Part 3: In Christ We are SERVANTS / Colossians 1:24-2:5

Discover the life-changing truth of who Jesus is and what it means to belong to Him. Through Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we’ll see how our identity, purpose, relationships, and mission are transformed as we learn to live fully in Him.

This week we see IN CHRIST we are SERVANTS

Transcript

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I think I was uh 15, 16 years old. I worked at a water park in the south of the U.S. If you I think it's there's an aquapark around here, it's all the big water slides and stuff. It's crazy busy in the summer, and it was a great place to get a summer job. I thought, you know, lifeguard, I'll sit on a chair, sit back, see all the beautiful girls go by on the float. Well, I got assigned to the Pizza Hut to serve and cook pizzas. And uh it was not my ideal job, you know, to be waiting on people hand in foot all summer. And I remember there was one during one of the times we were there, we had to wear these pins that said, if if I'm not smiling, the drink's on me. Right? So they was trying, we were trying to make everybody feel friendly and welcome. And I was taking the orders, and this one family, I mean, they it was probably a huge family, they ordered a ton of food and a lot of drinks, and I put in the order, and the guy beside me who was working was not having a good day at all. It had just been a bad day, and he's getting ready to serve the drinks, and you know what they said? You're not smiling. The drinks are on you, on me. And I could see it like it was slow motion. He was like, You're right. The drinks are on you. And he took them and literally threw the drinks right on the customers. He did not last past that day. He was sent home. And the truth is though, none of us really enjoy feeling like being treated like a servant. Below someone else, or this is a step that below that I have to keep serving all the time. But this, the idea of servitude, is the next step Paul leads us to in Colossians. We've been rescued and reconciled in Christ. We've talked about that over the last two weeks. So, what are we supposed to become now once we've been rescued from sin, reconciled to God? Are we meant to now pull back and be hermits and just hide and guard our holiness and protect our own peace and keep the world at a distance, just find a cave somewhere along the shore and hide with my Bible and never speak to anybody else? Or are we called to be Christian superheroes, to go and save everybody, to conquer the world for Christ and to take it to the streets everywhere we go? Or has Christ called us to be something different? And that's actually what we're focusing on today. We're talking about this question of now that we've been reconciled and rescued, God calls us to step into a new role of servant. Colossians tell us that we are as we are in Him, we are servants. And here's the question that naturally flows then what does that mean? What does it mean to be the servant of Christ, the servant of others? And this is what Colossians, the last part of uh chapter two, and chapter one and going into two that teaches us. And there's a big idea I want you to grasp around servitude, and it's this in Christ, we've been given a new way to live, but it's not for ourselves, but for the people God has placed around us so that they can grow up into Him. He's given us a new way to live. Not just for ourselves anymore, but for those that are around us, those who need the hope and healing that you and I have experienced, who need the reconciliation and rescue that you and I have partaken in in Christ. So let's look at some passages and see what servants actually do. We're going to start in Colossians 1, verse 24 to 27, and it says this. Now I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, and my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints, to them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of his mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. The first thing we see here about servants is this servants show up for people. They show up. Listen to Paul's words there. Now I rejoice in my suffering for your sake. Who talks like that? Like I don't wake up in the morning going, man, I am so happy to suffer today for my friends. Please, God, help me suffer more today for my wife, for my child. Am I willing? Yeah. But he says, I rejoice in my suffering for your sake. Most of us don't talk like this. We tend to show up when it's convenient, when the person's easy, when it doesn't cost us too much. But when it gets messy or one-sided, we quietly start to pull back and protect ourselves. But Paul shows us a different way here. Before Christ, his life revolved around himself. Then he met Jesus, and everything changed. And notice the three words that reveal the miracle of the gospel here. He said, for your sake. I do this for your sake. The gospel doesn't just change where we're going after we die, it changes our lives, what they're about right now. Today, tomorrow, this evening, before Christ, life revolved around me. Your life revolved around you. But if we have been rescued and reconciled, now life begins to revolve around Christ and the people that He loves. There's a key idea I want you to grab here, and it's simply this: we show up for others because Christ first showed up for us. He showed up for us. Think about it. Paul isn't celebrating pain here, he's talking about purpose. He has discovered that helping people know Jesus is more valuable than comfort. Helping people know Jesus is more valuable than comfort. The people who have impacted your life the most are usually the ones who gave their time, energy, and presence, even when it costs them. Paul calls himself a minister according to the stewardship of God. And a steward, we've talked about this a few weeks ago, is doesn't own anything. A steward manages what belongs to someone else. We look at these people in our lives around us, and these people aren't ours. They belong to Christ. And that takes a tremendous burden off of our shoulders, but it still gives us a responsibility to steward relationships well. And then Paul gives the great mystery here that why we even do this, why we do this, because Christ in you is the hope of glory. Hear those words again. Christ in you. Not merely Christ for you, not merely Christ beside you, but Christ in you, the living Christ dwelling within ordinary people. That believes that every one of us in here that are believers in Christ, that not we're not doing this in our own power. We are filled and carriers of the hope into a hopeless world. Not long after I had moved to New York, after we had moved to New York, I was volunteering at a film workshop. And that's where I first met a guy named Jamal. When he found out I was a pastor at this workshop, he was very quick to let me know where he stood. He said for him, he really didn't need God. As a matter of fact, he thought he was smarter than God. And in that moment, I had a choice. I could have rebuked him and run away and said, get behind me, Satan, you know, giving him to him. But instead of creating distance, I made space for a friendship. Found out Jamal was also a personal trainer, so we started working out together, and those workouts turned into conversations. Those conversations turned into a real relationship. And over time he actually became meeting other family and friends, sitting at our dinner table, and eventually he even started coming to church. Looking back, nothing particularly impressive was happening. Just ordinary presence, making room, refusing to let someone resist, resistance to God become a reason to keep them at arm's length. And this is what faithful presence of showing up in people's lives is. It creates space for real relationships to grow, even when someone is still far, far from God. And that's why we actually keep showing up. Not because we're naturally strong or we have all the answers, we're their saviors, but because Christ is. And Christ is in us. And sometimes the greatest thing you can do for someone as a servant isn't to solve their problems, is simply to refuse to leave them alone in them. And this is the principle we should embrace that we should begin to desire presence in people's lives over convenience. Ask Christ this week to give you a heart that moves toward people even when it costs you something. Which takes us to the next thing we're going to see about servants, and it's in Colossians 1.28, the next verse, and it says this. Now it is Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ. Everyone mature in Christ. We proclaim, we warn, we teach all with wisdom. And this is what servants do next. They speak truth to people. They speak truth into people's lives. Again, Paul says it here, Him we proclaim. Everything in his ministry revolved around Jesus. This is not Paul telling about his life and what he's done. It was him proclaiming Jesus. In a world full of competing voices, Paul cuts through the noise and says the true message is Jesus. Most of us can struggle here. We can like to avoid hard conversations. We stay silent maybe when we should speak. We choose comfort over truth because we fear maybe conflict or rejection. We tell ourselves we're keeping the peace when we're often just protecting ourselves from a difficult conversation. But Paul shows a better way. The truth is, people don't need our wisdom. They need Christ. They don't simply need a better version of themselves as we talked about last week. They need a savior. And he says that he warns and teaches everyone not to rebuke, but to grow them in wisdom and the knowledge of the Savior. Both are necessary. Love does more than just comfort. Love protects, it guides, it challenges, it tells the truth. Sometimes love says, you're heading in the wrong direction. Sometimes love says, Let me help you understand God's truth the way that I have learned it from Him. And this is the key idea that you and I we should speak truth because Christ's truth has changed us. I am not the same person as I was before Christ just because I went underwater and came up and was baptized and I found a nice church. I am changed because of the teachings and the wisdom of Christ have taken root in my life. It's changed me. It's changed the way I think. It's changed the way I understand and view the world. Changes the way I walk through this world, what my goals are, what my joys are in this life. I am not the same, not because of somebody else, but because of Christ maturing in his wisdom in my life. And this is why he says we must present everyone mature in Christ, people coming more like Jesus, rooted enough that suffering doesn't destroy them, grounded enough that false teaching doesn't deceive them, and secure enough that they can stand firm even when life gets hard. As Jamal was beginning to grow in his faith, God's truth really started pressing in on some deeper places in his life. And one of the hardest places was his relationship with his mom. He carried a deep wound from childhood. He had been in deep poverty, instability, shelters, things that children should never see. Much of it was tied to the choices that his mother had made. And he told me one day, he, as much as he's learned about God's forgiveness, he could never forgive her. There were hard conversations about forgiveness, the truth that we can't fully experience, the forgiveness we've received from God if we refuse to give that forgiveness to others. These were truths that were difficult to hear. He said it felt unfair. But over time he kept engaging in God's word. We kept having these conversations. And he began to think about what it would be like to put it into practice. And something in Jamal began to shift. He started to forgive his mother, not all at once, step by step, not easily, but genuinely. And then something beautiful happened. I'll never forget it. One Sunday he walked into church with his mom. And to see them together, experiencing God's word, I thought of how many conversations we struggled and arm wrestled over seeing the fruit of what was happening in this moment. And that's what speaking truth and love can do. It doesn't always feel gentle in the moment, but when it's received in the context of real relationship, God can use it to bring healing that we once thought impossible. So we have to begin to desire faithfulness over just being light. Wisdom over just being the cool friend. Ask Christ for the courage to love people enough to tell the truth, even when at risk the relationship. Which brings us to the third thing that servants do, and we find this in the last part of Colossians 1 and the beginning of 2, and it says this. It says Paul again speaking, and he says, This for this I toil, struggling with all energy that he powerfully works in me. What is he toiling over? What he we just talked about, seeing people grow. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for those who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the richness of the full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And I say this in order that you may do you may that no one may delude you with plausible arguments, for though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. And this brings us to the last thing. Not only we speak, not only be with them, but we stand with people. Servants stand with people. What moves me the most about this section is that when many of the people Paul is writing to here have never even met him, they've never even seen him face to face. He says, and this is what I toil for with all energy. It's what I'm putting my full effort into. These are deeply personal words. Paul is carrying them in his heart. These are not relationships that are just out of convenience and out of distance that we're happen to rub shoulders on a weekly basis. These are people Paul is toiling for that live miles, hundreds of miles away, and some he's never even met. Most of us find long-term standing with people difficult. When someone becomes hard, slow, or even distant, our instinct is to pull back and we lower our investment, we decide we've done enough, and we quietly move on. But again, Paul shows us a different way. Love always moves forward toward people. He wants them encouraged, united, rooted in truth, confident in Christ, protected from deceptive teaching. And in other words, he wants them to keep going, to stand with them. Paul isn't just introducing people to Jesus, he's helping people stay with Jesus, to walk with Jesus. And that matters because following Jesus is not always easy. There are seasons when faith feels strong and seasons when it feels fragile. And if the only reason somebody's following Jesus is because of our presence in their life, when we happen to be distant or gone and they fall away, we have not done what we need to do to actually connect them to Christ. And sometimes that means staying connected over distance, even over difficulty. And the key idea is this we stand with people trusting that Christ will provide the strength for us to do it, even when they're far away. Many of us sitting in this room live far from family and friends, people that we've had our lives connected with for a long time. We've made new family and friends here. We've become part of a family of faith, but there are still people in our lives that are distant, that are far from us, and it's harder to stay connected through phone or text or whatever, like what it used to be. But God has connected people in our lives over the years that we just don't have the freedom to say, I'm done with you. I'm finished. I think of another moment with Jamal. It was the night that we told him we were leaving New York and moving to France. We were eating dinner in one of our favorite restaurants, and it already was emotional. Our whole family was there, he was there, and we all felt the weight of it. It felt like things were about to change in a big way, and the truth is they were. But Jamal did something unexpected. Instead of only receiving the news, he spoke truth into our lives. He looked across the table as only he can. If he was here, you would understand he has a big presence. And he simply said something that carried away deeper than the moment. He said this you don't get to stop being family just because you move. It was comforting and it was true. What struck me the most was Jamal wasn't just receiving love, he was now living it for us. He was setting the example. The same man who once said he didn't need God was now the one calling others to keep being family, to keep showing up for one another, even when the distance was great. Over the first year here, Jamal never missed a month of calling me. Sending a text, always calling. Sometimes I could answer, sometimes I wouldn't, and he would always leave a message that was encouraging. We went back to New York, we see him, he wants to come over. He's doing what he said he would do. And I'm not telling you that every long-term relationship, every long-distance relationship has to stay as active as it once was. But ask Christ to give you a heart that stays with people even when our presence isn't constant. The more I read this passage, the more I'm convinced, the more convinced I become that Paul measures success very differently than you and I often do. In this passage, he doesn't talk about his accomplishments. He talks about people, serving people, suffering for people, people that he taught, people that he prayed for, people that he fought for. And it all followed this one true reality: that Christ in you is the hope of glory. Christ in you is the hope of glory. Whatever relationship God has placed you in right now, a place that He has called you to serve people, to teach people, to stand with people, to encourage people, whether they're here, your neighbor, a coworker, or somebody you haven't seen in years, that God still has your heart connected to. As I mentioned, Jamal and I still stay connected through text, calls, and times together when we can. God's still working on him. And now he's working through Jamal. The same man who once said he didn't need God is now a servant of God, doing same things for others that he we saw God do in his life. I hear stories he shares of what he's how he's sharing the gospel on film sets with his family and even some tougher, tough places in the city where he now volunteers. Just a few days ago that Jamal sent me a text that kind of stopped me in my tracks. This is what it said. I'll read it to you word for word. He said, Thank you for being a friend of a broken old fool with old dreams long overdue. He's a poet. I can't tell you how much God has blessed me. I am overwhelmed with joy and hope for the first time in my life. Thanks for showing me it's okay to heal. In the coming years, I want to find others to love with all my heart. I'm not gonna be afraid to do that anymore. I'm gonna live the way God intended me to, whatever the outcome may be. And I want to die the same way with gratitude. I sat there and just stared at those words and it reminded me, this is why we show up. This is why we speak truth. This is why we stand with people, not because we're the ones who change them. We're not the heroes, but because Christ in us becomes the hope of glory in them. And then through them to others. The gospel doesn't simply rescue us, the gospel doesn't stop with reconciling us, the gospel transforms us into people through whom Jesus continues his work into the lives of others. And so it makes me ask our question of the day. Very simple but pointed question. Who is one person God's calling you to show up for, to speak truth to, and to stand with this week? To serve. To serve, to be a servant. Not like somebody waiting on tables or at a pizza stand, angry at the day, but somebody who's excited about sharing the hope of glory within us to others. My guess is that even as we're asking that question, a face has already come to your mind. Maybe a child, maybe a parent, maybe an old friend, someone who's hurting, struggling, drifting, or feeling alone. Maybe God put them in your life for a season, and maybe he intends to love them through you again today, this week. Because we as rescued people become reconciled people, and reconciled people become servants. And in Christ, we are servants. Maybe as you've listened today, you realize you've been living for yourself. You're that person Paul was or I was before Christ. And maybe you know you're still far from God, like Jamal once was, and you've been keeping him at a distance. Well, I've got good news for you today. And it's this that the gospel of Jesus has already shown up for you. You're here. People are standing with you here. People are speaking the truth to you now. He spoke the truth that we are sinners in need of a savior. And he stood in our place on a cross and took the judgment we deserve so that we could be forgiven and brought home to the Father. I want you to hear this. You don't have to clean yourself up first. You don't have to have it all together. You simply come as you are, even with your resistance and your wounds and your self-protection and your need, and you simply submit to him. If you've never trusted Christ, or if you've been running from him, today can be the day you stop and tell him, Jesus, I can't save myself. I need you. Forgive me, reconcile me, make me new, and help me be a servant to others. Will you pray with me?