SPEAKER_00: Please turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 1, verses 1 through 14.
SPEAKER_00: You'll find the text printed in your bulletin, also in the Chair Bible, page 924.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you also for your prayers for the men's retreat last weekend.
SPEAKER_00: It was a great time for the men of APC to get off and be together and connect deeper with God and with each other.
SPEAKER_00: Half of the men who attended were new to the church, which was really a great opportunity to connect with a lot of new new faces, new new men.
SPEAKER_00: As I said, this is a new sermon series.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be in this topical sermon series for the next four or five weeks or so until the Lord says, stop.
SPEAKER_00: But celebrating God's faithfulness over 40 years to this church, hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father.
SPEAKER_00: We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the love, excuse me, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God and truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant, he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and has made known to us your love in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.
SPEAKER_00: He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reading of God's holy and powerful word.
SPEAKER_00: Let's ask the Spirit's help.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for this letter to this congregation.
SPEAKER_00: But we know that this truth is just as applicable to us, and we need to hear it just as much as they did.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, teach us by your Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Your word is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, may it cut deeply into us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it is that we need, you know.
SPEAKER_00: May we find your word beautiful this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Desirable, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So it was 40 years ago in the month of May, just a few miles down the road in Old Town Alexandria, 418 South Washington Street, the Campania Center, that still stands there today.
SPEAKER_00: It's been refurbished.
SPEAKER_00: I asked in the first service if you were there at that first service, stand up.
SPEAKER_00: Stand up, Ben.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody else?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Ben and Liz Crowley were at that first service.
SPEAKER_00: Jim and Dorothy Taft were at that first service on travel.
SPEAKER_00: And Bob Morrison and his wife Rosemary were there.
SPEAKER_00: And God has been faithful, hasn't he, over these past 40 years?
SPEAKER_00: It was a small group back then.
SPEAKER_00: Four years later, Tom and Sharon Holiday came along.
SPEAKER_00: And that first year, our average attendance was 30 people.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a struggle.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: It was a struggle.
SPEAKER_00: We couldn't keep any families.
SPEAKER_00: The families would come and visit and say, we like a lot of things, but what's the ministry for children?
SPEAKER_00: And well, it's small, but it's there.
SPEAKER_00: And they would just leave, family after family would come and visit and then leave.
SPEAKER_00: Until Bryant and Lynn Street showed up with their kids and they said, No, we're not gonna leave.
SPEAKER_00: We hear the gospel here in a different way.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna stay.
SPEAKER_00: And then God started bringing families.
SPEAKER_00: And God grew this church over the years in many ways.
SPEAKER_00: The reason that church was planted was to have a Reformed Presbyterian gospel witness in the city of Alexandria, which did not exist at that point.
SPEAKER_00: That's why God planted this church in this city through all the moves.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel began to change us.
SPEAKER_00: It began to grow us, both spiritually and numerically.
SPEAKER_00: The sermon passage before us today was the text that I preached on our 10th anniversary as a church.
SPEAKER_00: It's the text I preached on our 25th anniversary as a church.
SPEAKER_00: It's the text that I preached as we kicked off the Arise Capital campaign seven years ago to build this beautiful building.
SPEAKER_00: It's a text that means a lot to me.
SPEAKER_00: And I come back to it this morning in this sermon series.
SPEAKER_00: This passage was life-changing for me.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's letter to the Colossian believers in the little town of Klossi, which is present-day Turkey, Paul wrote this letter from a prison cell in Rome in 60 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote to a church he hadn't been to, and yet the man that was converted through his preaching, his name was Epaphras, he went home and planted a church along the Lycus River.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the letter that Paul wrote to that church.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul wants to encourage them by this letter, but he encourages us by this letter too.
SPEAKER_00: The first point I draw from the text is Paul's praise for the Colossians, verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: We always thank God when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints.
SPEAKER_00: Those are two great things for any church to be known for.
SPEAKER_00: These people love God and they love each other.
SPEAKER_00: Perfectly?
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for the perfect church, you're not going to find it.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a church that loves people.
SPEAKER_00: And when we don't love people well, many times over we've testified that God brings reconciliation, God brings hope.
SPEAKER_00: Because love comes from Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul said.
SPEAKER_00: You love Jesus, and your faith is growing in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And your love for each other, I've heard about.
SPEAKER_00: Paul commends them.
SPEAKER_00: Christ's love has been demonstrated countless times over 40 years in this church through many ways, including manna ministries, manna meals.
SPEAKER_00: You might say, well, what's a manna meal?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the bread.
SPEAKER_00: Thousands of meals have been delivered to people in this church from fellow members because time of need, the need for food.
SPEAKER_00: And so many of you have brought meals to other people who needed meals.
SPEAKER_00: And the love of Christ has been demonstrated through manna ministry.
SPEAKER_00: It's been demonstrated through the Deacons Fund to our mercy partners.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's close to$2 million now over these years.
SPEAKER_00: People with physical, material, tangible needs.
SPEAKER_00: And the people of God have loved by their actions, as the book of James says.
SPEAKER_00: Gospel works, always follow gospel faith.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen the love demonstrated also, and this might surprise you, through the intercessory prayers.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not right now on the intercessory prayer list, I encourage you to sign up.
SPEAKER_00: Every week on Thursday, we send out a list of ways to pray for this church, and it's deep.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing superficial about it.
SPEAKER_00: We're not praying for just external material needs.
SPEAKER_00: We're praying for heart change in us.
SPEAKER_00: It touches my heart every week.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a one-pager, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It's a few pages.
SPEAKER_00: Sign up and ask for the one from last week.
SPEAKER_00: Bailey will sign you up.
SPEAKER_00: We're asking God to change our hearts first and foremost.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll see the humility of the staff and the elders and the deacons and the deaconesses and the ministry leaders here, how they pray for their own hearts first.
SPEAKER_00: Last week on the way to the men's retreat, I stopped, Matt Coombs and I stopped to visit one of our dear friends, Jim Stanford, who was one of the first elders in this church.
SPEAKER_00: Jim and his wife moved out to Winchester many years ago.
SPEAKER_00: Jim has been my prayer partner for 36 years.
SPEAKER_00: We pray almost every week.
SPEAKER_00: He's 91.
SPEAKER_00: And we stopped, we stopped to visit, and the prayer letter comes out Thursday.
SPEAKER_00: We're there Friday afternoon about 12 hours later.
SPEAKER_00: And Matt, he'd already been praying for you, hadn't he?
SPEAKER_00: He'd been praying for your heart.
SPEAKER_00: He prays for my heart every day.
SPEAKER_00: You want to know if somebody really loves you?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody really loves you.
SPEAKER_00: There's no greater way than they're going to show their love for you than praying for you faithfully.
SPEAKER_00: Persistently.
SPEAKER_00: And they're going to know not just the stuff out there, they're not just the circumstances of your life.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to know what's going on inside your heart.
SPEAKER_00: What greater gift, what greater gift have I had as a pastor here from so many of you praying for my heart?
SPEAKER_00: That's what I need most from you.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to pray for my heart.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to pray for each other's heart.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think most churches do that.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's pretty special if we can be that vulnerable with each other and that honest to say, pray that God would show me my sin in new ways.
SPEAKER_00: Show me that God will show me his faithfulness and his mercy in new ways.
SPEAKER_00: Pray that God will give me more joy.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you pray.
SPEAKER_00: Sign up.
SPEAKER_00: Bailey would gladly put you on the list.
SPEAKER_00: I have witnessed many times APC members showing Christ's love by giving generously of their time, their talents, and treasure.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that long ago.
SPEAKER_00: It was just a year ago when we ushered in Vision 2026.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my, oh my, what has God done?
SPEAKER_00: And it was a tough time.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Sorry to take you back to those days, but Doge was going on.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you were wondering if you were going to keep your job.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you were wondering, Am I going to have?
SPEAKER_00: How can I make a commitment to catalyzing a culture of radical missional living?
SPEAKER_00: How can I do that when I don't even know the future?
SPEAKER_00: But you did.
SPEAKER_00: And God poured out amazingly.
SPEAKER_00: Our giving just went through the roof last year.
SPEAKER_00: Right under four million dollars.
SPEAKER_00: Because we stepped out in faith.
SPEAKER_00: And we believe that God is good and God is merciful and God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Every step we take that He directs.
SPEAKER_00: Every step that we take that He directs, He is always faithful.
SPEAKER_00: But you got to step out.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be sitting still.
SPEAKER_00: This is what He's saying here.
SPEAKER_00: This past year, almost$500,000 we've spent on people other than us.
SPEAKER_00: We're not spending it on us.
SPEAKER_00: This is benevolent giving.
SPEAKER_00: Giving to people outside of APC, giving to people in the city of Alexandria, giving to people in the United States, giving people around the world, giving to people that we believe are in need of Christ's love expressed in very tangible ways.
SPEAKER_00: That's expressing the love of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this church of Colossae did.
SPEAKER_00: That's what APC is doing by the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: He says in the text, because of the hope that's laid up for us here in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't live for this world.
SPEAKER_00: We don't hold and cling to our possessions.
SPEAKER_00: We're pilgrims.
SPEAKER_00: You know that, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you're a pilgrim and you know you're just passing through this world, you will be generous with your time, your talent, your treasure.
SPEAKER_00: It's not yours, it's his.
SPEAKER_00: You don't live for this world because you know that your real home is waiting for you.
SPEAKER_00: And you become incredibly helpful to the people around you in this life.
SPEAKER_00: Let me demonstrate in another way that the love of Christ has been shared in this church.
SPEAKER_00: Come to the Inquirer's class.
SPEAKER_00: Are you a member?
SPEAKER_00: If you're not a member, come to the inquirer's class.
SPEAKER_00: It's the first weekend in June.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to serve you a really good meal Friday night.
SPEAKER_00: And they'll bring you back Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to serve you lunch Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: And you're going to hear a lot of stories about God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: There was a man named Tim who came to our church years ago.
SPEAKER_00: He came to my office.
SPEAKER_00: He said, My pastor in California told me I needed to come see you immediately after I moved to Washington.
SPEAKER_00: He was a Navy officer undergoing court martial.
SPEAKER_00: He was alone.
SPEAKER_00: His wife was back in the Midwest.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: My life is turned upside down.
SPEAKER_00: And I started counseling him.
SPEAKER_00: He was a Christian, but he'd messed up.
SPEAKER_00: People do.
SPEAKER_00: I've been a character witness in many, in many courts.
SPEAKER_00: Quantico, Navy Yard, many times.
SPEAKER_00: And I've seen the gospel change people here.
SPEAKER_00: I told him, I said, we only had two fellowship groups at the time.
SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't care which one you go to, but go to one of them.
SPEAKER_00: He went to the ones that we were going to on Wednesday nights at the home of the Morrisons.
SPEAKER_00: And he had a meal.
SPEAKER_00: He had a home-cooked meal waiting for him every Wednesday night when he showed up.
SPEAKER_00: And he had a group of people that came around him and loved him and served him and listened to him and prayed for him.
SPEAKER_00: And six months later, the night before his court-martial in Navy Yard, downtown, we were together in his apartment in his high rise in Crystal City, praying for him.
SPEAKER_00: And the next day when I went to the Navy Yard, his CFG had taken off the day of work.
SPEAKER_00: They were there.
SPEAKER_00: They were going to be there with him, and they were going to be there for him because that's what the body of Christ does when we love each other.
SPEAKER_00: God worked in a powerful way in his life.
SPEAKER_00: God was merciful to him in this particular instance.
SPEAKER_00: God's people, loving God's people because of the love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not part of that, get in there.
SPEAKER_00: Find a group of people that you can meet with, you can serve, you can study the word together, you can pray together, you can grow together.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, look at Paul's proclamation, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, increasing, as it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God and all of its truth.
SPEAKER_00: What is the proclamation?
SPEAKER_00: It's an authoritative statement.
SPEAKER_00: From God's word, of God's promise, by God's power.
SPEAKER_00: That's a gospel proclamation.
SPEAKER_00: Unchanging truth, changing lives.
SPEAKER_00: It's on the sign just a few yards from here.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that.
SPEAKER_00: Unchanging truth, changing lives.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen it countless times in this church.
SPEAKER_00: It's not only people being brought to Christ, it's sleepy Christians waking up.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen a lot of sleepy Christians wake up.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of sleepy Christians who just kind of lose their way a little bit or just kind of just get ambivalent about their faith.
SPEAKER_00: They kind of lose their joy, like I did.
SPEAKER_00: After shortly after I came here as a pastor, I lost my joy.
SPEAKER_00: It was hard here in the first couple years.
SPEAKER_00: Don't let anybody tell you different.
SPEAKER_00: It was hard.
SPEAKER_00: I lost my joy.
SPEAKER_00: I lost my sense of God's ability to convict me of my sin.
SPEAKER_00: I lost a lot.
SPEAKER_00: But I rediscovered it.
SPEAKER_00: I rediscovered the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The real gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was born again.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had that experience?
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you do if you haven't.
SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful time in my life.
SPEAKER_00: The whole gospel for the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: It's been said that the gospel must first be local.
SPEAKER_00: It must work where we live if it's going to travel well.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've found that to be true.
SPEAKER_00: If it doesn't work here, if it doesn't work in my home, if it doesn't work in my marriage, if it doesn't work in my life, it's not going to travel very well.
SPEAKER_00: We get that.
SPEAKER_00: Bearing fruit and growing.
SPEAKER_00: The deeper this gospel grows in us, the further out it goes.
SPEAKER_00: I did a little math.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of dangerous, right, for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not a math guy.
SPEAKER_00: I realize that over 2,000 times from this pulpit, the gospel's been gone out.
SPEAKER_00: Over 40 years.
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of seeding of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of planting of the gospel seed.
SPEAKER_00: And by the grace of God, a lot of lives have been changed.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword.
SPEAKER_00: It penetrates.
SPEAKER_00: It cuts through what nothing else can cut through.
SPEAKER_00: It cuts through our unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: It cuts through our pride, our arrogance.
SPEAKER_00: It cuts through our apathy toward the lost.
SPEAKER_00: It cuts through like nothing else.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's a powerful blade, the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: When the Spirit of God accompanies the preaching of the Word of God, God changes people from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: And the gospel goes deeper in us and it goes further out.
SPEAKER_00: This is just the way it works.
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful gospel.
SPEAKER_00: As we said last year in Vision 2026, catalyzing a culture of missional living.
SPEAKER_00: That's a strong word, verb, catalyzing a culture of radical missional living with our time, our talent, and our treasure.
SPEAKER_00: Living organisms grow and reproduce.
SPEAKER_00: A living organism will grow, multiply.
SPEAKER_00: We're part of three church plants to this point.
SPEAKER_00: By God's grace, Matt and Katie Roberts are going to plant a church at Mount Vernon within the next year.
SPEAKER_00: God's going to continue to plant those seeds and new life is going to spring up.
SPEAKER_00: It's powerful.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel, this gospel is so powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a little list, okay?
SPEAKER_00: What it does.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, it saves the lost.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel, when it's preached with the unction of the Holy Spirit, this gospel preached in the unction of the Holy Spirit, in the power of the Holy Spirit, saves lost people.
SPEAKER_00: Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people have been saved through this ministry by the power of the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: We've never seen so many people saved as we've seen in the last year.
SPEAKER_00: God is working, God is doing something powerful in our midst.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have experienced it firsthand.
SPEAKER_00: But it can't be kept on the fringes of your life.
SPEAKER_00: It can't be kept on the fringes of your soul.
SPEAKER_00: It's got to come right downtown.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: Right smack dab in the middle of your heart for it to be that kind of power.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: When the Holy Spirit is at work in your life, the Holy Spirit wakes us up.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit shows us our need for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit takes us to run to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we see.
SPEAKER_00: We see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Last night we had our international worship service in this sanctuary.
SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful time together.
SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful time.
SPEAKER_00: I started weeping as we were singing.
SPEAKER_00: Because right over here.
SPEAKER_00: There were about four of our sisters, all of them from Africa.
SPEAKER_00: Four of our sisters were singing, leading us in worship, with two of our Hispanic friends members were singing.
SPEAKER_00: The six of them were singing.
SPEAKER_00: And I I started just looking at the one woman.
SPEAKER_00: A year ago, this would have been the furthest thing on her mind to be in a church praising Jesus Christ, leading the praises of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This woman was living a very different life a year ago.
SPEAKER_00: I looked at my sister yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: And I heard the languages that were being read in French, Spanish, Mandarin, and I looked around and I saw what a little foretaste of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: People from every tribe, every tongue, every nation are going to come together, and we're doing it here.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I love pastoring this church.
SPEAKER_00: I love pastoring this congregation of people from all over the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is a foretaste of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens when the gospel goes deep, it goes out.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, this gospel, when it goes deep, sanctifies the saved.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know that little word, sanctified, sanctification, it means to, once you are a Christian, that you grow up as a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: You grow more holy, you grow more like Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to sanctify, to set you apart to God.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel sanctifies the saved.
SPEAKER_00: Sleepy Christians wake up.
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden they find the ability to love like they haven't before, to give, to forgive, to witness, to minister.
SPEAKER_00: They find a new surging power within that they didn't know previously.
SPEAKER_00: This is what happens when this gospel is preached.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a little story.
SPEAKER_00: It happened right after Sharon and I moved here.
SPEAKER_00: I had a meeting in the first couple weeks downtown, right at noon, I think it was on a Wednesday, and I gave myself enough time to I thought to park, and I get downtown and I go down because all the garage, most of the garages in DC are down, right?
SPEAKER_00: They go down, they go down and they go down.
SPEAKER_00: I'm down to about the fifth level.
SPEAKER_00: And I start to, you know, I how much I you know how much time am I gonna have to get back up to the top and walk a couple blocks?
SPEAKER_00: I think I found a parking spot on about the eighth level after I stopped sweating.
SPEAKER_00: And I made my appointment on time.
SPEAKER_00: Afterward on my drive back, okay, you have to understand I'm a preacher, right?
SPEAKER_00: I got an illustration out of this.
SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: When you come to Jesus Christ, you come in at street level.
SPEAKER_00: But what God's purpose is for you and for me is that the longer you walk with Christ, the deeper you go in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel goes deeper in you the longer you walk with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's not happening, you better be curious about that.
SPEAKER_00: If that's not happening in your life, you ought to be curious.
SPEAKER_00: God, why is that not?
SPEAKER_00: Why am I not growing in more joy?
SPEAKER_00: Why am I not repenting more of my sin?
SPEAKER_00: Why am I not serving you with more devotion and love?
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself that.
SPEAKER_00: Only the Holy Spirit could do that.
SPEAKER_00: You can't work that up.
SPEAKER_00: And you're not going to do that just because these are notions in your head.
SPEAKER_00: These are doctrines that you attest to.
SPEAKER_00: This is, is this a power?
SPEAKER_00: Is this a power in your life?
SPEAKER_00: This is what was going on in this church in Colossae.
SPEAKER_00: This is the real gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Unchanging truth, changing lives.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't always do that in me.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I find my heart kind of wandering.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I find my heart getting cold, lukewarm.
SPEAKER_00: You do too.
SPEAKER_00: What do you do then?
SPEAKER_00: Don't you dare conclude that this is just the way it is.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not going to get better.
SPEAKER_00: You ask God to make you come alive in a new way.
SPEAKER_00: You ask God to awaken your heart, to give you a deeper love for Jesus, to give you a clearer view of your sin, to give you a clearer view of how much you've been forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Don't stop.
SPEAKER_00: Don't stop praying.
SPEAKER_00: I have found him faithful to that in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Again and again.
SPEAKER_00: Once we understand the gospel, did you see that phrase?
SPEAKER_00: In all of its truth.
SPEAKER_00: When this gospel was preached in the power of the Holy Spirit, lost people get saved, and saved people are growing and being edified.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Edwards in the year 1744 in Northampton, Massachusetts, wrote a pamphlet called The Treatise in Religious Affections.
SPEAKER_00: He listed three things that always happen when the gospel is going deeper in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing is a growing intense conviction of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's always part of your growth.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not experiencing a deeper level of conviction of your sin, something's amiss.
SPEAKER_00: If you are more aware of other people's sin than your own sin, something is amiss.
SPEAKER_00: When God is doing a new work, a fresh work of grace in your life, you will become more and more aware of your sin, my sin.
SPEAKER_00: I won't be so quick to point fingers at other people.
SPEAKER_00: My sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the way the gospel works.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not just a sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just cheer up, you're worse than you think, that we taught in sonship for so many years in this church.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's true, cheer up, you're worse than you think, but it's also true, cheer up.
SPEAKER_00: You are more loved and you are more accepted and you are more forgiven and you are more desired by God than you could ever imagine.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago, we were advertising sonship, which is a course of discipleship course we used to teach here.
SPEAKER_00: And the the the administrator, the the administrative aid assistant I had wanted to publish it on the website, and she put up on the screen, cheer up, you're worse than you think.
SPEAKER_00: I marched into that office.
SPEAKER_00: I said, What is this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a side ship slogan.
SPEAKER_00: I said, No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00: It's half of it.
SPEAKER_00: Half is not the whole.
SPEAKER_00: Cheer up, you are more sinful than you know.
SPEAKER_00: Cheer up.
SPEAKER_00: You are more loved and forgiven and accepted and wanted by God than you ever dare to imagine.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't hear that, you haven't heard the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Edward said the second sign of revival is enlivened congregational worship.
SPEAKER_00: We're experiencing that here.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed?
SPEAKER_00: Ben?
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: We're growing, we're growing in our spirit of worship here because we're being set free in new ways.
SPEAKER_00: And we're able to express, we're able to pour out what God pours in.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the signs of gospel renewal in your life, in the life of a congregation.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, growing personal witnessing.
SPEAKER_00: We're growing in that too.
SPEAKER_00: More and more people are actually opening their mouths and testifying to the saving power of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: More of us are pulling on the net.
SPEAKER_00: I preached on two weeks ago, a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: More of us are putting our hands on the net.
SPEAKER_00: That's how they fished in the first century, right?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody had a$3,000 fishing rod by themselves on the pier.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not the way you did it.
SPEAKER_00: You're on a team, you're on a gospel team, and your covenant fellowship group at work, wherever you go, you're pulling on the net together because Jesus loves lost people.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, I came to seek and to save the lost.
SPEAKER_00: Early church history.
SPEAKER_00: What we're reading in this passage was evident.
SPEAKER_00: People like Justin Martyr in the second century A.D., Tertullian, early 3rd century A.D., listen to what Tertullian said about what was going on in the gospel, how this gospel was going deeper, how this gospel was going out and affecting the and changing the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: He said, We are of but yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the Christian church had not existed for more than 200 years at that point.
SPEAKER_00: We are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your Roman cities, your islands, your camps, your palace, your senate, and your forum.
SPEAKER_00: We have left you only your temples.
SPEAKER_00: Man.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be a part of that church.
SPEAKER_00: It was true.
SPEAKER_00: These early Christians, they didn't have degrees.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't well educated.
SPEAKER_00: All they had was Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that's all they needed.
SPEAKER_00: And that's all you need.
SPEAKER_00: And they changed the world.
SPEAKER_00: The power of the gospel changed the world.
SPEAKER_00: All over the world, this gospel is growing and bearing fruit, just as it's been doing among you since the day that you heard the grace of God in all of its truth.
SPEAKER_00: It goes deeper and it goes out.
SPEAKER_00: You're not a cul-de-sac.
SPEAKER_00: What you've learned in your Christian life is not just for you to pull around your little cul-de-sac.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be on a river, a river that flows, a river that moves, a river of living grace.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the gospel does when it touches our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Vision 2026, his vision to catalyze a culture of radical missional living to better serve our church and our city and our world in the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, it is.
SPEAKER_00: By the grace of God, in the last year we paid off a mortgage of$1.5 million.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're down to one mortgage.
SPEAKER_00: And God is going to give us what we need.
SPEAKER_00: We're planting a church in Mount Vernon.
SPEAKER_00: We're excited about that.
SPEAKER_00: Katie and Matt, we're so glad that God sent you here.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to partner with you.
SPEAKER_00: And God's going to do something special.
SPEAKER_00: Because ultimately it's the power of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: By God's grace, we're going to double our missions giving.
SPEAKER_00: By God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: By God's grace, we're adding to our staff.
SPEAKER_00: We now have a women's ministry director.
SPEAKER_00: But listen to what Richard Lovelace, a theologian at Gordon Comwell Seminary in Boston, said years ago.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: I believe this with all my heart.
SPEAKER_00: He's right.
SPEAKER_00: Only a fraction, only a fraction of the present body of Christ professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justification work of Christ in their lives.
SPEAKER_00: If he's right, that's terribly sad, and I think he's right.
SPEAKER_00: Only a fraction of Christians today are solidly appropriating the finished work of Jesus Christ in their lives.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way it usually goes.
SPEAKER_00: Many, many Christians are still confused.
SPEAKER_00: They think that sanctification comes by doing.
SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest, I think the biggest differentiator in the PCA, our denomination, is this.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that you're justified by grace through faith.
SPEAKER_00: All of our churches believe that.
SPEAKER_00: But in real practice, do we believe that we're sanctified?
SPEAKER_00: We grow more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We grow holier by Jesus to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Not by what we do.
SPEAKER_00: Put down your deadly doing.
SPEAKER_00: But by what we believe.
SPEAKER_00: You need the cleansing blood of Jesus to come up, make you come alive in new ways to make you grow just as much you did needed to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: That's what changed me.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't my justification.
SPEAKER_00: I was saved.
SPEAKER_00: I was justified when I was a little guy.
SPEAKER_00: I got that.
SPEAKER_00: What I needed to experience was a gospel that was so powerful that years later it would show me that I had stopped.
SPEAKER_00: I had stopped in some ways really growing in my faith.
SPEAKER_00: I had stopped and I'd lost my joy.
SPEAKER_00: I'd lost my praise.
SPEAKER_00: And God was merciful to me.
SPEAKER_00: And God showed me how much more Jesus wanted to offer me.
SPEAKER_00: But I had to humble myself.
SPEAKER_00: I had to believe this gospel had so much more to give me.
SPEAKER_00: It was one of the best things I ever did.
SPEAKER_00: I would not be here today if he hadn't done that in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, you lose your joy, trust me, you don't want to preach.
SPEAKER_00: You lose your joy and you you lose your faith in the power of the gospel, this is the last thing you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to tell people, you don't want to tell people what you don't believe in your heart yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, and I'm gonna have to leave this to you, all right?
SPEAKER_00: You do your Bible study this week, verses 9 to 12.
SPEAKER_00: Asking God, Paul's prayer.
SPEAKER_00: This is Paul's prayer for the Colossians, asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will.
SPEAKER_00: This means filling out to completeness.
SPEAKER_00: He uses the word knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word is kinosis, knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: See, there was a problem in this church in Colossae.
SPEAKER_00: Some false teachers had come in and said, Well, what you've heard about the gospel is good and well, but that's just the start.
SPEAKER_00: He wants you to go much deeper.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to give you a special knowledge so that you kind of become elitist because you think you're holier than other people.
SPEAKER_00: Because you think you're smarter than other people.
SPEAKER_00: You know, like Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: And they were starting to believe this.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul writes this letter, and he says, you don't need any other foundation, you don't need any other truth than the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ, the grace of God that saved you, is the grace of God that sanctifies you.
SPEAKER_00: He uses the word, he puts the prefix epi, kind of over and above, turbocharge knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: Epikinosis is what he says here.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, don't fall for the lie.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me say this, let me make an application.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you settle for just storing so much more doctrine in your head, information, information, information, information.
SPEAKER_00: That's not where it is.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: He's not calling you to a life of more information, he's calling you to a life of transformation.
SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus is precious to you, you will experience more transformation.
SPEAKER_00: And he'll continue to change you from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: And you won't regret it.
SPEAKER_00: I promise you.
SPEAKER_00: You'll thank him for freeing you from things that you got caught up with.
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful thing, this prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Four participles that he uses of what living a life pleasing to God looks like, bearing fruit, growing, being strengthened.
SPEAKER_00: Let me comment just quickly about that, being strengthened.
SPEAKER_00: He says, um, verse 11, being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy.
SPEAKER_00: Commentators differentiate between those two words.
SPEAKER_00: Endurance and patience.
SPEAKER_00: Endurance has to do with your journey, your personal journey.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you just feel like giving up.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you wonder, how long can I do this?
SPEAKER_00: That's endurance.
SPEAKER_00: It's about your personal journey in life.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us have hard journeys.
SPEAKER_00: Patience is not about that.
SPEAKER_00: Patience is about hanging in there with other people.
SPEAKER_00: You right?
SPEAKER_00: They're two different things.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he prays for both.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you lose your patience with other people.
SPEAKER_00: You just don't, you know, I'm done with that.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm praying that you will be strengthened in your endurance on your journey and patience with the people that he places in your life.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm praying for that for you.
SPEAKER_00: I need that.
SPEAKER_00: I think you do too.
SPEAKER_00: Looking back, what we're going to do in this sermon series is looking back 40 years, but we're also going to look forward.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to get stuck in the past here.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to pray that ongoing revival takes place, that the Spirit continues to give us fresh experiences with this gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I want to close with a true story.
SPEAKER_00: History tells us about Duke George.
SPEAKER_00: Duke George's adult son was dying.
SPEAKER_00: And on his deathbed, his father told him the real gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That we're not saved by our works, we're not saved by how good we are.
SPEAKER_00: We're saved by grace through faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: As he was sharing the gospel with his son, his son's wife, his daughter-in-law, was in the same room.
SPEAKER_00: And after her husband died, she said to her father-in-law, Father, why have we not heard these truths before?
SPEAKER_00: Her father-in-law said this, because these truths are for the dying, daughter.
SPEAKER_00: No, they are not.
SPEAKER_00: Duke, you got that wrong.
SPEAKER_00: These truths are for the living.
SPEAKER_00: You see, he was one of those Christians that was concerned if you preach the real gospel, people are going to go nuts.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to think, well, I don't have to obey, right?
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to take this holiness seriously.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if God saved me, then all I have, you know, he, like countless people I have met, can't handle the real gospel.
unknown: No.
SPEAKER_00: You take the real gospel, you take the full gospel, and you will desire to be holy more than ever.
SPEAKER_00: And you will repent more than ever.
SPEAKER_00: But you will have a freedom and you will have a winsomeness and you will have a joy that you did not have before.
SPEAKER_00: Tell the whole truth.
SPEAKER_00: Take in the whole truth.
SPEAKER_00: These truths are for the living.
SPEAKER_00: They're for us.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to set us free in new ways.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a person in this room that he doesn't want to set free in new ways, including the preacher.
SPEAKER_00: This is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is the power of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We are saved by grace and faith, and we are sanctified by grace through faith.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel is free.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel is full.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel is transforming.
SPEAKER_00: Father, would you help us to believe this this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Cut through.
SPEAKER_00: Use the blade of your word to cut through.
SPEAKER_00: Cut through whatever has accumulated in our minds and our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: That we do not believe the fullness and the freeness and the beauty of this gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, wake us up.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, forgive us for our unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, give us your joy, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, give birth your fruit in us right now.
SPEAKER_00: I pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.