Embracing Suffering for the Growth of the Church

1. "Following Jesus is hard. It's not easy. Now he doesn't say that exactly like he did, I don't have a verse that says, Paul said, following Jesus is hard. But the idea here is that the words that he's using in this passage and the things that he's talking about, like suffering, struggling, toiling, all for Jesus, it's hard, because those are things that are with the idea of following Jesus. And suffering and struggling, it's hard. It's not something that we typically want to go through." [43:06] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "Jesus is King. And not only is Jesus King, he is the reason for all things. He's the point of it all. He's the center of it all. And so there's nothing that happens anywhere, at any time, that happens outside of his voices, outside of his supremacy, because he is King. And we have to do that. We have to keep that as centered in our vision. We have to have that in common. Because if we forget that, that Jesus is King. Well, then all of a sudden, we're suffering, and we lose hope. And we forget that fundamentally, that we are not alone." [45:30] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Followers of Jesus suffer with Jesus. Followers of Jesus suffer with Jesus. Now, with Jesus is important. So let's look back in chapter 1, verse 1. He says, Now I rejoice in my suffering. Let's have joy again. Because of suffering. He rejoices in his suffering. That's a really key thing that Paul kind of expands on in a lot of different places, and it's something that we see is pretty true for followers of Christ. We can rejoice in our suffering. But let's talk about what that means. It doesn't mean that Paul enjoys suffering. He's not asking for it. He's not saying, I know it feels good, the suffering that's on my way. It's quite the contrary." [46:03] (58 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "Paul rejoices in his suffering because in his mind, he is suffering for the sake of the church. He is taking that onto himself. He is to suffer for the body. That's kind of a really important thing for him. And it might be a little bit hard for us to picture it, but I've got an image to help you figure this out. Maybe think about it a little bit. I want you to imagine two trees. Now, if you've heard of them. But I want you to imagine there's two trees. One is kind of an older, weathered, you know the kind of thing I'm talking about? This is the kind of tree that I was a little boy. And then, next to that tree, imagine there's a little smaller tree. Now, I want you to imagine those trees. I want you to imagine that they're heading into autumn. So, those trees are heading into autumn. And that older, weathered tree, I want you to see a little attention. You're going to suffer. It's not going to be great. It's going to be kind of hard." [47:26] (83 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "Paul paints us this picture of Jesus identifying with us in our sufferings and we identify him. We suffer together. When Paul is suffering for the sake of the church, he is filling up what is lacking in Christ's affliction for the sake of his body. He is suffering with Jesus. Jesus is suffering with him. So that means that when we suffer for the sake of the gospel, when we endure persecution, rejection, ostracization because we follow Jesus, when people make assumptions about us, when they lie about us, when they spread rumors about us, when we lose promotions or friendships or family members, all for the sake of Jesus, for the kingdom of God, we do not do that alone. We do it by ourselves." [51:52] (46 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "Followers of Jesus suffer for a purpose. We suffer for a purpose. It's not meaningless suffering. It's not like you're not suffering just to suffer. There's a point. So let's read a little bit further. In verse 25 he says. Of which meaning the body Christ. The church. Of which I became a minister. According to the stewardship from God. That was given to me for you. To make the word of God fully known. So here's the idea. Paul identifies himself as a minister of the gospel. According to the direction. The stewardship of God. For the sake of the church. And for the sake of this church in Colossae. So meaning that you know. Paul knows that he's sent to the Gentiles. And for a reason. So why is Paul suffering for their sake? Why is he a minister of the gospel? To make the word of God fully known. That's it. We can go home. Not really. Don't worry. We have some more to talk about. All this suffering. All this work. All this toil. Is for this purpose. So that this church might fully know the word of God." [57:15] (75 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "There is a hope of glory. A hope of high renown in you and in me as we follow Jesus. And it is Jesus. He is our hope. He is our glory. He is all the things. He is this great mystery. That generations of people searched the scriptures and couldn't find the answer until he came. We have to think about that. That from the conception of God's people in the nation of Israel. He told them. One will come. One will rise up. And he will lead you to me. And he will make me known among the Gentiles. And so generations for hundreds of years. Scholars and studiers of the prophets and of the law. They were searching for the answers. And they were trying to figure it out. And when Jesus finally showed up. They didn't know what it meant. And they couldn't figure it out." [01:00:12] (49 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "Jesus is king. And I know that we're American. Or we're in America. And we don't get what that means. Because we have a president. We get to vote for them every four years. We don't like when we vote for the other person. And hope or figure it out. We don't get to vote Jesus out. He's not going anywhere. He's the king. For all eternity. Not only is he the king. He is the king of kings. He is the lord of lords. He is the center of creation. He is the highest and the one. He is the point of it all. And to be a minister of the gospel. To follow him and tell others about him. That means something. Because that's why Paul tells them. That he proclaims Jesus." [01:04:15] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "Followers of Jesus mature through three things. The first one, Paul says, is through proclaiming the gospel. Him we proclaim. A proclamation or to proclaim means you tell people. You have to be told the gospel and you have to tell others the gospel. We proclaim, not just the gospel, but we proclaim who Jesus is because that is the gospel. The gospel is the story of Jesus. And it's us recognizing who Jesus is. So maturity in Christ, that growing up in him, comes from proclaiming the gospel. The second one is we warn everyone. Warning is not a fun word. It's not something that we want. Because you don't want to receive it and you don't want to give it. But let me tell you something. Followers of Jesus mature through the warning that comes from the gospel. That warning is the correction and the admonition of other believers in the spirit of God when we stray. If you're going to mature in Christ, you need people who can help course correct you. You've got to course correct. Because let's face it, we're all human. We can move our eyes around. We can get distracted. Not only that, we can think that what we're doing is right. We can convince ourselves of that. We can say this is right. I should be doing this. But you need other people to warn you. You need the gospel to warn you about what is actually right. That's where maturity comes from. Through recognizing that warning and listening to it. And then finally, the maturity in Christ comes through teaching. It comes through teaching everyone. And we know exactly what to teach because Jesus told us in Matthew 28 right as he was getting ready to go back to heaven and ascend. He tells them to teach everyone to obey all that I've commanded you. It's not about knowing the Bible or knowing the scripture. It's the obedience factor." [01:08:53] (60 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10. "Followers of Jesus suffer together. We suffer together. It's an important thing. Because just as we said that Jesus suffers with us, we are not alone. As his body, as his church we suffer together. Look at me beginning in chapter 2 verse 1. For I want you to know how great a struggle, how great an agony I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face. So I'm going to pause right there and give us some context. There was this whole valley basically in modern day Turkey where all of these churches were. Where all these little cities were. And what happened was really cool. Paul's in Ephesus. He makes some disciples. They get sent out. They multiply. And now they're starting to plant churches all down this little valley in all these different places. Paul's never been there. He doesn't know them. If he showed up he wouldn't know who they were. And so I think for Paul it's probably a little crazy because up to this point he's been the dude. He's the guy who shows up in town. He knows who the first followers of Jesus are. But he doesn't know them. But he's still struggling for them. He's agonizing for them. And look at what he says. I'm struggling for all of these people that their hearts may be encouraged being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery which is Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." [01:15:41] (92 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)