The Branch Church
Colossians 1:1-8
good morning. How's it going? Yeah, my name's Stephen. If we haven't had the chance to meet, I'm one of our elders and serve as the lead pastor. Today is a day that we've had circled on our calendar for a very, very long time. And we have a lot to be thankful for. Today is a significant day in the life of our church. And as we celebrate being in existence, I don't know if we sing happy birthday or what we do, but we have been here for 10 years. And you know, it's interesting having been a church planter. The church that we planted in Texas in the branch are like three months apart from each other. And so that church has gone through their process and have gone past that 10-year mark. And you know, it's amazing to be here and to be looking out among like people who were here from day one. And people who are like new here, like today is your day one. And just to be reminded that for a church plant in a college town to celebrate being in existence for 10 years has nothing to do with staff, it has nothing to do with leadership, it has nothing to do with the elders, deacons, or the people who are here has everything to do with the sovereignty and grace of God. And that is it. And so today is an emotional day, so like if you're new here and you don't know me, like I keep a Kleenex, I try to in my pocket, it's right here, okay, currently is dry. But today is a significant day. It is a key marker for our church of all that God has done in preparation for all that he is going to do. So it's not like we've made it, right? It's like when you're married and you have an anniversary, you're not, you don't celebrate the fact that you've finally made it. It's like, okay, we've done the work and now we, you know, like our prayer is always like, would you just, would you double what we've had, you know, would you double it? So it's 14, would you make it another 14 and we get there, would you make it another 28, you know, until we're both blind and can't see or hear or do anything, I don't know. But as a church, like our prayer is that God would continue to pour his blessings, not just on us, but around us. And so as we gather today, it is a testament to God's generosity and his sovereignty is graced to us. But it's also a testament to the courageous men and women who paved the way for us to be here. And we say this a lot, like we stand on the shoulders of pioneers who like went in the face of what everyone else said, like, hey, planting a church in a college town is a really dumb idea. A few weeks ago, I used the S word, today I'm going to use the D word, right? And so I'm not going to use the S word again, but it's a, it's a, it's a terrible idea, right? Because college kids don't have any money. So you have, and they were, they're really needy. So you should never go to a college town and try to plant the church unless you already have bookoos of money in a building. We've had neither. And look around. Why are you laughing at that? It's not a joke. But we're here because there was a group of people who was just crazy enough and just faithful enough to say, yes, Lord, we will follow you. And they came here. And that's why we're here today. Like, that's why we have blue chairs and a tarp that is different than normal. And like, we're doing this because they said, yes. And what I know about our church now is there's a lot of us in the room who are waiting to hear what God's calling us to do. And I hope that the example that we've seen from the people who've gone before us is like, our only response to God's questioning is, yes, Lord, where will you take me? And if we become that kind of people, this is why we pray for the nations every week, which we're going to do here in just a second. It's because at some point, someone's going to say, I feel like God's calling me to Oman, which is who we're going to pray for today. And you're going to pack up like a little suitcase. I don't think you can take a lot. And you're going to go to Oman and you're going to spend your life there. And there might be one person who comes to know Jesus and that will be enough. And that's the reality of what it looks like to be a part of a church plant. So later in the service, Gabe and Brie are going to come up and they're going to share some of the origin stories. So I'll say that for later. But just because the world says you shouldn't do it isn't a good enough reason to not say yes to what God has called you to do. And so you may not feel ready. You may feel like you're too young. You may doubt your skills or your training, your readiness. That's God's not concerned about any of that. He's just, are you willing? And if you're willing, he will equip you with the rest. Here's what I've learned and just like watching our church over the last handful of years. When we came to the branch, our oldest is 10. Okay, Brie and his 10. He was five when we came here. Maryland was three. Berkeley wasn't even here yet. We talked about on our signs, we exist for those who aren't here yet. So Burke, we're glad that you're here. But where there is clarity and conviction in calling, it's our job to courageously take that next step of faith and trust God. That's what Christians do. And God will bless our efforts as we do that. And it may not turn into a church plant that looks like this. It may just be, what if it was just a faithful band of brothers who continue to meet and regularly meet and to dive into God's Word? I think that would be just enough. And so I just want to encourage all of you. And I'm supposed to be short today. So good luck with that. That we have an example here to follow. And so no matter what season of life you're in, I know that God's calling you into something that's going to be harder than where you currently are. And the next step for the Christian is to crush their comfort zone and to step out in faith and to follow Jesus into the unknown. Because that's where we will find him doing a work that he's begun long before we ever got there. And so I just want to encourage you in that. And so for those of you who are here from the beginning, I just want to say thank you. I also would like for you to stand up if that's okay. So if you were here on day one or whatever, I don't know exactly how that would look. But like how many of you will you stand up if you met and gave and breathe house? Are there any of you stay standing? Because we're going to try to get the whole room standing in here just a second. How many of you were here when we met in the back room at 530? Okay. Why are you all on this side? Except you said, hey. Okay. How many of you were here while Gabe was still the lead pastor? Okay. Look at the room. So here's the point. You can go ahead and sit. Thank you for doing that. That was fun. It takes courage to stand up. All right. But we have half the room who has no idea the origin story of the branch. And it's our job together. So the ones who stayed seated, like if you kept your seat, like we're responsible together for the next ten. Okay. That's our going to be our covenant together. And he may only be here for a couple of years, but there were a few of them who were only here for their time in college. They've moved on and now they're back. And so that's what life and biblical community looks like. Just so you know. Okay. There's the picture. That's what we talk about. All right. So moving on. We have a few new members to announce. We're transition. But we got it. All right. So Danny and Christy Preston are here. They're right over here, sitting in the front. And Devin Parsley. I haven't seen Devin. She was here last night. She's here. So Devin, there she is. We're so glad that you were here. They've gone through our membership process. Yeah. And Danny's already serving up front, slapping the bass. So that's pretty sick. All right. So now let's, I want to spend just a couple of time, just a little bit of time praying for the country of Oman. So Oman is a small Islamic country in the Middle East with just about 5 million people. Okay. It ranks at the bottom of the list for scripture availability. So their ability to have access to the word of God is virtually zero, mostly because of government restrictions. 90% of the countries never heard the name of Jesus. So here's what I want us to do. We're going to spend a minute doing this now to pray that the name of Jesus would be magnified from the city center in Oman to the edges of the country. That there would be people who would be raised up to bring the gospel. There would be an epaphorus that's listening who would go and be sent to Oman to bring the good news that Jesus saves. That we pray that out of that would come healthy churches that would be planted and rooted in that one day they'd celebrate being around for 10 years. Maybe they're in a gym too. And let's pray most of all that the gospel would root deeply in this place. Okay. So let's pray now and then we'll jump in to Colossians 1. Father, we are so thankful for today. We're thankful for the gift that is this church, this body of believers, and I'm thankful for the courage and the faithfulness of those who paved the way for us to gather here today. And so I pray that in all things that we would be a people who are centered on your word, we are telling others about who Jesus is. We're loving with everything that you've given us and got most of all that we're glorifying you in our every action. And so I pray now for our brothers and sisters in Oman, a place that desperately needs access to your word. They need access to the gospel. God, I pray that you would help us to be creative and even thinking about how we pray and what we might be able to do as a church to support the gospel work that's going on and that needs to be going on in Oman. So Lord, we love you. We trust you. We are genuinely thankful for your presence today. So we love you in praying Jesus' name. All God's people said, Amen. All right, so if you have your Bible, we're in Colossians, chapter 1. We're going to go verses 1 through 8 today. This is like literally the first week in the Paul's letter to the church in Colossae. We will spend all the rest of the fall. We'll be in the book of Colossians. So go ahead and earmark it if you're going to be here. Put a ribbon in and I'm going to go ahead and read verses 1 through 8 and then we'll come back and we'll do what we normally do. Okay, this is the word of the Lord. Colossians chapter 1 verse 1, Paul, "In apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, in Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you in peace from God our Father." 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 and truth, just as you learned it from a pathris. 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. Now here's what I know, okay, having been around church for a long time, having helped people learn to read their Bible and gone through professional Christian school, okay? We like to skip verses 1 and 2 of every book that we ever read, right? We like to skip the greeting because we're like, well there's nothing spiritually formative about the greeting. And what a waste, right? If it wasn't formative it wouldn't be here, right? Verses 1 and 2 is the word of God. And so this introduction is so oftentimes breezed past as just, oh it's just a hello. And it's so much more than that when over the last couple weeks we've laid out some of the contextual background of what's going on and who these people are. But for Paul to say one that he is an apostle, what he's doing is not just saying, hey my name's Paul, he's saying I'm Paul and I have the authority to lead this congregation. This letter has meat because I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. So we can't miss that, otherwise the letter wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have it. If Paul was just some random dude, if he wasn't inspired by and trained by Jesus, he was not an apostle, okay? And so by missing these key elements we miss Paul's strategy to raise, to send the gospel out to the edges of the earth and just to raise up healthy churches, the things that we talk about all the time. In verse 2 he says to the saints and faithful brothers, he's encouraging them in their, in his greeting. How many of you need to be encouraged? All of us, I'm not going to have you stand again because I can't do that twice in one service. But all of us need to be encouraged. I need to be encouraged. I need someone to say to me sometimes, hey, faithful brother in Christ grace and peace to you. Sometimes that is enough. And so for us this introduction is uniquely important because the Colossians didn't know who Paul was, right? He didn't ever get to go there. And so what he has is he's got, they have word of mouth, a paphorous comes, he sits at Paul's feet and he absorbs the teaching and then he's the courageous one. He's the church planter who goes back home. And now there's a body of believers there because he didn't stay put. He didn't get comfortable. He wasn't worried about the ivory tower of Paul's doctrinal basis. He took what he knew and he put it into practice. That's what we see here in verses one and two. So the most important thing that Paul's doing is he's reminding them of his authority. And as important as that end, as important as his authority is, it's not as important as what he's telling them next and reminding them that of their acceptance into God's family. Sometimes because of all the things that are going on the world, we need to be reminded that we're a son or you're a daughter of the most high God. That's what Paul does in just two verses. And so I just want to encourage you, as you read your Bible for yourself, don't skip the stuff that you think isn't important because it doesn't seem important. There's so much meat and rigor here. So in these next few verses, starting in verse three, Paul transitions from introductory introduction to prayer. And so we see this idea of bearing fruit and growing in the gospel. And there's kind of four gospel keys here that I want us to see. We see some gospel essentials. We see gospel fruit. We see a gospel method. And lastly, we see a gospel example with the life of a pathist. We won't spend a ton of time on a pathist because we just did that two weeks ago. So if you want to know more about him, listen to a couple weeks ago. So verses three through five is this idea of members of God's family. And Paul immediately transitions into this prayer. And what does he say? How does he start? He says, "We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you." So when I'm drawn to praying for you, I'm drawn to give thanks to God for your presence. And it's not just their presence, it's the position that they have to get the gospel from where it was in Ephesus down the Meander River and into Colossae. Paul's grateful for the work that is going on there. When we pray for you, we always give thanks to God. So I hear what I know too, all right? Having been here for a long time, having met with a lot of you, the spiritual discipline of prayer is one of the most challenging spiritual disciplines, probably of all of them, maybe except for fasting. I don't know. But a lot of times you hear like, I just don't know how to pray. And I totally get that. I've had seasons of life where prayer just seems super dry and mundane. I don't have the words to say. Have you ever felt that way? Am I the only one? Okay. Yeah, in the back, right? No, all of us have seasons that are like this. And here's how I want to encourage you. And here's what if you came to me and you said, "Hey, listen, I don't know how to pray. I've never been taught to pray. Open your Bible. The Bible is full of prayers. This is a prayer. You want to learn to pray? Pray these prayers. This is enough. Go to the Lord's Prayer. Pray the Lord's Prayer. That is enough. A lot of times we like to over-church the spiritual disciplines. Okay? What I mean by that is we try to polish them up and make them fancy, make them hard, harder than they need to be. And so sometimes we just come to prayers like this one and you're like, "Oh my goodness. Maybe I'm just going to go through like the people I know in my family group and I'm going to pray these prayers over them. That's a good place to start." So I just want to encourage you in that. The prayer is hard. We have examples all over scripture to do that. Okay? So right out of the gate Paul seeks to encourage them by the frequency of his prayers for them. Right? It helps. Like have you ever gotten that text like, "Hey man, I'm praying for you?" Yeah. How do you feel at the end of that? One, I don't know how to respond to that except for like extreme gratitude. And then like, now I feel bad because I... How can I pray for you? Right? And so it's a reminder to have an awareness of the people around us. This regular intercession of thanksgiving on behalf of God's people is a key rhythm of the life of the Christian. Okay? So this prayer though is directed to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What we establish is this letter is written because there is heresy that's crept its way into the church and colossae. Specifically around the person and work of who Jesus is. And so what does Paul do? In this prayer, he's laying out a Christological grid of where they're going to be headed. And we'll do a lot of that. So when we say Christology, what we mean is the study of who Jesus is. What does the Bible say about who he is and what he has done? That's what Paul is going to do the rest of the way, the rest of the time that we spend in Colossians. So Paul directs the prayer, God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just like, "Hey, I know what's going on over there. We're going to get it right." Okay? So we got to pay attention to what's happening here. This is significant. These statements are important. So Paul then goes on to give thanks in very specific ways. Okay? He gives thanks for their faith in Christ Jesus. And I want you to pay attention to these words. They're going to be on the screen behind me. He gives thanks for their love that they have for all the saints. And he gives thanks for the hope that they have laid up in heaven. Faith, hope, love. You'll see these rhythms being constantly Paul uses these all the time to characterize the life of a Christian. Faith, hope, and love. So here's what I know. That loving God is shown in how we love our neighbor. This is what we talked about when we were in Acts. Our love for God is shown by how we love our neighbor. But in this context, particularly how we love other Christians, we talk a lot about like love the people who are hard to love. And then we don't think about the people who are here. Some of the people here are hard to love. I don't, I'm not none of you, but you get what I'm saying. Like sometimes we have a harder time of loving the people who are in the church because they're thinking, "Oh, they're already Christians. I'm not going to waste my time." And yet it's that person who desperately needs to be accepted and welcomed into community because they're on the life line. And so Paul's trying to encourage the church to have love within itself in order to develop a robust view of who Jesus is. Okay, verses six through eight is this idea of our gospel identity. And our identity in Christ is linked to his kingdom agenda alone. Okay, we've talked a lot about we are sent, but we're also sent to be makers, right? Go to the ends of the earth. That is the command and then make disciples. Okay, as we go, we make. So at this point in church history, the gospel is spreading like wildfire. It's going everywhere. And what we see is we start seeing churches popping up all over the place. And Paul's effort is trying to keep the church's focused on the work of Christ and the work of Christ alone because the church gets really easily distracted. Okay, and at this point in church history, it's just this gospel is just going like crazy and people are coming to know Jesus every day. And so what Paul in this prayer, he talks about the gospel is bearing fruit and increasing. And he does that. He talks about it in three very specific ways. The gospel is bearing fruit and it's increasing in me. The gospel is bearing fruit and increasing in us. And the gospel is bearing fruit and increasing in a whole world. This is, this is awesome. This is why we pray for unreached people group because our desperate plea is that we would see this happen. That we would see the gospel bearing fruit and increasing in every square inch of this planet. That everywhere there is a heartbeat, the name of Jesus would be proclaimed and magnified. And until that has happened, we can't just come in here and keep filling up a gym and keep adding seats and just stay comfortable. We're not going to do that. Not here. We're going to preach Christ. We're going to live in biblical community. And then we're going to get up and we're going to go love to the ends of the earth with the compassion that's been shown to us. That's who we are. That's what we do. But here's the reality. Those who have a deep, rooted belief in Jesus always have a desire to share the gospel with others. If the gospel really has brought you from death to life, you have a story to tell. So real quick, okay, real quick because I'm, I'm, we're working hard here, okay. In this prayer is one of the most robust theological doctrines that we have in the Bible, okay. For Christians, when we talk about theology, we a lot of time be like, oh, that's for like the really, like that's for the religious elites. And what we forget though is that as we do theology, what are we doing? We're learning about who. We're learning about who God is. And as we do that, what should happen to us? It's not that our brains get bigger, but as it said, our hearts begin to change because now I understand who God is and what he's done for me. Now, my life is going to look differently in response to that. So that's what when we say theology around here, that's what that's ultimately, that's our end game. It's not so that you're the smartest person in your college classroom, okay. It's so that you become the light of the world in your college classroom, okay. So in this passage, we see the doctrine of the Trinity, okay. And so when we taught our kids this, we were using the new city catechism, and we would do this little hand gesture. It's one God, three persons, one God, come on, one God, oh, you don't have to, I'm just kidding. But you did good. One God, three persons, right. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. The Father's not the Son, the Son's not the Spirit, the Spirit's not the Father, but they are one God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. And so why is, yes, amen. Why is that important to us? Because look at what happens in this passage. Our adoption by the Father should provoke us to praise Him with gladness. Our redemption by the Son shouldn't motivate us to follow Him with gratitude. And our conversion by the Spirit should empower us to obey Him by going, okay. This is a line that comes right out of the little hand book that we hand out to all our family group leaders. And I hope that you guys looked at that this week. Our adoption by the Father should provoke us to praise Him with gladness. Our redemption by the Son should motivate us to follow Him with gratitude. Our conversion by the Spirit should empower us to obey Him by going. That's why theology matters. That's why studying God's word matters. And here's what I know. Everything that we need as sons and daughters, we have been, we have received by the Most High God. Everything. Everything. I don't care what's going on in your life, like what happened this week in your life. Everything that you need, you have in the Most High God. And so today as we respond in communion, I hope that we do it in a way, in a couple of ways. One is an immense amount of gratitude and thanksgiving, okay. We shouldn't be here. That's the reality. Churches and college sounds generally don't make it, okay. We shouldn't be here. And so today as we respond, let's praise God that we are here and that people are coming to know Jesus. We just had baptism two weeks ago, okay. I mean, look around the room. Let's pray that God would continue to use us as a vessel for the gospel movement so that one day we're no longer praying for unreached people groups, okay. That's the end game. And so as you come to the table, let's come with gratitude, let's come with thanksgiving. And we rehearse the sacrifice of Christ as we take the bread and we dip it in the cup. My prayer is that you rest in His promises to make all things new. He will nourish you, He will sustain you, and He will encourage you along the way. Let's pray now and we'll respond in worship. Father, we're very thankful for your word. I'm thankful for this letter that's given to us, written to a church that needed to be encouraged, that needed to be corrected, that needed to be loved. And so God, I pray that you would help our body to be mindful and to root out heresy where it may creep in, to do the hard work of studying and learning our Bibles, to grow in our theological understanding so that our affections and worship might be more pure. So ultimately that we can praise and glorify you in a more Christ-like way. And so Father, as the pastor of this church, I'm thankful for all that you've done over the course of 10 years in my life and in the lives of the people that are here. And so God, I pray that we would use this moment in our church's history as a catapult for revival on the campus, on the square, in the high schools, middle schools in our community. And around the world, I pray that we wouldn't get comfortable just because we feel like we've crossed a threshold of sustainability. Use us in ways that we haven't even dreamt of yet. So we pray these things in the beautiful, powerful, gracious, sovereign name of Jesus. And all God's people said. Amen. 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