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Colossians Part 15 – Friends

Oct 10

Posted by Bo in Colossians

Colossians 4:7-18

Here is the Word .doc for the following lesson. Colossians Study 15

Friends

Colossians Study

Friends

What would you think if I sang out of tune, Would you stand up and walk out on me.

Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song, And I’ll try not to sing out of key.

Oh I get by with a little help from my friends…

We are at the end of this wonderful letter to the Colossians.  Filled with some of the most wide ranging doctrinal truth found anywhere in scripture.  It’s easy to forget that what we have been reading and studying is a letter.  To be sure, we understand that most deeply we consider these words the revelation of God, penned by Paul under inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  But the vehicle that this disclosure was made by is in the form of a letter.  And so it bears the personalization that any correspondence of that sort would bear.  So in closing, Paul send greetings on behalf of those who have labored diligently with him.

Tychicus

“Tychicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts, ” (Colossians 4:7–8, ESV)

Tychicus is mentioned 5 times in the NT.  The first is in Acts 20:4 at the end of Paul’s third missionary journey.  A collection was being taken up from the Asia Minor churches to be presented to the believers in Jerusalem who were suffering deeply at the time.  There was full fledged persecution going on from all sides at this point and Paul had a target on him.  So as we read of the proximity of Tychicus to Paul we can appreciate his commitment to Paul and his love for the Gospel of Christ.

When our letter finds him, it has been 4 years since they first met in Ephesus and 2 years since Paul’s Jerusalem arrest.  He has faced numerous assassination attempts, multiple trials and jailings; still Tychicus is by his side.  So it is not surprising when it comes to the important duty of delivering this letter, along with those to the Ephesians and Philemon, that Paul selects Tychicus as the letter bearer.  And if you remember our early lessons you’ll understand that he has no easy task before him.  The trip from Rome to Colossae was a difficult one. Tychicus would first have to cross much of Italy on foot, then sail across the Adriatic Sea. After traversing Greece on foot, he would sail across the Aegean Sea to the coast of Asia Minor. After all that, he still faced a journey of nearly one hundred miles on foot to reach Colossae.  Well over a 1,000 miles in all.

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Colossians Part 5 – Reconciliation

Jun 25

Posted by Bo in Colossians

Colossians 1:20-23

Here is the Word .doc for the following lesson. Colossians Study 5

It was in a church in Munich that I saw him—a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

“It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. ‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. …’

“The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.

“And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

[Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent.]

“Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’

“And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course—how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
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Colossians Part 4 – Supremacy

Jun 16

Posted by Bo in Colossians

Colossians 1:15-19

Here is the Word .doc for the following lesson. Colossians Study 4

What does it mean to enjoy supremacy?  In our country‘s system of jurisprudence it means that 9 people in black robes have the final say over what it constitutional and not.  Their decisions are absolute and unappealable.  In the realm of political rule, the closest examples are found in nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.  Here, kings rule in a system of government that we refer to as an absolute monarchy.  An unelected man serves as both head of state and head of government, thus wielding political power over the sovereign state and its subject peoples.  He is unbound by elections, a parliament or a constitution.  He is all powerful.  Then there was the trio of young girls from a Detroit housing project who went on to set the standard for all female R&B performers during their run of hits in the mid 60’s.

But here’s the thing.  Those Supreme Court judges may be impeached and removed from office.  That Saudi Arabian king can die from cancer, thus ending his reign.  And for what happened to the Supremes I’ve got three words, “No Diana Ross”.

We call and consider people and things supreme that bear no resemblance to true supremacy.  In just a few verses Paul paints a picture the Lord Jesus Christ that ought to sober the drunk and awake the sleeping.  The height, width and breadth of his power and domain are without borders.  Let’s look at His supremacy as it relates to three areas:

  1. God the Father
  2. Creation
  3. The Church

God the Father
“He is the image of the invisible God”
I’m sure each of us can recall statements from unbelievers that go something like this.  “I can’t believe in something that I can’t see.”  Or we’ve experienced times of desperation and waning faith where we wish we could behold with our eyes what we are struggling to hold onto in our hearts.  To them and us this verse is an absolutely extraordinary statement.  The invisible God has made Himself visible!  Just consider that for a moment.  Now while you are considering that, consider this.  The eternal God who transcends not only time and space also transcends form.  What kind of watch do you think God wears?  “That’s stupid”, you say.  That it is.  Time is a divinely created human construct that was instituted by an eternal God.  But we don’t honestly believe that God is bound by it.  He condescends Himself to it so that we have some frame of reference in which to identify with His creatures.  When we look out into space and ponder our Milky Way galaxy we say this is God’s realm.  And it is.  But we don’t limit His ownership to simply this galaxy or universe.  It’s ALL His.  And when we say ALL, that again is a human construct we use in an attempt to try and understand God’s vastness.  For His domain has no domain.

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Colossians Part 3 – Prayer

Jun 10

Posted by Bo in Colossians

Colossians 1:9-14

Here is the Word .doc for the following lesson. Colossians Study 3

The story is told about a small town in the south. For many years, this town had been “dry” in that no alcohol was ever sold or served there. But one day a businessman in the area decided to build a tavern. In response to this new tavern, a group of Christians from a local church became concerned and planned an all-night prayer meeting to ask God to intervene. Shortly after the prayer meeting that night, lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.

In the aftermath of the fire, the owner of the tavern sued the church, claiming that the prayers of the congregation were responsible for his loss. But the church hired a lawyer to argue in court that they were not responsible. After his initial review of the case the presiding judge began the trial with an official statement. He said: “No matter how this case comes out, one thing is clear: the tavern owner believes in prayer, and the Christians do not.”

As we begin this third of our studies in Paul’s letter to the believers at Colossae I feel compelled to confess to you how woefully unqualified I feel to be teaching this week’s study on prayer.  You see, as we begin to deal with Paul’s prayer for the Colossian church, it’s not just something we read, groan a sound of assent and commend him for.  It’s illustrative for us.  It’s when the descriptive becomes the prescriptive.  This is where I have had to do some heavy personal evaluation and criticism.  Stick with me for a moment because you might be able to identify with me.

tiedhandsThere was a time when I was sure of my powerful role to wield if not entirely control the hands of God by my actions and prayers.  If there was a lost person, I possessed the subtilty of speech and sleight of hand to “get him saved”.  If someone was spiritually immature, I knew the regimen of enforceable activities in order to get the desired outcome.  Only those things that seemed truly out of my reach were items for prayer:  A hurricane in the Caribbean that needed diverting, Bill Clinton’s salvation or maybe getting 3,000 people to Friend Day.  But even in what would’ve appeared to be an act of dependence upon God, my prayers still possessed quite a bit of self reliance.  I truly believed that God’s hands were tied without me.

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Colossians Part 2 – Thanks

Jun 10

Posted by Bo in Colossians

Colossians 1:3-8

Here is the Word .doc for the following lesson. Colossians Study 2

There are 183 days until we officially need to be ready to answer the question “what are you thankful for”.  I readily admit that I don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about that question.  Now consider how replete the scripture is with instructions to give thanks to God.  A form of the word thanks or thankful appears ~150 times in the NT.  But what is most instructive is the repeated object of that thankfulness.

I happened upon the website http://thankfulfor.com as I was searching for ‘things people are thankful for’.  What follows is a sampling of items that I thought were interesting.

  • catching up with family this weekend in the land of 10,000 lakes
  • the attic fan. Don’t even need the A/C yet!
  • I’m thankful for a fun day off with the boy yesterday :) Free White Sox game, ballpark nachos, Robin Hood movie date, and SOUPLANTATION/SWEET TOMATOES. WOOT
  • Wisdom to continue with a right decision, as hard as it can be sometimes. Using words for encouragement. Ribbon. Flowers. Costco. America. The prospect of going to church tomorrow. I’m so thankful, God.
  • Google ~ Go there today and “insert coin” to play Pac Man! Happy 30th B’day, Pac Man!
  • God’s grace
  • I’m thankful that my Lakers are playing so well in the Western Conference Finals
  • Kids growing up and showing independence
  • Dog slobber!!!
  • the universe stopping me before I made a mistake.
  • Thankful to live in a place where the garbage truck takes away the trash from my house. Even if it’s at 6 am
  • My new iPhone that arrived today after a three month wait!
  • my openness to growth and change. I’d be such a different person, and possibly a really negative person, if it wasn’t for it.

As you can see, the things for which people are thankful for run the gamut.  From the seemingly trivial, to the momentous.

Anyone who has spent any time at all in a church that engages in the practice of “testimony time” knows that even for Christians, placing our gratitude in its correct place is sometimes an elusive task.  One of the reasons why we study and meditate upon scripture is so that our minds would:

  1. be made aware that God is the benefactor of all things
  2. we as the beneficiaries would be overwhelmed by gratitude
  3. give all thanks to whom it is due

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