have to sit there like the Colossians who didn't have their little Bible all in a nice little leather bound sort of thing and wonder, do you know the truth? You don't have to look at me and go like, man, I hope he's preaching the truth.

[29:18] All you got to do is open your Bible and look at it. So what a blessing we have with where we are. But here's the point of this. The same gospel was preached to the Colossians as to the rest of the world.

[29:30] They're not missing anything. They've got it all. Which also, by the way, goes to something that a lot of younger folks would have a tendency to say.

[29:42] When I was a chaplain at a children's home, the number one question all of these at-risk kids kept asking me is, why was Christianity the white man's religion?

[29:53] And I was just looking at them going like, what are you talking about? You crazy? Do you know where Christianity came from? It came from the Middle East. You know?

[30:04] Like it prospered in North Africa before it ever got to any Europeans. Like this is not the white, this is not the American religion. Okay? Like I, so anyway, I'll get off my soapbox.

[30:19] The third thing, the third thing, there is fruit in the Colossians and the rest of the world from the gospel. There's fruit in the Colossians and the rest of the world from the gospel.

[30:30] Look back at verse 6 again. It is, that's the preaching of this gospel, constantly bearing fruit and increasing even as it has been doing in you. So saying even as it has been doing in you says, yes, it's producing fruit in the Colossians, but it's also producing fruit in the world.

[30:49] In other words, the faith, hope, and love we see in the Colossians is the same thing we're beginning to see in the rest of the world. So today, because of the preaching of the gospel, we should expect to be able to go to China or South Africa and meet with Christian brothers and sisters who we know they're Christian brothers and sisters because they have faith, hope, and love.

[31:10] Right? Fourth, Paul emphasizes that the gospel is about God's grace. The gospel is about God's grace.

[31:23] Verse 6. Since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth. They heard and they understood.

[31:35] They've been told the word of truth, the gospel, the grace of God in truth. Why is he emphasizing this idea of truth? Because the false teachers were coming to them and telling them, we're here to tell you the truth.

[31:52] So Paul's using their own words and saying, no, no, no. You've already got the word of truth and you've been told the grace of God in truth. You have everything you need.

[32:04] You have everything that you need. The fifth statement I'll make is this. Paul wants them to know that Epaphras has preached rightly to them.

[32:16] Epaphras has preached rightly to them. Verse 7 and 8. Just as you learned it, it being the gospel, the truth about God's grace, from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bondservant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on your behalf, he's also informed us of your love in the Spirit.

[32:34] He's our beloved, faithful bondservant. He's a faithful servant of Christ.

[32:45] Paul's telling the Colossians, your pastor's not crazy. Your pastor's not off of his rocker. He's not teaching you falsely. I'm telling you what, as a pastor, that's really good to have someone come along beside you and confirm that what you're saying is true.

[33:00] I mean, when you think about it, it's interesting to me that what he says about Epaphras as a faithful minister, he points out just as you learned it from Epaphras.

[33:21] Epaphras preached the gospel to them. He's commending to that church this pastor because this pastor taught the truth.

[33:32] Not because this pastor was a good leader. Not because this pastor was a good visitor. Not because this pastor was a good anything else. But because this pastor preached the truth.

[33:45] I'm going to tell you something. If you have a pastor, and I'm not talking about me because one day I may be gone, right? We all know how this works. I'm just saying. But if you've got a pastor preaching to you the truth of the gospel, that's being faithful to the word of God, then you ought to count your many blessings.

[34:04] Because I know churches out there that do not have someone going right to the text and preaching to them from the text, showing them what the word of God says.

[34:14] And if you ever think to yourself, it's like it's time to move out of Medina and you go to someplace else, this is a great point to take with you. That you need to find a church that's preaching the truth of the gospel.

[34:27] Find a church that loves the gospel, that knows the gospel, that puts the gospel front and center in all things. Because without knowing the gospel, then that person's just going to be telling stories.

[34:39] You know, what we don't want to do is open up and just start telling a bunch of stories. We want to know what God said. Paul's giving thanks for the prospering of the gospel, the clarity of the gospel, the preaching of the gospel that the Colossians had.

[34:56] And this gospel, remember this gospel, let's talk about that for just a second, let's define. I don't want to leave it to undefined. Gospel is not about the church. The gospel is not about your pastor.

[35:08] The gospel is not about your worship services. The gospel is not about how you became a Christian. The gospel is not about how you should respond to the gospel.

[35:20] The gospel is good news. It's information. It's FYI. If you get tested at the doctor for something, you want to find out the news before you find out the advice.

[35:41] I want to know what it is before you tell me what I should do. If you walk into the doctor and he just starts telling you what to do, that's where we all kind of go, whoa, whoa, whoa, why do you want me to do that? You haven't told me the news yet.

[35:53] But the gospel is good news. And it's good news because it is the historical account that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on flesh, lived a perfect life, died upon the cross for our sins, as a sacrifice, rose from the grave by the power of the Father and the Spirit, ascended to heaven, sits upon the throne, rules and reigns, and is returning one day.

[36:22] That's the gospel. It's all about Jesus. It's all about what he's done. The gospel is not about how we respond to it, though we do need to respond to it.

[36:39] As a matter of fact, you need to respond to it today. I don't know if you've ever responded to the gospel. Some of you, I'm sure you had. I think maybe probably most of you, but maybe there's somebody here who's never responded to the gospel.

[36:49] The response to the gospel ought to be turn from your sins, stop living your sinful lifestyle, and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the response to the gospel.

[37:04] And so here's how this ends for us then. What do we need to do? We need to love the gospel so much. As a church, this church needs to breathe the gospel.

[37:22] We need to have the aroma. Okay, let's just use that. We'll just use aroma. We lived in Lufkin, Texas, and we lived in a little parsonage for the church, Pollock Baptist Church.

[37:35] It was a 100-year-old building. It used to be the school building for the local community, and they turned it into the parsonage for the pastor. And the church was across the road from the house.

[37:46] It was across, I guess, a state highway, speed limit about 70 miles an hour. You go up a hill. You get to the house, and the first thing is the carport, and then you had to walk all.

[37:56] It was a super long house. I mean, like, it was so long. It was crazy. I mean, they put everything, you know, every old building in the community, they just stacked together. So you had this long hallway to get there.

[38:08] But it was great because I would get into the carport, and right there in that carport, I could smell lunch. But my favorite thing was I could smell the chocolate chip cookies when she was baking them.

[38:26] I was outside, and I could already tell that cookies were being baked. We need to live our lives as a church body in such a way that when people just get near us, they smell the gospel.

[38:44] They smell the gospel. And that means you just got to learn it. You got to learn what the gospel is. Paul's thankful for the work that Christ has done.

[39:02] Because there's nothing worse than listening to somebody who thinks that they know truth, thinks that they know all that you don't know, and they come and they speak with all kinds of authority.

[39:13] You know, that's how you convince people. You just talk louder and more boldly, and everybody goes like, oh, okay, then he must be right. That's not always the case. I just don't want you to be duped.

[39:27] I don't want you to doubt that you don't have the truth. You've got the truth. It's right there in the word. And that is a great foundation for us to be able to move forward to see how does he want us to live.

[39:42] How will the Lord have you respond to him today? Let's pray. Let's pray. Well, let's pray. Well, let's pray.!