all you can be is faithful to what the future hope god says if we proclaim the hope it's going to increase and multiply throughout the world so it's my job to proclaim the hope to help us grow in faith and we leave the increase to the gospel that intro video gets me amped doesn't it i love the way i music let's go jesus let's go lie to the world let's get in the bible like that's the kind of video i want to start at sermon good morning church if you have your bibles open up to colossians we are in our new sermon series on colossians and last week pastor scott gave us an incredible introduction you got to meet epaphras we'll talk about him more today we got to meet about paul and what we learned was that this book comes out of discipleship and there's a deep call to discipleship even at the outset of this book it's like the backdrop to everything we're going to read the relationship that paul has with the church of colossi pre-exists the letter right and so what's so cool is that's kind of our foundation as christians as someone had to disciple us in order for us to become christians you had to hear the word of truth and upon hearing it we know biblically that faith comes through hearing in hearing the word of god the first time you were discipled you heard the word of god from someone else and so i thought scott did an amazing job of saying what is discipleship it's an emphasis on god's word being put into your heart and it's two people coming together god makes three and you get over his word and you begin to read and meditate and chew on it and learn and grow so now we're gonna keep going we're diving into verses three through eight what i'd like to do is pray for us that god would move our hearts this morning that he would help us to focus on what is true and what i believe he's going to do for us just because this is what the passage is going to present is he's going to show you the first fruits of your faith and how to keep your faith growing faithfully that sounds kind of weird faithfully growing faith god is going to show you how your walk with him is enriched through this the outpouring of that is going to be a ministry in your life your personal life not my life your life you're going to have to really hold on to yours this morning that god is going to use his gospel his truth his hope your faith to have your ministry take his gospel into the world and to bear fruit among the nations your home your families this passage is going to set up the colossians for what's coming next in the book so let's pray and we're going to break it apart it's going to be a lot of fun father we love you
we love you because you loved us and you loved us in this way you sent your son to purchase us from darkness to pay for our sins to make a way to you and so we gather this morning as a body of believers humbled by that that we didn't earn this we didn't buy a ticket to get into your club rather you purchased us
that fills us with joy and hope and lord this morning as we're filled with that joy and hope would you make your word true in our hearts that you promise us that you're going to carve us up and change us hebrews 4 12 says your word is living and active it's not some piece of ink on a page but it's your words speaking to our spirit through your spirit lord shape us this morning so we might be more like your son in the mighty name of jesus we pray amen amen when you're newly married you get away with a lot don't you husbands i just got to celebrate my eighth anniversary with my wife michelle pretty awesome in about a month in about five weeks we're going to have our third baby little cali and so life has gotten so full and so good and so rich but i remember early on in our marriage just getting away with things that today i probably wouldn't even ask so we heard it was a good idea to get a house early on our marriage is gonna be good and uh and so we're looking around we're looking for homes and what we found was there's this little development right outside of our neighborhood where our church was where i was working and they had all these incentives to get young idiots like me to come and build a house and so we did i we couldn't believe it we're like wow what a deal yeah higher interest rate who cares it's we did not know any better we built this 1500 800 square foot little dream home we were so excited and this is where i got some tolerance for my wife are you ready we come into the house day one and i look in the backyard and in houston texas we have this thing called grass and they actually they the grass can live there and they just they roll it out like a carpet and they water it and it lives and it flourishes it's green it's really pretty to look at you can walk on it doesn't stab you and uh and i looked at our backyard and i said this is my castle i want to plant a garden and so i told my wife i'm going to go cut up the fresh-laid sod and i'm going to put some planters right in the middle of the backyard she's like why and i said because you just never know maybe maybe the world will collapse and we need to grow vegetables okay and so this is our house and i'm gonna do it so i did i went to my buddy who uh he leased out like a thousand acres and i shoveled 1500 pounds of soil off of his farmland brought it over in my truck cut like four by eight foot squares out of our backyard and then used these uh like 12 by 16 foot like just pieces of pine to create these ugly boxes i filled them with dirt didn't even paint the box just filled them with dirt and said okay i have dirt i've got boxes now i just need seeds so i go to home depot and i got all sorts of things i got like yellow squash i got green beans i got tomatoes i got jalapenos i got corn and i like divvied it up i looked up square foot gardening i was so into it and within a few weeks those seeds sprouted and they began to grow and before you know it our backyard had these ugly boxes that were full of life in fact we have like six foot corn stalks on one side of the yard and like little tomato bushes on the other and i was going out i was cutting yellow squash off the vine bringing it in i would go out i'd pick green beans it was so awesome here's what i didn't know about gardening plants need nutrients and the dirt i put into that ground had a limited supply of nutrients it also rains a lot in houston so here's where the story gets kind of dramatic
the first thing that happened was we had a six-month yellow lab puppy and she discovered that there was corn in one of the plots so we came outside one day and heidi our dog had eaten all the corn and then proceeded to throw that corn up in a corner of the yard we would find little corn plants would come over there later and uh she destroyed the first box the second box was destroyed by rain because the rain fell it compacted the dirt the nutrients were gone and the plants were just literally smashed the root systems were just constricted the third box died because it's hot in houston and because the dirt was above the soil it basically baked the plants alive my last box held on for a long time but it eventually ran out of nutrients and those plants died too so in the end my gracious wife was stuck with four ugly boxes and no plants oh my gosh why do i tell you that because today paul's going to use a metaphor he's going to talk about the fruit of the gospel and how it is bearing fruit throughout the whole world and i want you to see how he's trying to show them that there's a place where we get our nutrients from god that allows us to grow in faith and when we starve ourselves from those nutrients our faith our walk our ministry can turn ugly and it doesn't matter how much work you've put in on the front end if you don't take care of your walk it can go horribly wrong now check this out let's read colossians chapter 1 verse 3 paul says 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 hope laid up for you in heaven 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 in 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 let me give you a little backdrop in colossians one of the things we're going to find out as we move into this letter is that there are faithful brothers in colossians and there are unfaithful brothers in colossians in fact the book of colossians is kind of a double purpose book it's written as a letter of thanks and and and uh and paul's saying we are so blessed because of your ministry to us epaphras is kind of the spearhead of that right we learned about him last week he's been sent by the ephesians and the colossians he's kind of heading up a support mission for paul because paul's in prison and he needs support and so they want to love on paul by sending one of their best to go take care of him
however this early little church has got a group of people growing up in it who are teaching a false gospel and paul writes this letter because he knows that the faithful need reinforcements the faithful need to be grounded in the truth and before he gets into the controversy and we're going to study this it's going to be so awesome i can't wait to get into chapters 2 3 and 4. before he gets into the controversy he wants to lay the groundwork that in order to be fruitful in faith in order for the gospel to bear fruit some things have to be true and they were true when the colossians had faith and it's going to be that truth that sustains them when they combat the false teaching that's besieging the church now how could you make this personal this morning is it possible in your life right now there are things that you love that are not things that align with the gospel is it possible that when you first came to christ your heart it burned for him you longed for him and yet there are competing things competing distractions competing motives competing longings that have caused you to drift in your ministry for god is it possible that you can be faithful and struggle yes so we should long to know how do i get back to that first fruit how do i get the good stuff so that my ministry may prosper my faith can grow and my hope can rest in what is true and good look at verse 3 we always thank god the father of our lord jesus christ when we pray for you god at side note paul is such a faithful minister you don't know why because he loves the people that he's met he loves the church he loves the people who have given their lives to christ and there's just a good little example there when you read the bible it's always good to say are there any examples to follow here paul just gave you one how much time do we spend praying for one another just in this room i know you guys so personally i've heard your stories i've sat with you in meetings you've told me about your lives your jobs your kids your grandkids i feel like i know you to a degree and so when i sit with the lord i pray for you specifically you and that's what paul's doing for the colossians he's saying i know you i can see your faces i can hear your voices i remember your homes i remember the meals we ate together we have been doing life together and now i'm far away but i always remember you and that's important for us because we get to kind of come in and do a rally every sunday worship jesus gathers the saints sing praises to his name we get to pray together here but when you leave here do you remember one another paul says i remember you every time i pray and look at this he says since we heard of your faith in christ jesus and of the love you have for all the saints so what is one of the things spurring on his prayer that the people he's remembering have love for god's people this is going to kind of be the major point of paul's passage here you guys love other christians we heard that you have love for others and you have a deep faith in christ and those things go hand in hand that faith in christ produces love for the church it produces love for others it produces love for those who are in need and while that doesn't exclude the world because we know god gives us the example that he so loved the world he sent his only son if your faith is not marked by a devotion and love for your brothers and sisters first there's something off balance
faith received produces love look at this we heard of your faith in christ jesus and the love that you have for all the saints faith produces love because of the hope laid up for you in heaven 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 in truth we got to take a side note nerd moment here this is such typical pauline writing as you read colossians you're going to say does this guy not heard of periods right he wants to be so specific and his specificity is good for us it means we can get right down to the to the head of the problem but it can be frustrating sometimes because you're like clause clause clause clause where where are you going paul i'm trying to follow you but you're stringing a bunch of stuff together i want us to see his string of thought here this morning because it will set you free look at this because of the hope laid up for you in heaven underline that in your bible underline because of the hope laid up for you in heaven this is one of the most amazing lines in all scripture to understand this line will infuse your ministry it will infuse your walk look at this because of the hope laid up for you in heaven of this you have heard before in the word of the truth the gospel
what have they heard before there's a hope laid up for them and this hope is fully expounded upon in the truth the gospel the good news what is paul talking about he's talking about the first day he showed up in colossi he was invited into a home and he told them the story he told them god's story that god created us treated adam and eve treated this beautiful garden
and adam and eve in disobedience rejected god's good promise deceived by the serpent they took this fruit and they chose to sin and what happened was we inherited we became corrupt our very nature at odds with god that's not hope is it it's the opposite it's the bad news that leads to the good news we stand in opposition to god all the old testament then begins to tell a story of redemption because god in genesis chapter 3 makes a promise he says eve one day one of your kids one of your sons is going to kill the snake
but he's going to get killed too he's going to undo the curse from genesis chapter 3 until matthew chapter 1 we're longing to see who this kid is every single chapter the old testament is echoing forward to this kid it's amazing i mean it's really amazing if you don't believe me i'd love to meet with you sometime and i'll take you genesis exodus all the way on through the old testament every single book is longing for this child here's how ingrained it is if you go to genesis chapter 5 lamech which is the father of noah he names his son noah you know what noah means it means rest you know why lamech named him rest he said maybe this is the one who's come to bring take away the curse genesis chapter 5 before the flood lamech is naming his kid in hope that he's the one
but he's not the one he's not the one and we go chapter by chapter and we get more and more of god's story being revealed to us abraham is it's gonna be one of your kids judah it's gonna be one of your kids david it's gonna be one of your kids we're getting closer and closer it's getting narrower and narrower and this little girl this 13 14 year old girl an angel appears to her and says you're the one you're the mom you're a mom of the one that all of your ancestors have been longing for all the death all the suffering all the sacrifices all the works all of that's going to be paid for and every single person prior to christ who put faith in the promise of christ is going to receive salvation because of christ and he comes he enters the world god sends his son totally god totally man john 1 1 says in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god he was with god in the beginning and all things are made through him he comes into the world he dwells among us and demonstrates the full grace of god the full glory of god everything that's in him
he goes to a cross and he purchases us from our sins and paul's telling this to the colossians day one right this is the gospel this is the truth and you have to pay attention to words like v because d is different than a a truth is one of many truths the truth is definitive it means there is no other there's no other gospel there's no other good news there's no other truth that you can have a future eternal hope in this is it the hope is that christ paid for your sins and through him you can have eternal life and when you have christ you have a future hope if you have christ today you will stand before god one day and every single sin you thought was going to stand before you in condemnation is wiped away in fact the beauty of the gospel is that today you don't have to stand in condemnation today you can receive full forgiveness full pardon right now that's the hope that's the glory of god
paul says you believe that that hope that i proclaim to you that hope proclaimed gave you faith that you received and this is what happens theologically when you and i speak this story this true history of god and the hope in jesus christ the holy spirit illuminates hearts and men and women are drawn to god he draws men to himself and we respond with what faith i put my faith in christ
this most beautiful thing ever hope proclaimed leads to faith received and so we need someone to proclaim that hope because what does it do it produces faith
what happens next paul tells him how this all happened it came to you as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing that's cool that's cool because as he's talking about their faith he's letting them know that this mission isn't just about them he's saying you guys are growing but guess what it's growing everywhere god's work is multiplying outside of your ranks it's going all over the place and part of that is because of the faith they have and the love they have for others he says 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 in truth just as you learned it from epaphras our beloved fellow servant now here's what's so cool
hope proclaimed leads to faith received and when we have faith in god it produces love and that love causes us to proclaim the hope it causes us to meet people where they're at serve them epaphras is one of the first disciples of paul in colossi he's going to become a minister in colossae as you heard from scott last week regular guy we have no reason to believe he's some super scholar we have no reason to believe that he was he's just a guy he is someone that god chose to use to minister to this church it was his love for them and his discipleship to them that is helping produce the faith in the church
look at the words you want to always look for repeated terms in scripture because here's where we want to pivot we understand that when we hear the hope of the gospel it produces faith that faith will produce love in ministry i want to get to that at the end we got a back step how do i continue to grow in faith i want to look for the action terms the things that actually allow me to see what produced the faith to begin with what was the initial spark it says 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 the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven good of this you have heard before in the word 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 in truth just as you learned it from epaphras our beloved fellow servant what is the repeated idea here the gospel was not something they played once but something that was spoken over and over and as it was spoken it was taught so i could tell you jesus died for your sins believe in him you go you go to heaven that's not untrue but that is such a small picture of god's grand story don't you want to know more don't you want to grow an understanding of the grace of god because if i leave you with just jesus died for you believing you go to heaven you may not understand what he died for why did he die for me is he the only way is that there's so many questions that come with just a simple statement that is true and what paul is saying is you heard this from paphras you were taught this by pappas you heard it from me you've heard it you've heard it you've heard it is it possible that as a community we don't hear the gospel enough and we don't hear it in a personal way and so we may have the theology down i know jesus died for my sins but i'm not connecting that story to the sins i committed 10 minutes ago i'm not thinking about what i did this last week and connecting it to god's story today and so every morning i can wake up and say you died for my sins and not the sins that i confessed to you ten years ago when i came to know you you died for the sins that i'm committing in my heart now when i woke up and my first thought was about me and not you or my first thought was about what i wanted i wasn't serving my family or i haven't been to church in a month and i i just your whole life is covered by christ but that means there's a moment for intimacy with you and christ every single day the worst thing we can do is create a separation from our salvation and our sanctification which is that we are being made more holy how do you get made more holy the gospel infuses every day of your life the gospel calls you to repentance every day the hope that's laid up for you is what inspires you to move every day it's not the hope that drew you to christ one day it's the hope that you to christ and draws you to that day that there's a coming day that'll change the way you you work that'll change the way you read your bible it'll change the way you ask for forgiveness it will change the way you receive forgiveness a lot of us don't like to keep the gospel right in front of us because we know what we did yesterday and we're holding on to salvation we don't want it to be fire insurance it's easy to just treat it like fire insurance and say i like being saved i don't like being pride at i like being saved i don't like the gospel constantly shining a cue beam on the things i'm holding on to
and so we do we close up and we spend periods of time not getting nourished and our walk slowly starts to look like my garden first a labrador eats your corn
then the rain falls and compresses your finances and something tragic happens someone you love dies
and you're sitting in that last box and you're like everything's falling down and you maybe start starting to even doubt jesus do you love me is that is this true why is my experience in christianity not joy why am i going through so much hardship
the reason christians endure hardship with joy is because their joy isn't in what is being produced now but what has been produced for them later it's so much greater than what is present but when i get filled up with the things that are right in front of me i can lose my way i can lose sight of what is good
so what's paul saying he's saying guys this is going to bear fruit and increase in you your faith comes from your hope in what's coming and what's coming is eternal and good it's where your hope is based and it's going to produce a new love and love is going to produce the proclamation of that hope and that hope is going to produce more faith if i'm weak in my faith today what you need more than anything is to sit with jesus and talk to him about your life and put your life underneath that cross again and say lord here's where i'm at here's where i'm struggling here my hopes my dreams but would you help me see what is eternal that when i die all this stuff that i've stored up is gonna go to someone else and i'm gonna get you is my hope in you where is my hope
you know jesus gave us a really really cool parable and so if you want to turn over to luke um chapter 8 i want us just to revisit this it's a parable about salvation but there are principles for sanctification in this passage and i want to just hear it again that jesus is going to tell us how someone gets saved but he's also going to lay out the circumstances that shortchange salvation and i think there's principles for you and i because i wonder if we don't get lost in these fields
8 verse 4 and when a great crowd was gathering and the people from town after town came to him he said in a parable a sower went out to sow his seed and as he sowed some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot and the birds of the air devoured it and some fell on the rock and as it grew up it withered away because it had no moisture and some fell among thorns and the thorns grew up with it and choked it and some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold as he said these things he called out he who has ears to hear let him hear by the way when you when you read he called out it's okay if you're in your house just to call that out loud just trying to imagine what would have been like here jesus proclaimed something over a crowd
and when his disciples asked him what the parable meant he said to you it's be given to know the secrets of the kingdom of god for others they're in parables so that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand now the parable is this the seed is the word of god to me this is one of jesus's most straightforward parables what's being tossed on the ground the word of god what produces faith the word of god what is the word of god it's the gospel we just read that in colossians the gospel the truth the word he gave you all three of those he's breaking down what's going on theologically so we get to use these two passages together the gospel is tossed out among the people and their hearts are the so it says now the prayer is this that sees the word of god the ones on the path are those who have heard then the devil comes takes away the word from their hearts so that they may not believe and be saved and the ones on the rock are those who when they hear the word receive it with joy but these have no root they believe for a while and in time of testing they fall away and as for what fell among the thorns they are those who hear but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life their fruit does not mature
as for that in good soil they are those who hearing the word hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience can we not underline the word patience that's so important isn't it don't we want fruit today wouldn't it be great if you could just like put a quarter in the slot and boom faith boom growth boom fruit look at all the evidence of my faith in my fruit it would be so awesome but jesus says here good soil when given the good stuff the gospel will produce fruit in time in time now this passage about salvation if you've put your faith in christ if you received him with a good heart you are saved and the question now is are there some things you can learn from this that cause people to stumble on their walks one is the enemy the enemy wants to shoot flaming darts at you ephesians chapter 6 he would love for you to doubt the goodness of god and the goodness of god's plan in your life he would love for you to be impatient about fruit in your life he would love for you to get disillusioned with the gospel and turn your eyes on other things he would love that don't believe him
is it possible that some of us are just taken with anxiety and cares and patience in god stresses us out
you've got plans you've got goals for your ministry you've got goals for your family you've got goals for your church i want you to think about this empathize with me and scott as we look at all the amazing people we get to minister to and we're like oh we can see amazing places where we could go and god says yeah but i want you to wait over here i want you to wait over here we're going to bring some families from over here and we're like we have to trust your plan we can't see what you can see all we can be is faithful that's true for you too all you can be is faithful to what the future hope god says if we proclaim the hope it's going to increase and multiply throughout the world so it's my job to proclaim the hope to help us grow in faith and we leave the increase to the gospel
this one always scares the torah out of me because we live in a culture that is so rich we're so blessed by what we know by our education what we can do we're good at producing it says as for what fell among the thorns they are those who hear but as they go on their way they're choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life
i can produce so many pleasures and so many cares
and i am rich
church there's such a warning in here for us because god has blessed you so that his ministry might multiply he's going to use you in your way but be aware that it is so easy for us to culturally lean into what we can control and you're educated highly functioning adults in the united states of america you have more control than most people in the entire planet have over their lives
back in the day when jesus wrote these words when he spoke these words
you you would see dead people every day death was such a regular part of their life we hide death we mass death in our culture we believe that we're promised tomorrow we do because we live in a community that if i get hurt you can replace things in me they did not have the sort of medical technology or the sort of hope it is amazing how dark and just mutilated their world would have been compared to ours because of that we do not have a sensitivity to the future sometimes we forget that every breath we're given is a gift and jesus is saying you can miss what's coming and your fruit will not mature because your focus is on what is present something you did something that just fills you with a little pleasure or is really important to you or is a concern in your life
those things can rob us of our maturity and the faith
so let's go back to colossians luke chapter 8 would be a good place for you to meditate as you balance these two passages the colossians heard the gospel it produced faith in them and that faith produced love for all the saints and so here's what i want you to think about today if you need faith you need to re-hear the hope that's step one for you and so if today is a hard day for you you're like man i drug myself into church for the first time in a long time and i am not sure where my hope is your hope lies in this jesus purchased you nothing in this world can harm you because your eternity is secure you get god and not only do you get god then but you get god today you can talk to him today you can get in his word today you can be encouraged today you can be light of heart again as you focus on what is coming the future hope as you get discipled and you focus on the future hope that's going to produce in you this faith this muscle it's going to grow and here's what god is going to lead you to do the more faith you have the more sensitive you will be to loving other christians
that's something we should consider is there a way you can serve the church today is there a way you can serve another believer today is there a way that the little faith that you have could serve someone today and that reminds you of the hope and the hope then produce more faith and then you serve a little more and it starts to snowball as you walk out this faith with god i receive faith i give it back in service i receive faith i give it back in love i receive faith i'm constantly looking how i can be of service to my god how can i lay my life down and love others
this is how the gospel spreads
look at verse seven just as you learned 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 here's a question i might write down we've got these things these bulletins they've got amazing information in them they'll tell you all about what's coming up as a church on the back there's a blank side and you can take notes here what i would write there today is how is my ministry growing where am i getting my nutrients am i deprived which which which planter box do i look like the one in the beginning except story or the one at the end is there a labrador going to town on the corn in my field and it's okay to be honest it's okay to say i think i'm struggling or you might say i'm doing great and i want to see god grow it even more how can it increase a hundredfold that's what jesus said he said that good faith that produces salvation will yield a hundred times it grows it gets bigger
and so i write that down how is my ministry growing how am i doing give yourself an honest assessment the next thing i would do is i would write down the things you need to apologize to god for reflect on the sin in your life it's a spiritual discipline called examine something the church has practiced for the last 2000 years it means i lay before god in fact psalm 5 psalm 4 talks about this it says that at night i lay in my bed and i'm silent and i reflect my heart back to god i ask him to reveal me the things that aren't of him and then i speak the gospel over my life
lord was harsh with my children
but you covered it you paid for it you're a good father help me to be a better dad forgive me for not being a good dad yesterday help me grow and lord would you just take this shame i feel and just strip it away because i couldn't have done this on my own i need you and you've given me your son jesus thank you for dying for me
insert every sin lord i lied lord i stole lord i cheated lord i i lord i failed here's the deal we must be humble we are failures who have been made righteous and in our feelings we can become growing mature believers it is a victory to confess your sin an absolute victory it will grow you it will get you close to christ because you will have to put your eyes on him you can't look at your sin and look at the gospel and keep living the pretense that you're all right it's okay to not be all right it's not okay to stay broken bring your brokenness to jesus
the last is this
are you ministering to the church so that when people come and visit here and they leave and they go back to their churches they can't wait to tell the rest of the body that god's doing a great work here isn't that awesome look at paphras he shows up to paul paul you won't believe all the cool things we're doing in colossae in colossi those guys love jesus and they love your people
just imagine if one of us moves you know heaven forgive one of you guys have to change addresses and you have to go to another church one day will you speak fondly of this church as a as a church that proclaimed the gospel and brought hope to tucson and supported and loved one another so that when men and women looked at the oasis they said that is the love of christ that's what love from god looks like it looks like the way those people interact with one another and the way they interacted with their community their schools their jobs with their families i want us to have a good reputation in god's kingdom i want you to stand before god one day and hear a good and faithful servant but i also want to hear the oasis church was a good and faithful church and they grew together as they proclaimed the hope of christ 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 here's what i want to leave you with
who are you a faithful minister of christ for that might be another list you could make later when you're sitting with the lord who's god called you to minister to right here as you think about the people in this room and the people who will be here in the next hour they are your brothers and sisters in christ but they have a special relationship to you compared to say a random church in houston or some church in the northeast or some church in california you are a part of a body and that body is a member of a bigger body and god is using his church to take the gospel into the farthest reaches of the earth but you have a special relationship with this body you are not going to be judged for how you loved a church you never went to right
you're going to be cultivated here and so ask yourself that question if i was epaphras who am i being a minister for who am i ministering to and then ask the question how's my ministry growing do i need more faith let me sit my life underneath the gospel and be refreshed again let's pray father we love you we thank you for your word we thank you for the hope that is coming and the hope that we have now that lord when we die we will go to heaven and in heaven we will spend eternity with you and when you raise us up on the last day we will become a part of the new earth the new heaven and all of eternity will be spent with you god our hope is not that we live forever our hope is we get you forever that we can be in relationship with you forever we want what you want we want to be where you are we will do what you ask us to do
lord if there's something in our lives today that's drawing us away whether it be anxiety or a care or some goal that we've just elevated is lofty in our hearts some pleasure we just don't want to let go of wouldn't it be great lord if if my sin could just exist with the gospel a little bit it can't man we want it or would you put that thing to death in us so that we can experience the joy of the gospel by giving that thing to you and receiving the forgiveness that you give
lord we love you and we praise you it's in the mighty name of jesus we pray all god's people said amen hi i'm pastor scott pastor of the oasis church listen we are so excited that you decide to join us for the preaching and teaching of god's word we just pray that this will stir your affections towards christ but we have one encouragement we want to leave you with please do not allow this to take the place of the local body of believers we pray that you will be involved in a local congregation a local church that you can find yourself submitting under the eldership and the leadership of a local church we pray that you will find yourself stirred towards christ and that your joy in christ will be ever increasing