Colossians 1:23

Lashins chapter 1, beginning with verse 20, reading through verse 23, our focus is on verse 23. And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself, by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven, and you that were sometime alienated in enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. If you continue in the faith, grounded and settled, be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I Paul, am made. a minister. May God bless to us the reading of His sacred and holy word this morning. In Bunyan’s masterful allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress, he provides a glimpse of the Christian life from all perspectives, and so it’s a pretty full and complete picture. Mr. Christian’s progress. along the narrow road leading to the celestial city is carefully described for us. And there are several times we find that Mr. Christian is ready to turn back and to give up. He counters such great difficulties that he wonders if he is going to be able to continue. He sees others giving up along the way, and they tell him it’s no use. use to continue. There are lions in the way. Or the path is too treacherous. There’s a precipice and hobgoblins. There are giants, pagan and hoppery that are eating people. There’s a hell of difficulty that no one wishes to tackle and so forth and so on. However, Mr. Christian, despite all the obstacles, and all the difficulties in his way continues to persevere and he refuses to give up. And eventually he arrives, as we find at the celestial city. Now, what is Bunyan portraying for us in this, but the perseverance of the saints? It is this doctrine which Paul speaks of in our text when he says, if you continue in the faith. Now, today you rarely hear about persevering in the faith, but clearly this doctrine is taught in the scriptures, and we should certainly pay attention. Like Mr. Christian, you must continue down the narrow road, regardless of the hardship or the temptation or the trial that comes along. confronting you. We must never cast aside the faith, but continue on the road. Our topic this morning is the need for a perseverance. I’ll begin by saying this. You must always consider the qualifications regarding the promise of salvation. If you continue in the faith, he says. You’ll find Paul here, carefully, qualifies those who hear the gospel here and who receives the promise and has the promise applied to them. It’s often the case that those who hear the gospel are a mixed multitude. Now, sometimes Paul is writing to a church, and for the most part, both those people seem to be faithful and serving the Lord. But sometimes the gospel was preached to the unregenerate, like on the day of Pentecost, when Peter proclaimed the message of the gospel. So it is a safe course for the minister to guard what he says, and when he indicates to whom the promise of God truly belongs. The problem is that even in the best of churches, there may be hypocrites, there may be false professors among the church. People, often are completely mistaken about their true state before God, deceived about how they stand with the Lord. One must not be surprised by this. When you get to the book of Revelation, you read about Laidaean Church. They thought they were rich and increased with goods and had needed nothing, that God’s blessing was resting upon them. When all the while he said, you’re poor and blind and naked, you need all kinds of spiritual help. Materially, you may be prospering, but spiritually you are languishing, and you are in serious trouble. So Paul here, after speaking carefully of their reconciliation with God, he now restricts his words to those who have genuine faith. In other words, what he’s saying here is, I’m speaking here of the true elect. Those who have saving faith, indeed will prove it by continuing in the faith, for God will preserve them, and they will not cast off the fay. So those who are truly reconciled the God, having fled to Christ by faith, shall undoubtedly persevere unto the end. That is the teaching that we have in Scripture. We’re kept by the power of God, yes, and God does keep us by causing us to persevere as we go through this life. So you have to reconcile if you continue in the faith here, are the ones he’s speaking on. Now, one of the things Paul mentions, remember Timothy, is he’s about to depart, he’s about to be martyred. What did he say? I’ve kept the faith. I’ve kept the faith. I haven’t turned one iota away from the faith of Jesus Christ, even though I’m staring death, in the face. There are two things, or I should say two types of individuals who are going to be excluded from the salvation of God. One is the rebellious unbeliever, because the unbeliever has no faith. The unbeliever doesn’t trust in the promises of God, does not see the need of a Savior and so forth. He that believe and not shall be damned, is what the scripture says. He that doesn’t not have the sun, shall not see life, but shall indeed have the wrath of God abiding on him, John tells us, in 336 of his gospel. So the unbeliever. But then there is what we might call the temporary believer. I use that term because these are the type of people that profess faith in Christ, and for a time, they seem to follow Christ, but then they fall away, and they give up the face. They abandon what they once profess to be. Remember the parable, the sower. The heat of persecution comes on and some people wither. they dry up. Or covetousness or ambition suffocates the seed of the word. Or the cares of this world overwhelm the person. Or the deceitfulness of false teachers cause them to abandon the truth. Whatever these cases may be. And Jesus gives us a sort of an array of things that can happen that cause people not to be fruitful, not to persevere, and not to continue. One of those things happens, and people show that they didn’t have the true faith to begin with. They never had it. God never worked a work of salvation within them. Have you ever seen the, or considered the difference between summer storms and winter storms? In a winter storm, when it sweeps in with the ice and the snow and the freezing temperatures, if there are any poor remnants of the summer left, if there are any flowers or anything left, it kills it. It just quickly causes to die off. But in the summertime, when you have a summer storm come along, even though it’s pouring down rain, you’ve got the thunder and the lightning and so forth, and the wind’s blowing, the sun eventually comes back out again and the rainbows out and all things seem to rise with renewed loveliness after this refreshing bath that they’ve had. So that the flowers smell sweeter, the grass gets greener, the young plants spring up more rapidly, and the air is fresh and clean. Such is the difference. When the storm of life comes into the storms of life come along in the case of a believer and one who’s only a temporary belief. The storms of life are like a winter storm with someone who has temporary faith. Because what happens is it kills them. But if you’re a true believer, what happens is it causes fruit to grow in your life. God causes you to be replenished, to be renewed, to be strengthened through these things. So you find Paul carefully qualified. to whom the promises of salvation apply. Now notice exhortations for you to persevere are as necessary as warnings to keep from apostasy. We need to be encouraged to persevere if you continue in the faith. Now, as you go through scripture, there’s often a warning about apostasy. For example, you find in Hebrews 312, take he, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. But you also find exhortations to persevere, to keep the faith, not to abandon it. This is one manner in which the people of God are to be stimulated to continue on, regardless of the hardships they may be facing in this life. It’s not sufficient for, people to rely on some type of profession of faith they made 20 years ago and some kind of decision they made for Christ when, you know, they haven’t dawned the door for 20 years of a church and then say, well, I was saved back, no, no, that’s not persevering in the faith. That’s not continuing in the faith. You’ve abandoned what you said you believed back then. My friends, people live as if they’re no different than the ungodly around them, and somehow or other they expect to be accepted among the church, the true people of God, when really they have never been reconciled to God. Reconciled people continue in the faith. They don’t abandon it. You remember there were many that came out of Egypt when the Israelites were brought out by a mighty, hand of God. And they never made it to the promised land. They never had entered into God’s rest, but their carcasses fell in the wilderness. They never finished the journey. What does the scripture say? The word preached to them did not profit them. Why? Not being mixed with faith in them that hurt. There are those who may be around the people of God but don’t have true faith. And when the trial comes along, they perish. You can start out well, it seems, and perishing in your sins, as the case may be in this situation. Was the Apostle’s exhortation from this part of Israel’s history, what does he tell us in the book of Hebrews? But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of for we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast under the end. Hebrews 313 or 313 and 14. Harold Abrams was a championship, a champion sprinter from the book from the land of Scotland. And during the trial races for the 1924 Olympics, he suffered his first defeat. And after the race, he sat up on the bleachers, all alone moping and moaning that he lost. When his girlfriend tried to encourage him, he bellowed, if I can’t win, I won’t run, to which she wisely replied, if you don’t want, run, you can’t win. Mora Abram went on to run and win the 1924 Olympic gold medal. Scripture says, know you not that they which run and race run all, but one receiveeth the prize, so run, that you may obtain. We’re to run. If you don’t run, you certainly aren’t going to obtain. Run. You can’t persevere if you never run the race. Some people never get their shoes on it, doesn’t seem like, let alone get started. And so believers run the race to obtain the prize, the scriptures is. So you must always consider the qualifications regarding the promise here of salvation. Notice this. Secondly, you need a faith firmly grounded in the truth of the way of salvation. If ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled. Steadfastly holding to the truth is the way to keep from wavering. My friends, we cannot have a fluctuating opinion, fluctuating opinion about what the faith is. is. Or what the gospel is. Nor can we merely have a light grip on it so that somehow rather it would be easy to let go off. We need to really have a death grip on the gospel of Jesus Christ because if we don’t have a strong hold on, it will be blown about by every wind of doctrine that comes along that’s brought into play by some false teacher. friends life and death depends upon what you believe surely we should recognize we need to anchor ourselves on the truth because if we abandon the truth there is no hope for us the word grounded here relates to the construction of a building you can imagine a building needs a foundation it has to be grounded or else the construction will collapse there’s nothing to hold hold it up. The word settled is similar and relates to something being fixed in place so it doesn’t get shifted around. It doesn’t get moved. I remind you what Jesus said. Look with me at Matthew chapter 7, if you would. Beginning with verse 24, Jesus said this. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them. I will liken him under a wide, man which built his house upon a rock and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock and everyone that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. Here are two sorts of people that hear Christ’s teaching or his doctrine here. The one embraces the gospel with a true faith and renders obedience to what Christ has commanded. The other hears the gospel, but there is no genuine faith here and therefore no concern to obey Christ. My friends, we can’t be satisfied with some vain outward religion. Note here that one profession of faith in Christ, one’s profession of faith in Christ, is firmly grounded, solidly grounded upon a rock, and he’s not going to be moved by circumstances of life. The other’s profession of faith in Christ is built on shifting sand, and the storms of life cause it to collapse. To have part in Christ’s salvation, and to call Him Lord, and the belief is gospel is important. We must be founded upon the rock in our faith. But one at least seemed to be making an outward profession, but we don’t see any true, genuine faith in this man. He’s a foolish man. He doesn’t persevere. His profession is such that it collapses. The foundation is the key. One is sand and one is the rock. And so genuine faith is the essential thing here. We have to have a supernatural work of grace in our life by God who grants us the faith in Christ in order to cling to the truth and not abandon it. But this is essential that we do not cast aside the true faith. Notice that faith and hope are closely tied together. So if your faith wavers, your hope dissipates. And be not moved away from the hope, he says, of the gospel. The hope of eternal life and of those other good things that are promised to those who have faith in Christ requires divine grace to maintain. There are many trials and temptations to drive you away from this faith. faith. To destroy your faith. Nothing tends to more strengthen your faith than having your faith grounded and settled as we just talked about. And if you become fluctuating it irresolute regarding what you believe, your hope will be shaken. A wavering faith leads you unable to maintain hope in the promises of the gospel. Remember how Peter says, You have faith and you add to your faith and then you add something else, you keep adding to it. The faith is one of the key blocks. If you lose, if you don’t have that, everything else is building on that. These graces are intertwined so that hope can ever be maintained if your faith fails you. The California coast was shrouded in fog the morning of July 4, 1952. 28 miles on the west side of the California coast was the island of Catalina. There was a 34-year-old woman that was wading in the water who was going to swim from that island all away to the coast of California. She was the first woman to swim both ways across the channel from England to Europe, France. And now she was going to make this historic. swim from Catalina to California. The water was numbing cold and the fog was so thick that she couldn’t even see the boats that were accompanying her across the waterway. As the hours ticked off, she swam on. More than 15 hours later, numbed with cold, she asked to be taken up out of the water and she gave up. She couldn’t go on any further. Her trainer wanted her to continue as they thought they were getting close to the coast, and yet all the swimmer could see with the fog, and so she lost hope. Later, they found out they were only a half a mile from the coast when she quit, and she gave up. Chadwick said, I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen the shore, I might have made it. Friends, when you can’t see with the eyes of faith, all your hope dissipates and you give up. You lose hope of reaching your destination. So you need a faith firmly grounded in the truth of the way of salvation. Now notice thirdly, your faith must be the same as that proclaimed by the apostles of Christ to be assured of salvation. Which ye have heard, he says here, and was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I Paul am a maid, a minister. Friends, the original gospel is the only gospel that can save your soul. Now, the gospel that the Colossians heard was preached to them by Epaphorus. We read in verse 7 of chapter 1. It wasn’t the apostle Paul that preached it, but Paul confirms that the gospel they heard was the true gospel. Apaphrus was not an apostle. He was an ordinary minister of the gospel, perhaps less esteemed than the apostles. But Paul wants to assure them, but what they were. heard was the truth of the way of salvation in Jesus Christ. Indeed, it was the same gospel which the apostles were sent forth to preach in fulfillment of the Great Commission by Jesus Christ himself. You’ll notice that phrase here when he talks about every creature under heaven. It seems to be he’s taking this phrase from the book of Mark, chapter 16 and verse 15, where we read this when the Great Commission is given. Mark 16 and verse 15. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And so we have this, the idea of the Great Commission here. Whatever Christ had given the apostles to preach, it seems that Apaphrus had continued preaching that same message that the Great Commission demanded be preached in all the earth. Now this phrase to every creature under heaven certainly doesn’t mean that every person at this time in the whole world heard the gospel of Christ simply that wouldn’t be true, I think, of the American Indian or the Chinese or all of Africa at this time. But rather every creature should be understood as every sort of person in all the world. In other words, the gospel was not confined to the Jews, but it went to the nations without distinction. People from all classes heard the gospel, whether you were a nobleman or a slave. People from all races, whether they were white or red or black or olive skin. People from all nations heard the same gospel as you and I have found in the scriptures. The Jews, genuine gospel was consistently preached by the apostles. No deviation from what Jesus Christ himself had taught. It’s the real thing. You find Paul warning the Galatians about accepting another gospel, which he says is really not another, but a perversion of the true gospel. There were perversions out there. And so they had to be careful. Many years ago, after using the same formula for decades, Coca-Cola decided they were going to change the taste of Coke. They came up with a new formula. And so they brought out new Coke and discontinued the old Coke. And then they had a massive uprising by Coke drinkers who said, this tastes too much like Pepsi. We like the old taste. And so, eventually, by protesting, the old Coke formula was reinstesting. stated and came out as classic to which you can still buy, I think, today at the store. Friends, you want the original classic gospel. You don’t want anybody messing with the formula. You want the same teaching that Christ provided when he came. Not some new formula. Not some new ideas devised by man. Whether it be a social gospel or health or wealth gospel, a new perspective on Paul Gospel, or Roman Catholic gospel, you want the true gospel. It’s the only one that promises eternal life. Go back to the scriptures. Carefully study the gospel of the apostles. What did Christ teach? What did his disciples teach? That is the gospel we must embrace and never move away from if we indeed want to enjoy the benefits of being reconciled to God and enjoy heaven itself in the future. the original gospel is the only gospel that can save your soul. Now, you can’t trust any man who has not been divinely called to be a minister. He says, whereof I, Paul, was made a minister? This gospel that I preach, God called me specially to preach it. You know, Paul didn’t say, I chose to be a minister. I thought it would be a good profession to get into. If you know anything about the history of Paul, it was the last thing he would probably would have thought about doing was preaching the gospel. He was opposed to the gospel originally. But men called of God will preach the authentic message of God because they’re not out to please men, but the honor of the God that has called them to the ministry. And that is the key factor. Anytime the gospel gets alter. It’s usually to make it more palatable than that. to take off the rough edges of the gospel. when we talk about man’s depravity and God’s sovereign grace and salvation and Christ’s blood atonement and the power of the spirit saving people and how God must preserve people. When we talk about these things, people have trouble with them. People find it hard to receive these things. These are hard sayings to them. So we have to cut some of these edges. The true gospel is the one that says because the true tells you who you really are how God is the sovereign one who reaches down in his mercy and saves you, how everything depends upon Christ’s work on the cross and how the spirit of must take a dead sinner and make them alive and how God must take a dead sinner and make them alive. And how God, God keeps us by His grace. That’s what it’s all about. Sadly, not everyone who becomes a minister has been divinely called and therefore you have to be discerning. We’re going to talk about this later on in Chapter 2. My friend, sadly, there are ministers that are working on Satan’s behalf. Paul calls them angels of light. They appear as angels of light. Let’s put it that one. They’re deceivers. You can’t trust everyone who claims that they’re teaching Christ on the TV and the radio and wherever you hear these individuals. As if they’re a sound in the faith. There are many seducers out there. Some of them have crept into the churches. And they assume the role of ministers but we must never let our guard down that we should never let the gospel be undermined. It’s not surprising if those not lawfully authorized to teach should infiltrate the church with falsehood. God said to Jeremiah, I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, yet they have prophesied. Jeremiah 2321. There are those I didn’t send. And so Paul says, I was sent here. God called me specially to do this work. He made me a minister of the gospel. So search the scriptures. see if those things you’re being taught are actually true and right that they’re according to what the scripture says. Let me close this morning by saying this. Mr. Christian in Pilgrim’s progress had to persevere all along on the narrow road until he gets to the celestial city. This was Bunyan’s way of teaching the perseverance of the saints. This is what we’re talking about. We talk about holding fast to the faith, not casting it aside. Not Everyone who professes to believe the gospel has genuine faith. Many are not grounded and settled in the faith. And that leads to wavering. That leads to them being drawn away. Your faith must be in the gospel, the authentic gospel proclaimed by Christ and the apostles. And only those divinely called of God are going to be the ones preaching that gospel. And so we, We should pay attention here to what’s being preached and realize that we cannot compromise on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Well, let us close with the word of God.