Knowledge, Col, 1:9-10

shifted from Ephesians here now into Colossians. So you've got to shift books here for a while. But the good news is we'll be in here for at least a month. So there's some continuity here. Remember, we're doing these side-by-side studies. And in order that I not say two things at the same time, we do have to do a little bit of moving back and forth. OK, so we have this passage that Helmut read for us. And one thing to remember, we previously, some weeks back, went through verses 3 through 8. And so, remember, this is the context.

And basically, Paul, so far as we know, had not been to Colossae. And it appears that what had taken place there in the founding and building up of the church took place because this fellow named Epaphras. had gone, it would appear from Ephesus into the Lycus Valley where there was Colossae and Laodicea and Heropolis, and in those three cities near one another. And so he had been informed, Paul had been informed by Epaphras about how the church was doing, and so he was encouraged by that. And so that's the preface to the passage we're looking at here.

And so he says here, for this reason also, that is for the very reasons that he's talked about, since the day we heard of it, so he's looking back to this time since they first heard of what was happening there. And one of the things to take notice of is he sprinkles superlatives in extreme words. And he says, for example, we have not ceased that you may be filled.

Words that have absolute sense to them. And then all, all spiritual, all respects, every good work. So this is a passage of extremes. Can you handle a little bit of extremism? That's what this is about. Now, the bottom line. Let's cut to the chase here.

What is Colossians 1, 9, and 10 about? First thing, it's about Paul's prayer for believers, right? That's the first thing. The second thing, it's about the condition of believers. Paul's praying about their condition in contrast to their position, okay? So he's praying for them.

Now, so you might be thinking, so we're all done, right? No, not yet. We've got more to go. Now, as we look at this, there's nothing to be alarmed about. If you see some languages on the screen, remember our little ditty here, if you can't read it, don't worry about it. So what you can glean from it, and we'll take one step at a time. Now, first part of the sequence, there's really three steps here.

The first one, Paul has not ceased to pray for the saints at Colossae. He's laying that out. And we'll talk in a bit about what that means. But He's laid that out. He says, I have not ceased to pray for you. But that has a purpose. He doesn't just say, I have not ceased to pray for you. Let's go on to the next subject.

He says, in order that, the saints at Colossae, He wants them, and He asks the Lord, that they be filled with the knowledge of His will and all wisdom and understanding. But He's still not done because He wants that to take place And that's the third consequence, that they will walk. He wants an impact in their lives. They will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

So He is praying for this work in them that there might be this result on the outside. So are we done yet? No. Now, for this reason also, since the day we heard of it, so he's beginning here, having laid out the things that he's laid out, then he proceeds with this request. We need to take a look at when he says, the day we first heard of it, let's kind of get some background.

Think of it, here's Paul, a few decades before that, he was out there trying to see that Christians are killed. It says in Acts that Paul was speaking himself, and he said, I pursued the church to the point of death. He wanted to see them done away with, whatever it took, even if it took death. Here is this Paul now praying for these people.

But what we see took place is about the same time Ephesians and Colossians were written, but those were preceded by several years with journeys to Ephesus. And it appears that Epaphras had gone from Ephesus to Colossae, and in that Lycus Valley here, Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis right across the valley.

And so when he said, since the day we first heard of it, some time had passed, probably since the initial time when he first heard of it. But he's saying, we've been continuing to pray for you. We've been going on praying for you ever since that day. Perhaps he's saying that because he himself hadn't been there. Others had been there. But he says, just because I haven't been there, don't think that we've forgotten you. We're still praying.

So what does it say? We have not ceased to pray for you. And so we need to ask what that's saying. Does this mean that Paul doesn't get to do anything else but pray for the Colossians? Time for dinner. Sorry, I can't come. I've got to pray. Paul, watch out! No, I'm sorry. I've got to pray. Is Paul able to sleep? Paul, you need to write a letter to these people. Nope, got to pray.

No? Can he write this very letter? No, here's how it works. Since the day we heard of it, there's the start, right? He is praying at intervals and he's telling them, we've not stopped praying at intervals. Regularly, we've been praying for you and that has not stopped since the very first day.

That's what he's telling them. So this not ceasing doesn't mean he can't do anything else. but he continues in intervals to remember them and to pray for them and to be concerned for their well-being. He's cared about them since the very moment that he heard about it. So his not ceasing doesn't mean that he can't do anything else, doesn't mean that he now all of a sudden cannot take on any other tasks. It means that he prays regularly for them and he's continued to pray regularly for them.

Okay, something else just to point out, in this first part here, the King James here has desires, and it's because in the 1611 time period, that word desires was used to pray with specific requests, so it had the same meaning at the time. So, just to clarify that point. He comes into his next point here. He wants a consequence as he prays. He doesn't just say, we pray for you, and then he stops.

He prays and he says, and we ask the Lord specifically for this to take place. What is it going to take in order for there to be a change in the lives of the Colossians, of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ in their lives, what's it going to take? It's going to take the Lord working in their lives, and so he prays specifically for what it's going to take. Now, he says that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. So we need to look at this word filled. Now, does this mean filled like the gas gauge?

Not quite. You can't go to the filled-with-his-will station and say, fill her up. Not self-service or full-serve. That's not quite the way it works. Let's take a look at what it does mean. This word filled is passive, by the way. So what does that mean? The passive voice tells us that we don't do the filling. So that means that I can't say, boy, you know, I am going to work really, really hard to get filled with the knowledge of His will.

The Lord is going to do the filling. It is His doing. Well, that sounds kind of familiar, like Ephesians chapter 1, huh? It's the Lord's doing. What we see as we look at this, Paul has a particular direction that he's praying, and while he has given them encouraging words in verses 3-8, the truth is, if he is praying for them to be filled, And he has a concern.

As a matter of fact, one of the things we brought out before was that there were false teachers coming into Colossae. And he is concerned that the various things that they're getting, they're being fed various teachings. He's concerned that the teachings that they're getting might distract them and displace the fullness of knowledge of God's will that they need to have. And so he's praying that they might be filled with the knowledge of God's will.

One of the things that is true of filling, is filling something displaces whatever else is there. Even if I fill a glass with water, it displaces the air that was there. One of the things he's looking for here is that they be filled with the knowledge of his will so that the other things that are distracting, the other things that are false, the other things that are an error, will not be taking them off the path. He wants them to be filled with the knowledge of his will for the sake of putting them in the truth and displacing what's false.

So the conclusion is that the believers of Colossae are not now filled with the knowledge of his will. There's an issue there. There's a concern that he has, and it's the reason that he's writing this letter. One of the things I think we've got to recognize, and we're going to see it as we go through the book of Colossians over the next several decades, the believers of Colossae were being fed a spiritual concoction. You know what I mean by a concoction? It's a mixture of things that's put together, not necessarily with forethought or any congruity between all the different parts. You kind of have this vision of a mad scientist sort of pouring things together and not quite knowing what you're going to end up with. That is the spiritual character of what they're being fed. You see that?

And so he starts off, and we're going to see this as we go through his letter to the Colossian Church, false knowledge. One of the things he's going to say a couple times here in this book is he's going to talk about true knowledge. If you go through books like 2 Peter, you're going to run into that same word pair again. True knowledge indicates that there is a false knowledge.

And so one of the things that they're being fed, this concoction that the false teachers are bringing in, It includes false knowledge. Philosophy. Things that human beings cook up. Things that sound like wisdom, but it's what this world made up. Empty deception.

One of the points we've made is that there's lots of different false teachers bringing things into Colossae, and one of the places where it's coming from is over the Silk Road, the Silk Road train. And one of the things it's bringing in is philosophies out of the Middle East and out of India. And so they're getting brands of, for example, Hinduism. And the people bringing those philosophies would not describe them as empty deception.

But he does. Hinduism, for example, says that we are all a dream of God. And we simply have to be absorbed back into the impersonal Godhead. That's empty deception. That fails to deal with the real issues and will delude people. Empty deception. Now, the other thing that appears to be coming in is Jewish kinds of things.

You've got to do this. You've got to not do that. Stop doing this. Start doing that. Don't eat that. Don't touch that. Don't drink that. Drink this instead. And by the way, don't do anything here, but make sure you do it over there. All the rules. So this is some Jewish mumbo-jumbo that's being mixed into this concoction, but we're not done. We're not done. We're not done. We're not done.

Self-made religion, self-abasement, severe treatment of the body. And frankly, this has gone on for centuries. People think, boy, somehow if I just deprive myself, that'll fix it. You know what it does? It just deprives themselves. That's all it does. It doesn't fix anything. But we're not done.

Worship of angels. That's come into our own culture the last decade or so. Worship of angels is one of the things that's happening here. So they've got this spiritual concoction that they're being fed. Paul says, I pray that you might be filled with the knowledge of God's will to displace this spiritual concoction that's coming at you.

You see that? So let's look at this word knowledge. Epinosus. Now it's a little different. We've looked at another word, gnosis. This has got a prefix in front of it here. So we need to know what epinosis is, okay? Do you know what epinosis is? Okay, I want you to know what epinosis is. This is not epinosis.

Okay, let's get to what it really is. All right. It's a substantial, thorough, and penetrating knowledge. This isn't at a superficial level, okay? It's a knowledge that's intensive. It's not shallow and introductory. One of the things, it isn't just memorizing facts and information. Today, as long as it works, computers can memorize things. You can make a computer memorize lots of things. This is not just that. It's an intensive, thorough knowledge. It's an in-depth knowledge. that you may be filled with the knowledge, the in-depth knowledge of His will, of God's will.

One of the things we've pointed out in weeks past, and it's interesting here, both in the introduction to the letter to the Ephesians, and now to the letter to the Colossians, we keep running into this His will. And so we want to break it down here. One of the points we made is that a lot of Ephesians 1 lays out God's sovereign will, God's will that cannot be thwarted. If you're a believer and you're concerned, boy, I want to do exactly God's will, there is an aspect of God's will, God's sovereign will, that you will not thwart.

It is because God is sovereign and He has predetermined them in times past, this is what's going to happen. Some of those are permanent situations that are going to continue through time. Some of those things are processes. God has predetermined that you will be conformed to the image of His Son. If you're a believer here this morning, that process is predetermined. That's part of God's sovereign will.

Now, we also brought up that there's God's moral will, okay? It's revealed in Scripture, and that's some of the things that we've read about and we'll read about even more in times ahead here. When Paul says, you know, do this, don't do that, he is explaining God's moral will, okay?

And add to that God's individual will. Things that are the will of a specific believer and different from another. So there's those three aspects. I would submit to you that certainly he wants them to understand the sovereign will, but what he is focusing upon is the moral will and the individual will for the believers there. So he says that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. And so let's look specifically at that.

The first thing is every believer has a position in Christ, It's eternal and untouchable. He's not praying that somehow that would be changed or tweaked or anything. That's fixed. Your position in Christ is fixed. There are a great many aspects of it. Paul is not praying specifically about that, not in the sense of any change that can be made to it or should be made to it.

But he is praying instead about the working out of that position in the life of the believer. That's what he wants to see worked out. The part of God's will that is fixed and immutable and unchangeable, eternal and fixed and untouchable in the heavenlies, that is to be worked out in the life of the believer. About that he is praying.

That doesn't start with behaviors, but comes about by God's working in each believer. You notice what he first talks about here is, he didn't say, I pray that you may have the right list of rules. He doesn't say, I pray that you may have this set of behaviors and that's it. He prays about something that will happen in them by God's doing. He wants the Lord to work in their hearts and bring this about, not because of a set of rules that comes from the outside.

Isn't it amazing how much of Christendom doesn't get that picture? Isn't it amazing how many people are told, okay, here's a set of rules, you conform to that, work really hard, do your best, here it is. And they just simply look to the external set of rules and go no further. There's no depth, there's no understanding of the position in Christ, there's no understanding of what the Lord is doing in His process. There's just simply, here's the rules, do it. And there's only an appeal to the flesh. He does not want an appeal to the flesh. The flesh will come up with its own mess. So being filled with the knowledge of God's will consists of some specific things. Knowing in depth your position in Christ through His Word. We need to know that. We need to know who we are.

One of the things that we'll sometimes come across, and it can be difficult, is someone gets amnesia. They forget, where am I? What am I doing? and it makes it tough to even know, you know, how do I orient myself? What do I do next? I had that experience about 12 years ago when the Lyme disease first hit. I mentioned I had Lyme disease. When it first hit, I'd be in the middle of a telephone conversation, all of a sudden it's like somebody just cut the line. Couldn't remember who I was talking to, couldn't remember, you know, what were we saying? What was the subject? It would just completely drop out.

Why is this important? It is the orientation from which we live and act and everything else. We need to know our position. That's our orientation to what's gone on before, what's happening now, and what I'm headed for in the future. It's also knowing that your position is founded in your having been identified with Christ. If we don't understand those things, If we don't have that, we've got no place from which to go and no place from which to grow.

Understanding that God has predetermined that you'll be conformed to the image of the Son. See, this isn't God's best guess. It isn't God saying, boy, I'd sure like it, but who knows if it's actually going to happen. It's recognizing that is something that God has put into place.

And finally, understanding the character of the life of Christ and the believer. When we come across, as we've mentioned in times past, when we come across imperatives in the New Testament, those imperatives are not moral imperatives, that is, you must do this or else you will fail, and failing you'll be condemned. They're imperatives of logic, because based on our position, this is the only logical consequence. Understanding the character of the life of Christ in the believer is critical to the knowledge of God's will, because that's God's moral will, the life of Christ lived through the believer.

Notice the condition that he puts on it. It says that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will is in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So it isn't just that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, but you may be filled with the knowledge of His will and that is entirely in the realm of all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Let me take a look at that. A few weeks back we had this cultural insight. I want to review it quickly with you.

The Greek culture, which had an influence in both Ephesus and Colossae, admired philosophy, intellectual development. And what they did is they centered upon three words. And Sophia, Phronesis, and Sunesis. And two of those words, Sophia and Sunesis, were the words that popped up here in Colossae. In Ephesians, we had Sophia and Phronesis. And now here in Ephesus, letter to the Colossians in 1.9, we've got Sophia and Senesis. Now it's fine to throw those words around.

Sophia is wisdom, as we covered when we went through Ephesians 1.8.

But this other word we want to touch on too, one of the points we made is that Sophia, throughout the New Testament, is specifically defined as either the wisdom of God, or the wisdom of the world. It's one or the other. The majority of the places in the New Testament, you'll find it referring to the wisdom of God.

Now, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, this is this word synesis. So let's take a look at this word. This word has the idea of bringing all the pieces together, they're in the abstract, so that the parts make sense as a whole. In our modern vernacular, we might put it this way, it's having it all together. Having it together, being able to bring all the parts and pieces together. What does it mean in my life, all these parts and pieces, if I understand, okay, Jesus died on the cross.

Is that true? Yeah. And if I also understand that there is a Holy Spirit, is that true? Yeah. As true as they are, it is when we understand the total of what God has done and is doing and is going to do. That's getting it together. When we understand how all the pieces fit together, they fit as a whole. That's this word synesis and that's what he's talking about. He says, I desire that you have an understanding of the will of God that's not just parts and pieces. but that it makes sense together. You get the big picture. That's what he's spelling out to them.

The other differentiation he makes is all spiritual wisdom and understanding, which is the implication that the other wisdom and understanding that they're being presented, the spiritual concoction, is not truly spiritual, not in a good sense. Spiritual here is spiritual having to do with the Holy Spirit's ministry in our lives, not what the world brings. Have you noticed that there's all sorts of vague spirituality out there in the culture? People are happy to have spirituality. You want to talk about people having this sort of an experience, or that sort of an experience, or feeling spiritual, people are happy to talk about that.

This, however, is a specific truth based on the spirituality of God Himself and nothing else. Now, we've got the consequence here. Paul is prayed, he prays for this internal He's looking for a result then to come from that. Right? So we're done, right? No. Okay. Verse 10, we're not done.

He says, "...so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord." He's saying, here's the result. I am praying for this in your lives and in your hearts with the consequence, with the result. I am praying for this in your lives and in your hearts with the consequence, with the result. that it looks this way. This is how it gets spelled out. He didn't say, here's the behaviors, start acting. He's saying, here's the behaviors, but I want those to come about because of what God is doing in you. That's what I'm praying for.

I'm praying for, yes, for these things to have reality in your lives, for them to be actual, real things, It's the outward manner of one's life. One moment to the next, step by step, based on the inner spiritual character and position. That's what this word walk is about. It's the outward manner of one's life. It's the outward manner of one's life. It's the outward manner of one's life. We'll see it as we go through Ephesians about seven times, and we're going to see it in each chapter of Colossians.

Here is for the first time being introduced in Colossians 1.10. Turns out that this description of how we live as walking comes out of the Old Testament.

It's not something that the Colossians and the Ephesians would have understood from their own culture. So it would take some teaching for them to understand what that meant. And the truth is that's probably more the way it is in our own culture too. Probably walking is not understood as this is our daily life. This is the way we live moment by moment. And so it needs to be explained as Paul and the teachers that worked with him likely had to do.

So what does he say? Walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. Okay. So we need to ask this question. Does this mean that we're to walk about, that is to live as a lifestyle, in such a way as to be worthy of the Lord so as to earn our position in Him? Is that what that's saying? No. No, our position in Him is based on believing, not earning. It's not the cart before the horse. We have a position in Christ, therefore we walk, not we walk so that we can have the position. Very important sequence there. That's why Paul is praying that their walking worthy is based on their being filled by God and not on, here's a set of rules, follow it. Big, big difference. Big difference. That's what he's trying to get across very clearly to them.

You see, the Jews that were coming in, part of the spiritual concoction, We're already coming in saying, don't do this, do that, don't touch this, make sure you touch that, don't do this. Coming in with all the do's and the don'ts in their rules. He's saying, that's not what we're aiming for. We're looking for those who are already believers, already have that position, to walk living out of that position that they already have. Not in order to earn a position.

Finally, it says, to please Him in all respects. Now, one of the things about this pleasing, again, we've got to ask this question. Am I trying to please the Lord so then He'll do something? No. We're not trying to do something to please the Lord so then He'll respond. God has already done. God has already done what He is going to do. It is because of what He has already done. that we learn to please Him, in all respects. We're responding to what He has done, not doing, so He will respond.

Important sequence there. Look at this in Matthew 12, verse 18, God the Father says to His Son, Behold My servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved, that is Jesus Christ, in whom I am well pleased. God is pleased with His Son, isn't He? There's no question about that.

What does He want to see in us? Not our best efforts, not the old college try, not the best we could ever do, not our best foot forward. He wants to see the life of His Son. It's His Son that is well pleasing. So, what pleases the Lord is His Son. We have the life of the Lord, that's what he wants to see. That's exactly what he wants to see. So Paul is not exhorting them to do their very best. He is exhorting them instead to get out of the way. So it is the life of the Lord that pleases him. So we please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work. Now let's ask this question.

Do you have to hunt around for good works? Do you have to invent them? Ever run into a good works inventor? He has prepared good works that we might walk in them. Someone who cooks up good works to do, that's not what he's looking at. We'll see farther on in Ephesians. He has prepared good works that we might walk in them. Here it's again, what God has done, all we've got to do is show up. How's that for a spiritual secret? Just show up.

God's prepared them. We don't have to cook up anything. and again and again. We don't have to invent anything. We don't have to go out and mine them and make them out of nothing. God's prepared them in advance. Every good work, it's His to do, in us, through us. He's prepared them in advance. Let's look at this idea of bearing fruit.

There's a passage in Romans 4-6 that is beautiful for touching on this subject who have the same word as in Colossians 1.10. Carpoforeo. And it means to bear fruit. And one of the things that jumps out of this passage, you see in verse 4, there's a bearing fruit to God. And in verse 5, a bearing fruit to death. And that brings up this key principle. Every spiritual tree is going to bear fruit.

It's only a question of which kind. It's only a question of which kind. So what is he looking for? It is only from the life of the Lord that there is going to be fruit to God. If it's not that, If it is the very best that we can do, it is still not fruit to God. Okay? Key distinction here. And so that's what he's wanting to discern here. So here's the discernment that we might bear fruit for God, certainly not fruit for death. Okay. And finally, increasing in the knowledge of God.

I'm going to postpone until next week talking about this phrase here, and there's a few different reasons for it. We're going to postpone until next week. It's because what Paul has described here, he's not done with, and this actually ties in well with next week's passage. Because what we've presented this morning is those three steps.

He prays, he prays for the result in them, and then he prays that that may be having this result, externally and in their lives. And there's more to go on to this. We're going to see more in this passage. So now we're all done, right? Not quite. Okay. Almost. So we'll continue next week with this thought.

One of the things to remember is that as Paul is playing this out, there are lots of consequences to God's work in us, aren't there? There are lots of things that come out of God's work in us, and he wants to fully explain those and spell those out, and that's why he continues on into this next passage. But one of the things I think for us to grasp here is that the Lord has set in motion, He has put everything in place by His provision in the past, by His provision for the present, by His provision for the future, He has put everything in place for us to be growing.

2 Peter 3.18 carries forth this idea, and Peter is ending up his second epistle here, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That grow is an imperative. It is an imperative why? It's not an imperative that if you don't grow, God's going to be really mad and He's going to punish you. It is growing, that is God's design and intent, and He has made every provision in the past, in the present, and into the future that fits with that growth. Growth is what a believer is designed by God to do as a new creation.

It's the same word that we see as increasing, there in Colossians 1.10. It's key to recognize that we don't just become a believer and then, okay, wait till the Lord takes me home. But in fact, God has a process taking place now.

It does not consist of, here's a set of rules, work harder and harder and harder. Here's the external behavior, just keep getting better and better and better at making the flesh do this stuff. That's not his pattern. I have made every provision. That's what we've been reading about. It's what God's done. It's what God's done. It's what God has done. I have made every provision. Rely on my provisions and not your own life, not your own resources, not what you think you can add to it.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you have designed this so that from the inside out, you have made us not just slightly different, but a new creation. We are not people who just have a slightly tweaked present, but we have an entirely different history. We have an entirely different present and we have an entirely different future. We're indeed, Lord, a marvelous work, and we just pray that we might grow in our understanding of it, that we might be filled with the knowledge of your will. Lord, thank you ever so much for what you've done, are doing, and will do into the future. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.