"To Him be glory forever": Colossians

Showing posts with label Colossians. Show all posts

Monday, April 6, 2015

The Savior's Glory

Yesterday it was my privilege to lead the community Easter sunrise worship service. On Easter morning, as the sun comes up, we have a worship service on the hill a bit behind our church. This picture was taken shortly before we started, as people were walking up the hill and the sun was beginning to break across a ridge east of town.

Last night I was reading Psalm 8, which opens with this verse:

"O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens."

Reading that verse took me back to a moment during our sunrise worship, a bit farther along when the sun was fully visible, just at the top of the ridge. I was facing the congregation and had my back to the sun, and as I was speaking I turned briefly towards it as I said something about the rising sun on that first Easter morning.

And when I looked towards the sun I was struck by two thoughts. The first was how dazzlingly bright it was at that very moment. It was so bright that I could not look at for more than a brief moment. And the second thought was that as bright as it was, it was only a kind of weak indicator of the glory of our risen Savior, Jesus. The brightness of His glory, right now, is something so powerful that I, sinner that I am, wouldn’t be able to stand its presence for even a moment.

But…and this is a significant "but"…I am a sinner saved by His grace and mercy towards me. Easter reminds me of many things, and one of those things is that one day He is coming again, in great glory. And all those who are His will delight in His glory. One of the passages I preached from on Easter during our regular morning worship was Colossians 3:1-4, which says this in the closing verse:

"When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."

The brightness found in yesterday's sunrise was a reminder of the glory of my Savior, Jesus, a glory that will be seen fully when He returns. It is a glory I will not try to hide from, only because I am His. Rather, it will be a great delight to see His glory, and to be with Him in it.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

The One Thing That Matters

This coming Sunday I will be preaching from Colossians 1:21-23. Part of what Paul writes in verse 22 is this:

"…he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death,…"[1]

The 'he/his' that Paul refers to is Jesus, and Paul is teaching that reconciliation with God comes through Jesus' death and not by any other means.

As I was pondering this I was struck by the difference between the life and death of Jesus. The Gospels are full of stories of his life. They tell of his birth, his baptism, the calling of his disciples, the miracles he did and the teaching he did in groups large and small.

Imagine for a moment that you were one of those people close to Jesus during his life on earth. Imagine that you saw him work miracles. Imagine that you heard his teaching. One person asked him, "What is the greatest commandment in the Law?" And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Imagine that you heard Jesus speak those words and you thought, "Yeah, I get that. That teaching is what it is all about and that is the way I am going to live, 110% of the time."

Well, that is a good teaching of Jesus' to hang on to, and it is a good goal to live a life that is obedient to those two commandments. But the truth is that it still wouldn't be enough to bring about reconciliation with God. The life of Jesus was a wonderful thing and there is much that we can learn from it, but it is only in the death that we are restored to wholeness with God.

Paul continues verse 22 like this:

"…in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach…"

Curiously, reconciliation with God is not found in the life of Jesus, but in the death. We move from being enemies of God to being reconciled with him when we believe that the blood of Jesus was poured out for us. When we believe that by his death, by the giving of his blood, our sin is removed, then we are joined with God as his dearly loved children.

Without the death, the living Jesus is a good teacher. By giving his life he is Lord and Savior. His death is what makes it possible to understand his life. At perhaps the most basic level, believing in the purpose of his death is the only thing that matters.

[1] In the Greek verses 21 through 23 are written as one long sentence. The passage is also translated as one sentence in several English translations, including the King James and the English Standard versions.

Friday, January 16, 2015

It's a Fact

Tomorrow I'll be preaching from Paul's letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verses 9-14. After I had written my sermon I found myself continuing to linger over one particular verse, 13, where Paul says this:

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,"[1]

In just a few words Paul is talking about what is an accomplished fact for all people with faith in Jesus. They have been taken, rescued even, from the kingdom of darkness, where they essentially lived as prisoners, and placed into the kingdom of Christ. They have been taken to a place that is so utterly different from the place of darkness that we could say that the difference is blinding.

Paul calls the first place the "domain of darkness," which suggests to me a place that is unbelievably dark. It is hard to find a place that dark in real life. Think perhaps of a cave, a mine, or the interior of a ship when the power is off. A place that is so dark your eyes never adjust, and never will.

And the other place, "the kingdom of his beloved Son." A place that is dazzling in its brilliance when we first come into it. So bright that we put on our sunglasses and find that we are still squinting. Like the sun shining on new fallen snow.

But the difference of the kingdom of the Son is that our eyes do begin to adjust. We begin to see with clarity the beauty of our Lord and the place he has prepared for those he loves.

And that is what I find myself coming back to in this verse, that by faith in the work of Christ Jesus, the images of the cross and the empty tomb, deliverance has been accomplished, for me, and for all who believe.

It's a fact. I no longer am a prisoner of the domain of darkness but have been transferred to the kingdom of the Son. May this fact also be true of you. Amen.

[1] Verse 14 ends the sentence, saying, "in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Persecution

One of the things we do each week in worship is to pray for Christians in other parts of the world, Christians who are living in places where sometimes just to say aloud that you believe in Jesus is to put your life at risk. To live in those kinds of conditions seems to be so distant from our experience here in the United States, where to openly be a Christian can be to invite a variety of responses but never with the same kinds of risks faced in so many places in the world.

Each week in worship we pray for believers in a different country in the world. I select the country based on a prayer calendar from Frontline Missions. Tomorrow we will pray for Christians in Tajikistan. We pray for their safety, for their faithfulness, and that they would know the closeness with which God always holds them. I encourage the congregation to remembers these Christians in their prayers during the week.

Earlier this week I read an article about persecution in northern India. It is a story not only about what may be considered outbreaks of persecution of Christians, but also about the way in which India as a nation may be drifting towards becoming a place where to claim any religious identity except Hindu is to be anti-Indian, and consequently to be an acceptable target for removal from society.

And yet, believers living in these circumstances know without any doubts that God holds them in all things. A woman who was attacked by a mob and whose home was destroyed said this:

“Even if I am beaten, it is all joy. Those of us who were beaten are the privileged ones. So we live for Christ, and when we die, we die for Christ. We have completely given our lives into the hand of Jesus.”

Last week I began preaching from Paul's letter to the church at Colossae, a church he had heard about but never visited himself. In the second verse of the letter he says this:

"To the saints and faithful brothers [and sisters] in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father."

Paul writes to a people known to him only by faith, and yet they are his dear sisters and brothers in Christ, and he joyfully lifts them to God.

May we remember that we are not just God's people gathered in Dulce, or in Rochester, or wherever you may happen to be, but that in Christ we are a part God's people that are found scattered throughout the world.

May we lift up in prayer our sisters and brothers in Christ throughout the world, particularly sisters and brothers in far-flung places, in hard and even dangerous circumstances, that they may continue to know God's grace and peace in every moment of their lives.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Prayer

During worship on Sunday morning we pray in our church. That may not be much of a surprise. Churches are supposed to pray, aren't they?

Now I am not certain, but I suspect that my church prays a bit differently than the average congregation from the several different branches of Christianity that I have been associated with in my lifetime. I have been Lutheran and Methodist, and I'm currently serving a Reformed congregation. When worshipping among different congregations of those groups, and also other branches of the Christian family, I have been in powerful times of prayer.

One of the things that stands out to me in our congregation is that each Sunday we ask for prayer requests. Each Sunday I walk into the aisle and ask if there is anything anyone wants to lift up. And each Sunday there are from perhaps 10 (rarely), to 15-20 (much more common), to even more, things that the congregation wants lifted in prayer. So I work those requests into our congregational prayer and then keep them as the things I pray over during the next week.

Prayer requests aren't that unusual but in my experience there are many congregations that won't do them, or if asked, people do not share them. I think it is a blessing to serve a congregation where people share what is on their hearts.

But not everyone wants to share every concern, and there is a way we handle that. There are slips of paper, like the one in the picture, where people can write down their requests and share them with me in confidence.

Disclaimer: I am not about to share a confidential request, nor am I going to share something that was contrived to make a point.

After supper this evening I went over to church to go through the sermon I have prepared for a funeral tomorrow. And as I walked into church I glanced at the little table where the blank prayer request forms usually are and I found the one in the picture.

Now on this past Sunday, after worship, I had personally cleaned the church and put things away. This request was not present at that time. So it must have been placed there yesterday, at the funeral I preached yesterday.

I also had a funeral late last week, so tomorrow will be three funerals in eight days, at my church, and I am aware of at least one other funeral, today, in a different church. For a town of about 3,000 that is a lot of heartache.

One of the things that is "standard" in our congregational prayer is to pray for our community. It is something that I work into the prayer without anyone needing to bring it up.

In Colossians 4:2 Paul writes:

"Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving."

I am glad for this anonymous invitation to continue in prayer for our community. I am glad that God worked through someone, unknown to me but fully known to Him, to leave this slip of paper in our church. Someone who knows that the healing for our heartache will be found in God.