Pastor Pat Edwards 1/21/2007
Grace Baptist Church in Bountiful, Utah

Life is fascinating and God has a wonderful sense of humor. Friday afternoon I was ready to write the introduction to this sermon and decided I wanted to begin by talking about truth. So I went to Merriam-Webster online dictionary to get a precise definition but as I pulled the page up I saw an article titled, Words of the Year 2006, so I clicked on it. Do you know what the choice for Word of the Year was? Truthiness, and the definition given it by the American Dialect Society is "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true." I laughed when I saw it for it deals precisely with the issues that confront people everyday whether in Bountiful, Utah or Colosse, Phrygia. Too often people bring ruin and sorrow to their lives because of "truthiness." They live according to what they want to be true rather than what is true. Truth is defined as "the state of being the case : FACT: the body of real things, events, and facts: ACTUALITY. So people go into debt because of truthiness, they leave their spouses and desert their children because of truthiness, they get pregnant or sexually transmitted diseases because of truthiness, they flit from church to church or from belief to belief because of truthiness - always seeking what they want to be true rather than accepting what is true. It’s a serious problem that we all face at times and need to deal with head on. In the first eleven words of this letter, 1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, some real issues are raised although most of the time we don’t deal with them because they’ve already been settled for us. But that wasn’t true for the Colossians the first time a letter came from outside the church telling them what they needed to believe or how they needed to behave. I remember several years ago a minister from another country asked Grace to host him at our church and sponsor him for other events. The board wrote back to ask for his credentials and references since we didn’t know him. He responded by letting us know he had been "called" by God and the wrath of God would fall on our congregation if we didn’t recognize his authority and honor his requests. He made it clear when he arrived he would get us straightened out. Since he didn’t provide any credentials and references and given his tone and claims we decided it was best not to buy him a plane ticket to America and provide him with a pulpit to preach from.

So how do the believers in Colosse know Paul is an apostle, that he is obeying the will of God? Last week I called this a letter from Grandpa Paul but other than sketching out an assumed spiritual genealogy I didn’t clarify why I think of him as Grandpa Paul. And there are those other issues. What does it mean to be an apostle? The most common meaning is "someone who is sent as a representative of another" but how do they know Paul has been called to serve the Lord and sent by him? And what is the will of God? How do we know it? Can we only know his general will and not his specific will? By general I mean all the stuff the Bible teaches that applies to everyone; love your neighbor, worship God, pray for your leaders. Specific means the day-to-day stuff that uniquely applies to me or you or perhaps to a group we’re part of; should we buy the new building, start that ministry or change jobs. What’s important about God’s will? If we’re faithful to his revealed truth, the big principles, do the day-to-day issues need a lot of attention? In other words should I worry more about obeying what God says or the choice I make between three job offers? That should be a fairly easy question to answer. If I am the person I should be then the choices I make will be the ones I should make. But most of us still want to know beforehand and we get knotted shoulder muscles and headaches trying to figure it out. However the reality for most of us is that we discover the Lord’s specific will for our lives in the process of living life - not beforehand. As we see the results of our choices we learn if we are in or out of the will of God.

What people believe eventually bubbles to the surface in what they do. Since that’s true the Colossians must study Paul’s life for evidence of his apostleship and calling. The Word of God will always produce hope, faith and love in a believer’s life.

This past week Chris and I started catching up on the backlog of movies we’ve missed although after seeing two movies I’m thinking we ought to just throw the list out the window. It’s not that they were bad but after a difficult weekend we chose two comedies that had come highly recommended by the critics. They sure didn’t feel like comedies but more like depressing stories of human weakness with a few jokes thrown in. One was "The Devil Wears Prada," the story of a young female writer hoping to make it in the world of journalism. She’s hired at Runway Magazine - think Vogue - as an assistant to the dictatorial editor who thinks only of herself and the world of high-style fashion. Our young journalist soon discovers that if she wants to get ahead she needs to adopt the values of her boss and the world of fashion. It’s not enough to do her job well, she must sell her soul as well to this system that values style over substance, image over action and self over others. And that’s what she does although not without a few twinges of conscience and lots of justification.

The fashion world is real but the image it presents of itself isn’t. Even the dictatorial boss recognizes this with a comment on how all her assistants are on the cutting edge of style, look glamorous but are too stupid to do their jobs. Their teen years were spent thumbing through Vogue or Elle or Seventeen instead of doing their school work so now they can’t spell or look up a reference or carry on an intelligent conversation.

We’ve all seen the infomercials with all the testimonials but if we look carefully at the bottom there is always the disclaimer that these results are not typical or the results may vary. Meaning: what we’re advertising isn’t real so it only works by accident. Think of what the world promises if you’ll sell your soul; beauty, youth, pleasure, happiness, wealth, peace, contentment, joy. If you’ll put yourself on the pedestal, if you will make your "needs" the priority, if you’ll bend all your efforts to become rich, if you’ll let pornography feed your sexual desires, If you’ll drive this car or purchase this brand of clothing you’ll be happy. But every scientific survey proves otherwise. People are wasting their lives and destroying the lives of others by chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

We have the same trouble in our world that the Colossians had in their’s, which claims are true and which are false? The test that eventually gives the right answer is reality and time. Given time what is real always becomes apparent. That’s what we see in today’s passage. Acceptance of the good news always produces increasing amounts of hope, faith and love. The Colossians can know Paul is an apostle called by God because his life produces spiritual fruit that anyone can see, fruit that lasts. It produced Epaphras and Epaphras produced the believers in Colosse. The changes they are seeing in their lives first occurred in Paul then in Epaphras.

Paul is a creature of habit like most of us and his letters tend to follow a regular pattern. Have you ever noticed what it is? The first half of his letters deal with doctrine, the belief system that controls our lives - what we know and the attitudes and actions that should come from that knowledge. The second half of his letters usually deal with specific issues and problems that the church or believers are facing and what the response should be based on the truth found in the first half of his letter.

Here’s a paraphrase of verses four through six. The Word of truth gives us hope that life can and will be different, that there is something to look forward to even in the worst of times. That hope produces faith in Jesus Christ and love for all the saints. And while it isn’t said explicitly right here it results in the good news being shared with unbelievers all over the world and creating new life just as it did with the Colossians.

When Paul writes he has heard about "your faith in Jesus Christ and of the love you have for all the saints" what do you think he’s hearing about? Declarations of love or descriptions of their activities and ministries? "They are faithful; they are loving" or "They share everything they have; they still believe in spite of beatings and jail; they forgive one another?" The obvious answer is that Paul is being informed about all the changes that have occurred in their lives because of their faith and love.

And the Word, the good news, is producing evidence of that same kind of hope, faith and love in the lives of today’s believers, in your lives and my life. Last week I shared in our business meeting that above and beyond your regular giving you provided over $6000 to meet the needs of people and the majority of that money did not stay in our congregation but went to help others. Because of you Friendship Club was started that ministers to handicapped adults who have few opportunities for social interaction or spiritual teaching. Three pastors will attend Bible School this year and be better equipped to serve their congregations because God’s Word has changed your lives. Men and women, boys and girls will hear the good news in Salt Lake City and in Utah and in Arizona and in Italy and in Rwanda and in the Philippines because of you - and that’s just the through our congregational giving. I know many of you support missionaries personally so people in places like Jordan and Ethiopia and South America also are hearing the good news. And through our support of ministries like the Gideons the Bible is being given to people all over the world.

Ultimately that is the will of God for you and me. Moving to that city, accepting this job, buying that house or attending this school are not as important as making sure our hope, faith and love are growing and producing spiritual fruit that bring honor to God and blessing to others.

So as we start this letter Paul has written to the Christians in Colosse we are reminded that Jesus gives us all we need to experience a full and productive life and that life in turn is evidence that Christ is in us and we are in him.