The ministry of Paul and the local church

OK, here we are, Colossians 2, 1-3, and I have this outline. I'm going to explain these two ministries going on here, which is kind of new, but I'll tell you why I'm doing that. And then we're going to look at the doctrine that Paul was presenting in this section of Colossians. It was hard to jump in here because it's a rolling mill of doctrine that Paul is presenting and then it's hard to start right on chapter 2 verse 1 because it's in the context of what's come before. And then I want to cover, there's a very interesting part in here in verse 1 about Paul began in chapter 1 saying He was very encouraged, he was very happy with the Colossians' state of their faith and that they were saved and they were producing fruit, right? And it was very positive.

But then in Colossians 2.1 he says, for I want you to know the great struggle I have had on your behalf and all those who are at Laodicea. and those who have not personally seen my face.

So there's a change in there that he's a little concerned by chapter 2. But we'll look at that. I'll explain that. So the flow of his teaching here in this chapter 1 into chapter 2, you can see on the left-hand side here. Oh, and I have to remember to give you the new slide too. Oops, there you go.

There's two ministries, and I bring this out because both Ron Merriman and J.B. Stoney brought this out, and it's kind of important. There's two ministries, the ministry of the gospel, and that's how you get saved, right? Death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, and you believe that, you're saved.

So in Colossians 1, 5 through 12, He's saying, we give thanks always for you. We heard of your faith and your love towards the saints, et cetera. And I'm paraphrasing. Because of the hope you laid up for yourselves in the hearing of the gospel. And there it is, the ministry of the gospel. That's a paraphrase. So they got that. And they're good to go. And you can see that ministry of the gospel is for the unsaved. And I've never heard this before. I've been reading it for many years from Stoney, and it just didn't make sense.

But all of a sudden, for this lesson, this all makes sense. So there's the other ministry, and that's the ministry of the Church, or the ministry of the Assembly. And I think Stoney divides everything Paul does into these two ministries. You could also say, I think, he uses these terms maybe It's the same from what we mean when we say the birth truths and the growth truths, perhaps. But anyways, so Paul says, I'm glad you're saved, but I need to move you on to this next ministry.

Does that make sense? Go here, go here. OK, so here's a theme, because I have to jump into this. In chapter 2, it's all a rolling mill of stuff he's throwing out there. So the flow of his teaching is, Christ is the head of the body, the church, and in verse 24 of chapter 1, I suffer on behalf of this body, which is the church.

In verse 25 of this church, I was made a minister for your benefit to fully carry out the preaching of the word of God. And then in verse 26, which is the mystery, which was once hidden, now it's revealed. And in 27, and the riches contained in that mystery, mystery, the mystery that is Christ in you, the hope of glory. And I must labor and strive to make you come to know that you are complete in Christ. So there's, you see all that mention of the church and the body and these ten or eleven verses. So that, in a nutshell, is what he's trying to drive into these Colossians' heads, which is a local assembly in itself, isn't it? So, let's review.

The Gnostic doctrine that was coming in to the Colossian church and beguiling them, and pulling them away from Paul's gospel, right? It's a new doctrine, and I've included five things about what this Gnostic gospel is and it could be one or two or three or a mishmash of all this stuff that they were getting, right?

That Christ was a mere man and the fullness came to him at his baptism so when he was baptized God came into him and stayed with him through his ministry and then left him at death because deity cannot die is what they figured. Or that B, that Christ was deity, he was not human, his body was an apparition of the human body, and he was solely a spirit being. And that's a Jehovah's Witness belief, actually. Or who grabbed the hem of my robe and things like that. Or he got hungry and he thirst.

Or the part C here, Christ was an angelic emanation close to the level of being flesh and body who could lead people to higher, higher more spiritual emanations So there's Christ and he could lead you to this guy, this guy could lead you to this until you got up to God and it was purely spiritual and there was no flesh, there was no body, all spiritual.

So either you have to, these Gnostic gurus were saying you have to rely on the Mosaic laws and regulations to buffet your body against the flesh. And that makes man a contributor, doesn't it, to the Christian life, relying on laws and regulations. The other part of the Gnostic gospel was, since body and flesh mean nothing, only spirituality matters, that you can do whatever you want. you know, all this licentiousness. You can take whatever liberties you please.

So that's what, and that's a review, we've had that before, of what he was presenting to these Colossian believers. Okay, so Paul's coming at them now with doctrine, and the doctrine of the body, and the doctrine of the church. And what it does is it inoculates believers against error. This is the only way. And that's why he's going into this, all this doctrine. And I'll show you this thing on doctrine in a second, which is really good. But I'm going to define doctrine here. It's the organized systematic teaching of truth.

And it's always given in love. So it's never divorced from love. It's always It's always very tied to love. As you can see from Ephesians 4.15, but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects of Him who is the head, even Christ. And Verne always, that speaking the truth in love, that phrase, he always says that that's, truthing in love is how it works out in the Greek.

So the third thing here is the doctrine of all these mysteries, the doctrine of the church, and the doctrine of Christ as the head of the church, and the believers who are comprised in a local assembly like ourselves, but this assembly is part of the overall church body that he's going to rapture to heaven, right?

That's all the cure to the mush of plurality and relativism that these Gnostic false teachers were bringing to the Colossians. It's the only cure. So that's what Paul is getting at. Okay, I'm going to show you three cool things. I'm only putting it here because It's very explanatory. It's visual, so just get the visual in your head. And I'm putting it in so that people in the future, these slides are reproduced at this time, which is because they're old, but they're good. And the first one is this one from the major Bible themes that was covered in Paul mentions in Ephesians that the age that the Colossians are living in is a mystery. That's the church age we're in now.

And that was a ministry in the Old Testament. But Jesus refers to it in Matthew 13. So we're in the seed, that parable, the wheat and the tares. the pearl bought at great price, and then the treasure hid in a field. So a man discovered a treasure in a field, and he went and he bought that field, because that treasure was so valuable. But no one in the Old Testament knew about this period we live in here, which is the Pinchieridere.

And this is good, because you can refer back to this chart. This great chart shows The rapture shows all the resurrections. You can see at the bottom that the Tribulation Age wasn't a mystery. Daniel discusses it in chapter 9 of Daniel. Jesus discusses it in Matthew 24. And the millennial age, that's not a mystery, because that's covered in Isaiah 2, 4, 9, and Isaiah 32. So those aren't mysteries, but this church age is a mystery. And Paul wants to get that across, and I'll show you that in a minute here. The next slide that I resurrected from old times was this slide. We won't go through the scripture verses here, but look at that visual there.

So that's the church. That's the body of Christ. He's the head of the church. And all of our local churches here are members of the body of Christ. And we're all one with Christ as the chief shepherd. So you've got that visual in your head. That's what Paul is getting across to them, but he's really flying over this doctrine very fast in chapter 1. One more visual. This one, which is good, which is like a local assembly or local church, and that we are all members like a body of the church with Christ as the head. Many members, but they function as one body. and spiritually born of the Holy Spirit into Christ's body as a member.

So some of you are elbows, knees. I'm a pancreas because I'm not here very often. You don't need a pancreas really. You can remove that easily. But there it is. That's what he's doing here. Good visuals, good visuals, and you can refer to that later if you ever think, oh, I want to look at what the church is and what that looks like. Oh, here's the thing. So Paul flies over the doctrine of the church without explaining it.

But I'll show you, and this is my opinion, When Epaphras came back to the Colossians from Paul, he brought two letters. One was this letter, the Colossians letter. The other was a letter to the Laodiceans and the Ephesians letter. He brought not Epaphras but Tychicus brought the letter to the Colossians, the letter to the Ephesians. He dropped off the letter to the Ephesians in Ephesus and he brought the Colossians letter to the Colossians.

But a lot of people think that the Ephesians letter was copied to the people at Laodicea. And I think, and this is my opinion, I think because he covers all the doctrine of the church in the Ephesians letter, the epistle to the Ephesians, he knows they'll get these truths in detail. You see what I'm saying? But that's an opinion of mine. but I think it's a good one because I'm just going to show you really quick in Ephesians chapter 3 and I just put it up there look at what I've highlighted in blue here he's talking about the stewardship of God's grace and stewardship is a dispensation and in verse 3 he's talking about the revelation of the mystery verse 4, that you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men. To be specific, in verse 6 of Ephesians 3, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body. Skip down to verse 8, to preach the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ.

9. The administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God, so that the manifold wisdom of God might be now made known through the church. And I'll just show you one more, and we're just looking at this because I'm just letting you see the content of Ephesians.

Here we are in chapter 4, and he gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, for the building up of the body of Christ, to the measure and stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. And as a result, you'll no longer be tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine and trickery of men and by craftiness and deceitful scheming. And weren't they going through that now with these Gnostic guys who are coming in? All that trickery of men, craftiness and deceitful deceitful scheming, and every wind of doctrine.

And it goes on in verse 15, But speaking truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the Head, even Christ, being fitted together and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part, and it causes the body to grow.

So that's where I think that Paul was saying, you're going to get this in this letter that I gave to the Laodiceans, all this detail. And that's why he flies over it in chapter one of Colossians, is sort of my feeling on it. Yeah, here's something Ron Merriman, and this is good. So Paul is giving them doctrine.

And I like what Ron Merriman says, what was normative in days past, even 40 years ago, has become dreaded in evangelical circles today. Doctrine has become the dreaded D word. Some see it as divisive, as though truth and error admit to little difference. doctrinal truth by nature is quite intolerant of error. Others see it as dry and boring, as though God's truth is unrelated to human experience. Still others avoid doctrine like the plague, fearful that it minimizes love, as though love can be sentimentally divorced from truth. But not so with the Apostle Paul. And you see how he says that doctrine and love go together?

So it's very important what Paul is laying down here. But with that, we get to the actual verse here. But it will go fast because I've given you all this background now. So he says, In verse 2, in chapter 2 of verse 1 of Colossians, I want you to know what great struggle I have had on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea and for all those who have not personally seen my face.

And the word struggle there is agonizomai. It's a strenuous, demanding output as an athlete would put forth to reach victory. I remember as a kid the the ABC wide world of sports. The thrill of victory and then the agony of defeat, right? And the guy takes a spill and he takes off the banner and it's just a mess. But he was striving for victory, that guy, that poor guy, whoever that guy was.

And that was what Paul was doing here. And it's also zeal, and it's contending with enemies as well, is this word agonismi. And it's used up in verse 29, where it says, and for this purpose I also labor, striving according to his power. So he's in this struggle to make sure these Colossian believers get this doctrine because it's the only way that it's going to inoculate them against all this mishmash that I mentioned before coming at them. So how is Paul agonized and contested on their behalf?

And I can think of a couple examples. One, he was shipwrecked at one time. One, he was beaten just about to death, left to die. He was beaten by a snake. He came back to life. He was always being stoned. He was always in jail. So you get the idea. You get the idea how he was agonizing and striving for all these believers, not just to be saved, but to get the doctrine and the ministry of the Church here.

And for all those at Laodicea, who have not personally seen my face. I said up here that's review information because I think it was I who covered that. He was going out to Ephesus and Klose is down here. Laodicea is down here. So he was north of those two towns on his missionary journeys. He never got down south to where these places were. So they have never met Paul. Epaphras was saved through him probably at Ephesus and Epaphras brought the gospel back to Colossae and Laodicea.

So they have not seen his face but they... and I think what it is too, and I wanted to mention this, that he was In chapter one, Paul is very glad that they have the gospel. He's very ecstatic. And Epaphras did an excellent job. But then, Epaphras, why did he go to Rome to visit with Paul?

I think because these Gnostics were coming in, and Epaphras maybe was saved maybe three years, or five years, or a year or two. He was teaching and he was saving believers. But I don't think he had this church doctrine that Paul was able to give the Colossian believers, if that makes sense. So he had to go to Paul to get the doctrine to bring back to give to the Colossians.

So it was like at this point in Epaphras' life, it might have been above his pay grade. is what I think, and that's my opinion too, so. But I think, yeah, Tom. It makes me also think that maybe this is all so much new stuff, a real heavy hitting focus that he needed to take time to dream in, so he might have had multiple meetings this fall just to get this all straightened out. Oh yeah, you could bet that they sat there wherever he was in jail in Rome, and Paul laid it out for him.

But then he put it in the Ephesians letter. He gave the Ephesians letter and the Colossians letter to Tychicus, who brought it with Epaphras back. But Paul is very concerned that he gets this stuff. So I just copied this quote from Grant This could be Ironside, I might have misquoted this, but this is good. Men who know little of the deep convictions that stirred the heart of the Apostle Paul will have great difficulty realizing the intensity of his feelings when the truth of God was questioned and the people of the Lord were in danger of being corrupted by false doctrine and turned aside from the simplicity that is in Christ. He wrote to the Colossians, I would that you know with great conflict I have for you. This verse can also be translated, I would that you know what intense agony I have for you.

And Paul was not one who would play fast and loose with the revealed truth. His very soul was tortured when Christ was dishonored by those who professed his name. He was not a self-complacent liberal theologian, carelessly tolerant of any teaching, no matter how pernicious, as long as it did not disrupt outward unity. So, even though And he says in Colossians 1 that they had unity, but that wasn't good enough for Paul. He wanted them to know these truths, so that they could stave off these false teachers.

Colossians 2.2, that their hearts may be encouraged having been knit together in love. The first line of defense in combating false doctrine is orientating a believer to God's word. That clings a believer to the facts. The facts is the doctrine. And the heart there, that your hearts may be encouraged, the heart is the whole man, mind, will, spirit and emotion. So it goes way down into the deep spiritual places, because man is body, soul and spirit, right?

So Paul was saying, stop orientating yourself emotionally to these guys who are coming in. And even though they probably dressed well, they probably smelled good, they probably had this really graceful way of speaking. And that's And think about guys on television. It's an emotional appeal. It's all emotional. And you're not standing, you're not thinking. Paul is saying think about this and stand in your position.

And then the word encouragement is perikaleo and that means to call by one side. So a paraclete is one who calls someone to his side to console them and to strengthen them and to build them up. If you think of that, what's that thing on the beach where there's one set of footprints, two sets of footprints and then footprints in the sand and then there's only one set of footprints and that's, well that's Jesus when there's only one set I picked you up and carried you, whatever. But that's the idea of a paraclete I guess, right?

Okay. Okay. Colossians 2.2b having been knit together in love. And having is a participle. It's a participle of means. So knitting together is the means for which the local assembly there at Colossae is encouraged. You're knit together and that encourages believers. I have a question here. How does the knitting together occur? What is what is Paul's means to be knit together.

And if we covered this in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 15 through 16, there is that phrase again that I want to highlight. By speaking the truth in love, truthing in love, we are to grow up in all aspects of him who is the head, even Christ. It's truthing in love, and that's doctrine. That's the the truth being given in love, that's giving doctrine. So the principle is that when you're knit together, like that human body that I showed you, those joints and those sinews of those muscles and the bone, it can't, it's tight, it can't be broken apart. And that's what, that's kind of the force of being knit together in love.

Okay, and then I'm going to go on to 2.2c, attaining all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding. And again, I'm just going to quote from, this is actually Richeson, definitely, and this paragraph or two that he gives, it explains this phrase so perfectly that I just said, Oh, this is, I've got to put this in here. So he says, the riches of the full assurance of understanding is sound judgment about the truths of Christianity.

God provides assets for our use and time. These go beyond our gifts, abilities, intelligence, or talents. A person with a full assurance of understanding no longer calls into question the word of God. Doubt is no longer the central mode of operation.

The believer embraces truth with high satisfaction. Certainty comes from understanding. The confident believer carries full assurance of understanding. He is full of assurance. And this phrase is very good. Because he has many certainties, this results in the wealth of assurances. Full assurance is the fixed persuasion that we comprehend the truth.

This person has reached the elevation of confidence that he knows for sure what truth is. He does not misconstrue truth or attach meanings. It does not bear. He knows the mind of God in the matter. So that, especially that phrase, because he has many certainties, this results in the wealth of assurances.

And I just thought that was so perfect. I didn't even touch that myself. So we end here with the last part of verse 2 of chapter 2. Resulting in the true knowledge of God's mystery, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. It's interesting that resulting and attaining, see that word attaining?

That's from the earlier part of the verse. So those are two prepositions, ice. And we covered those in chapter one. Ice is unto, and ice is a directional pronoun. So Paul, it's moving along towards a goal, right? And I've written down the concept here that Merriman quotes. And the concept is, being knit together leads to the wealth of full insurance via understanding. The ices, those prepositions, are moving the thought along.

A minister, pastor, teacher ministers understanding to the local assembly. Understanding leads to full assurance. Moving towards full assurance leads to the riches found in full knowledge. And full knowledge is epipnosis, of course, and the treasures of wisdom. And all of the above, as the verse says, are found in Christ himself.

So I thought that was a good wrap-up of that part of the last part of verse 2 into chapter 3. Which now we're going into the in Christ truths, aren't we? Starting next week. So Paul has to get them from being saved, and he's done that, he preface has done that, but then he has to move them through these church doctrines for them to understand who they are in Christ. So we're kind of finally there, but there's a lot of discussion about the mystery of the church, the mystery of the body. You have to understand that to know who you are in Christ. Oh, and then the last thing is the believer and the whole church body By knowing these doctrines, they become fixed and entrenched, and they're impossible to move. And that's a common theme of Paul's, is stand firm.

But it has to be in the doctrine. And the thing is, churches today are moving away from doctrine. And we're into doctrine here in this fellowship, but we're small. We're a small body. But it's for people who want to have these deep resources and explore these treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

And this is it. And Paul laid it all out here. It's not me. It's not Roger or Mike or JD. This is what Paul was giving. But it's rarely covered in the modern church age. So any questions? Complaints? It's a lot. It's funny because I got the the assignment, the first three verses, but it's hard to jump in.

You've got to know, you've got to go back to what Bob was doing, what Roger was doing, and you've got to wrap it into how he gets here. Otherwise it would have been a quick ten minutes. that Paul's intent, if you read 28 it says, we proclaim him, I think you have 28 somewhere in here, I don't know. Anyway, we proclaim him that monishing every man, teaching every man, with all wisdom, that we may present every man completely Christ.

Paul's goal is just not salvation. And that is a key thing. It's not just salvation. And actually several people pointed that out in my study. that there would be complete in Christ, not just saved. Yeah, right. And complete in Christ is a whole different deal. And that's what, you know, that's now, I've been reading Stoney for years and he goes above my head, but now finally I understand that. The gospel of, the ministry of the gospel and the ministry of the body. And Paul was, and Paul's prayer in chapter 1. He always prays for wisdom and knowledge and assurance and full understanding. He's a broken record on this stuff. I can follow on that thought, that whole train of thought through to this final conclusion that the world of flesh and the devil are no match for any of what Paul preaches. almost preaching through the Holy Spirit overcomes all three.

Right, yeah. That's a good point. I mean, think about the charismatic movement. They've got to have, they're just grasping at these things that aren't doctrine, you know what I mean? And it's kind of sad. Oh, and another thing is the churches today are, instead of being, go back in your mind to the body of Christ, the circle with all the members inside of it, or the actual physical human body, all the joints fitted together, Christ is the head. Well, churches are not even put together in that way anymore.

They've got a hierarchy, and I'll show you this. I don't think I have it here. I don't. Okay. I have it here. But it's a hierarchy. You have the senior pastor, then you have these pastors of this ministry, this ministry, kids, you have these level of pastors, then these lower pastors take people out of the church and they're leaders, then these people are leaders, these leaders have small groups. So it's a hierarchical structure to how a church, a lot of churches today, very few have, if we go back to that elders and Christ is the head, and just everyone's equal. you know, in the body of the church. And I think, so they're not holding on to these doctrines.

It's like, whoa. Now they're getting people saved, and that's good, but I think that... Paul's goal is much higher than that. I think of the verse that God, I think it's probably Old Testament, come let us reason together. That's part of the Father. We become less reason together. God wants to reason with us. Reasoning means you think. Yeah, right. You use your brain, not your emotions. But I don't know.

I've been researching a lot of how churches are structured and a lot of them are using, what's the guy's name? Saddleback. Rick Warren. So he's got this whole system and he's giving churches this membership covenant and they're opening churches all over the place and they're all the same and it's the hierarchical structure which the Bible doesn't have in mind. I think I saw it in one of the notes that the idea of almost more of an organization than an organism. Right, yeah. But it said it's an organism, not an organization. A living organism.

And the size of it doesn't matter. And with an organism, every part depends on every other part. It's a function together. And there's caring about every part. And the organization You get lost in organizations. We know that in the world. You're down here and the boss is way up here. Your ability to communicate to him is awesome.

It's the corporate structure. The actual corporate structure from the outside corporate world has imposed itself onto the church today. If you look at virtually every mega church, that's how they're all structured, with very, probably few, probably John MacArthur, he has a big church probably, but that's probably structured correctly because John MacArthur is a doctrine guy, you know, so. You can probably call that organization overkill.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know who all this came from is Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker was a management expert in the 40s, 50s, and he went into GM and he organized GM. He's the one who came up with company culture, and you know how you have a culture in a company, and that's why Google people go to work there, but they have everything they need there. They never have to leave the Google campus. except to go home and change and come back. But they have restaurants and coffee shops and it's all interconnected. They want to interconnect companies so that everyone works like this and it's hierarchical.

And Peter Drucker is the father of that. Well, Rick Warren went to Peter Drucker and said, boy, how do I... And Peter Drucker said, yes, I want to impose my German management structure I've always wanted to try this out on a non-profit. Peter Drucker just said, churches are non-profits. So I'm going to, here you go, Rick Warren. And he gave them the structure and look at it today. And it's just fanned out to everything. Go away.

You mentioned Ephesians, where he really goes into the church, and he begins, in Tuesday's men's study, we're in Ephesians chapter 3, and it's in his prayer, if I could just read this, it might help a little, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, and you, doesn't He's talking personal here. That you, not an organization, but you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with, again this is personal, with all breadth, the length, the depth and the height, even to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God, that we as individuals may be able to enter into this, he says something that our scientific community hasn't recognized until the fifties.

That there are four dimensions. There are four aspects or possible perspectives of reality. You notice he doesn't say up, down and sideways. He says breadth, length, depth and height. Where did he come up with four? We think in three dimensions most of the time, but Paul is going to a fourth dimension and he is saying that I and you, each one of us may be able to comprehend. four dimensions and I got to looking at that and I got to looking at what other men have written about that and they said clear back in the 1300s a Jewish rabbi looking at Genesis only came up with it we have ten dimensions four that we can measure and six that are outside of measurement capabilities And not until the fifties, when we have sixties, the atomic generator thing, did they discover that there are ten dimensions to everything. And four that they can measure and ten that they can't. I'm saying, wow.

And here's Paul saying that we might be able to comprehend this as individuals in his body. Because Christ is all in all. I look at you, I don't see you, because you have a body that is going to be different in the future, and only it's a temporary abode, and this is temporary, thank God. And each of us, we are in these four dimensional things that we can measure, and so forth, and the fourth, I think it's time, that's an opinion, I don't know that I'm right, because I'm just beginning to look at this and think about it, that we can comprehend this. I don't know if it helps or not, but this is where he goes with the marriage relationship and this mystery is that we are to show the world Christ and the Church are one as a unit, and that great pearl has revealed his glory to the world. And I did mention that your own, just an individual, your own body has members, but Christ is in you, so really he should be he should have control of your mind, and he should direct how your body should go.

So that's mind-blowing at Holly Hill. The things that we get into on Tuesdays sometimes. You guys get into it. So I don't feel bad about this. You guys get into metaphysics. Let's close in prayer. Our Heavenly Father we thank you for this study and just pray for Roger and the 10 o'clock hour and his message and we pray for the unity and the cohesiveness of all the saints here at Holly Hills and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.