Translated Into His Kingdom

Introduction

I’m trying to sit where people won’t get a stiff neck. I don’t know where that is. If you get too close to you, I’ll give you a sore neck. If you get too far away, I feel like I lose contact with you. And so I want to get somewhere where we can all be comfortable. I want to talk to you this week about the book of Colossians. I’d like to spend a lot of time giving you the background to it, but let’s just say it was in the Lake’s Valley where this city of Colossae was a small, insignificant uh city in some sense. There were other cities there, Hierophilus and uh and uh I’ve forgotten the other city that was there now, Laodicea, and uh and this city was a people of ancient people, thought they had some kind of deep insight, they had ancient wisdom, other people wisdom hidden that the world didn’t know, and they thought they had it, and so they were kind of thinking they really had some information that was uh really important other people didn’t know, and this letter is going to show that uh, you know, we we we live in a world where people think they’ve got information that other people have it is so important that they just don’t believe God and don’t believe in God.

And the Apostle Paul is going to write this letter by inspiration and tell these people, and really it seems to me that the the fact of the matter is the third chapter, verse 11, that Christ is all and in all. The apostles trying to tell us what is life all about. Where do you find the meaning and the purpose of life? Well, I’ll tell you where you find it. When you understand that Christ is every what is your life all about? You ever ask that? Is it about your job or your family or or who you are, what you’re trying to cover? Let me tell you. All of life is about Christ. Everything about life. It’s about Christ. And when you realize that in Christ is where the meaning and the purpose, the wisdom of everything in life, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, they’re hidden inside of Christ.

And so you’ve got to get in here and dig them out and find them, you see. They’re not hidden somewhere else. And in this valley, there was a historical record of about 10,000 Jews who lived in this, in this uh it was kind of like a uh resort area. 10,000 Jews lived there, there were pagans that were there, and then there were these people who were involved in what we call Gnosticism. This inside, this knowledge, perfect knowledge that they had of insight that other people didn’t have. And so the apostle is really going to refute that teaching as you read the book, and I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about that. But just so you can see, the apostle Paul, of course, and had gone in the 16th chapter and the 18th chapter of the book of Acts and preached in this region.

And so he went to Ephesus, of course, and spent a period of time preaching there in Acts the 19th chapter, and in verse 10, he tells that all Asia, while he was there, had heard the gospel. All Asia was influenced during that time period under the uh the goddess, the the uh uh the goddess of Diana or the Artemis, the temple of Artemis. Uh, it was three times the Partheon. And so if you had gone into Ephesus and and you’d gone somewhere and seen an assembly of people like this, and thought, well, this doesn’t look much, and that old preacher, he’s not very educated, he looks awful bad. And so this can’t be it. But if you go to some big place where everybody was gathered, and there were all sorts of ungodly things going on that would draw people to it, and you’re gonna see all this marvelous great image that was there, you’d think, oh, now this has got to be it.

You see, sometimes we measure things by the wrong standard. We can think, well, that must be all that no, I’ll tell you what, if just four or five people in a little room somewhere worshiping God, that’s what life is about. Doing what God says. And so Paul’s gonna write to these people and urge them to see that Christ is all. And Christ should be in everything we do and think. When Christ is all, I’ll tell you, you’re wrong track. Your life’s going somewhere, and you are gonna live what I call an essential life. You’re gonna live everything that is necessary, and you’re gonna live eternally also. So now let’s just jump in here and see what the apostle has to say about this problem these people are facing.

1. What the Church Is

Let’s begin in verse 1 again. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother. And notice Paul is an apostle once sent out. He says, Let me tell you what this is about. This is about me being sent out because of the will of God. And so everything in life, these are orders and information that comes from God, the God of heaven, who’s made everything. And Paul says, I’m an apostle to him. And here’s Timothy, Timothy was with Paul. And he says, to uh the saints and faithful brethren in Christ Jesus, which are Colossi, grace be unto you and peace be and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And notice here, the apostle shows us what the church is.

First of all, it’s saints. People that are set apart from the world, they’ve been called out from the world by the gospel, so we’re different from the world. We’re not home, we’re not at home here. We’re set apart from the world, and we are full of faith. We are faithful to God. We’re loyal. We’re trustworthy. God can depend upon us to do what we ought to do. And so these people were saints that were faithful. They were brethren. We’re part of a family here, you see. We’re going to look at that a little bit more in just a moment. And he says, These are people that are in Christ Jesus. That means to live in union with. It means to live in accord with. It means to align your life with everything that Jesus says.

2. Three Things That Make Strong Churches

And so when you live in union, live in accord, and Jesus is in you, and you are in Christ, and God is in you, and you’re in God, and the Holy Spirit’s in you, and you’re in them, you see. And so here’s a picture of the Bible showing a relationship of people because they listen to God. And so Christ is in them. He motivates them. And he calls them to think and do all that they do. And then he says to us in verse 3, three things I want you to notice. First of all, verse 3, we give thanks to God. Now listen to what I appreciated that brother’s prayer so much a moment ago. God bless you. I don’t know you, but I sure appreciate you, brother.

And so when you think about the fact that we give thanks to God the Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ praying always for you. Paul was in prison when he wrote this. And I want to tell you what you learned about these little letters. Paul had a lot of prayer meetings in jail. He spent a lot of time praying. Do you ever get your directory out and just pray for your brethren? And just thank God for them and go down and think about people having trouble and you just go. I tell you, once a month you ought at least take that hold. You say, Well, no way, preacher, you haven’t seen our directory yet. You ought to take that directory and make sure, maybe break it off into segments.

And every day, go through there and pray. What would happen to a church if we thank God for our brethren? In 2 Thessalonians, the first chapter, Paul said, I am duty bound, it could be rendered. I’m duty bound to give thanks to God for you. We should feel some duty to thank God for people. But now notice he says, we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying for you, always praying for you, since the day we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus. Now let’s see three things that he thanked God for. And these three things are what makes strong churches. It’s not the preacher, it’s not the church building, it’s not how much money we have or how much education we’ve got.

That will not make a strong church. That will not make a great church. What makes great churches is number one, people put their faith in Christ Jesus. I’m going to tell you, I’m a disciple of Jesus. As a result of that, I’m a member of the church. But I’m going to tell you what I don’t do. I don’t put my faith in the church. I put my faith in Christ. The church may have problems, may make mistakes, may do something wrong. That doesn’t turn me away from the church. I’m committed to Christ. I’m going to have the church get back on track. I’m not going to leave it. I’m going to have it keep turning back to the Bible and doing what God said. Because I’m a disciple of Jesus.

And so these people have, as I say, when you look at what it means for them to have faith in Christ, they were what I call fundamentally converted. When you’re converted and you see that Jesus is what everything, if I want to live and be happy and find peace of mind and joy, and live a good life and go to heaven and one day live with God forever, I’m going to tell you what. It’s all about putting my confidence, my trust, my assurance, not in me, because I’ll tell you, I can’t do it. I fail just about every day, somehow. Either leave something undone, think something I shouldn’t do, or do something I shouldn’t do. And I just keep coming back and putting my confidence, and may I say to you, how does faith come?

You know, some people say, well, you why I believe because of the way I feel in my heart. Don’t trust your heart, Jeremiah said Jeremiah 7 17. Is it verse 9 that the heart’s a steeple of all things? Who can know it? Don’t trust how you feel. Don’t go by that. That’s not how you have faith. You might say, well, I the way I here’s how I see it. Let me tell you, this is not the eye of faith. You know where the eye of faith is? It’s not here, it’s not here. It’s over here on the side of your head. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. Here’s where the eye of faith is. You may say, well, that don’t look like me. Well, I know, but what does it sound like?

See, what it sounds like is how you’ll know what God wants. You won’t know what God wants but what you see. You’ve got to listen to what God says. And so faith comes when people listen to the word of God, put it into their heart, and so they do what God says. And so these people were fundamentally converted. Secondly, notice it says of them, he thanked God not only because they had faith in Christ Jesus, but had love for all the saints. Now, this word love, of course, is just the idea of agape. It’s a love that is uh looking out for the well-being of others. And it would just indicate that really that this is not about me. First of all, it’s not about how I feel, it’s about faith.

Number two, it’s not about me. It should be that I uh I have love and notice this one word I circled in my Bible. Did you ever notice it? Love for all saints, that’s the hard part. I tell people some folks are human shiggers. You all have chiggers down here that get under your skin, and here they come. Well, I got people and they start told me I start doing this. Oh, here they come. I wonder what’s up now, you know. Well, there are people like that, but you know what I do? I love them. Because we’re family-oriented. We’re fundamentally converted, and we are family, or we are a family of people. And we should love each other. I mean the people that get their personality is completely different than yours, you know.

And they say and do things, and it just bothers you, and one spot of their griefs will cover your whole place. You know what people I’m talking about like that? A little bit of them just rubbed all over you the wrong way. You know what I mean? So we could we should see these people because of Christ, they had love for all the saints. When the church loves all the saints, everybody says, I’m I’m gonna love you. I know you drive me crazy, but I’m gonna love you anyway. And so we make up our minds what we’re gonna do. And then notice the third thing is, he said to these people in verse 5, and for the hope was laid up in heaven, where have you heard before in the word of truth of the gospel?

And so these people, good folks, they had a hope set before them. Hope is a desire and an expectation that is out in front of you. And it’s something, Hebrews the sixth chapter. I don’t want to get too carried away with this, but it’s it’s a picture of somebody being anchored in the Hebrews sixth chapter. The hope is an anchor reaches through the veil on the death, and it holds you in place. You know the thing that gives you stable stability about life and death is you’ve got an anchor going all the way through the grave out on the other side, bringing down the other side. I told this story about my dad and I one time we’re fishing, and we’d fish late in the night, and we’d parked by this big rock wall, and we were fishing there.

We didn’t catch it either time. My dad, he was a jokester. He turned the lights off, and so he started the motor up and pushed the lever down without turning the lights on. And he thought that was kind of funny, you know. And he turned the lights on, and all of a sudden we were about to hear that wall, with that rock wall headed right toward it with the motor going, and all of a sudden we flew over the windshield, tore the windshield in front of the boat and went down in the water and landed in the water, and my dad swam around the side of boat reached up and turned the motor off. My daddy was hot-headed. I thought, uh oh, this is going to be bad.

We tore the boat up on it, coming over the windshield. I thought he’s going to be real mad. He turned the motor off, and we were down in the water, and I could hear my dad laughing. I said, Dad, what in the world is so funny? He said, son, I said, Dad, we’re about to kill ourselves. What are you laughing at? He said, son, I’m sure glad you forgot to pull the anchor up. You see what happened? That anchor saved us. Hope is future motivation. Don’t worry about how it looks today. It may look bad today to you. Don’t you worry a bit. Everything’s right on track. You just keep right on going. Because you’ve got an anchor, see? And when you think you’re about to climb into the wall, don’t you worry, just keep on going.

3. The Word of Truth Is a Fruitful Message

You’re going to be okay. And so these people were family oriented, future motivated, and they were fundamentally converted. And Paul thanked God. When I see people like that, I thank God every day for them. But now notice what we find next. They had heard this, he said. The reason they had this hope was they had heard it, noticed in the word of truth of the gospel. It wasn’t the wisdom of the Colossian people that they’d learned this. They learned this because they had heard something. They heard the gospel, the word of truth, the gospel, and those which has come on to you as in all the world, and bringeth forth fruit is also in you since the day you heard of it and knew the grace of God in truth, even as you learned of Ephraim, our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister in Christ.

So Paul says, Do you all understand what’s happening? Why you have this and why you’re the way you are? It’s because you heard the word of truth. And this word of truth, this gospel, Paul said, it is a fruitful message. It goes out and produces fruit all the world, and guess what? It produced fruit in Colossae, and it’s producing fruit right here today. You know, you can take this gospel message anywhere in the world and dump it out somewhere in somebody’s heart, and it will produce something everywhere in the world. I know I’ve been all over the world. I tell people in Madison we have an open dump or used to. You go in there and dump things out, and you go out and pick out what you wanted, and my sons and I always went over in our old truck and dumped some out.

We usually brought a couple of loaves back when we came back. My wife kind of forbid us from going after a while. But we were over there one time, and somebody had a they owned a nursery, and they took a big dump truck and had somebody, a rich person wanted to change their yard. So built up all the beautiful trees and flowers and put them in that truck and the soil and brought them and poured and dumped it right in the dump. And we thought, look at that mess piled up in all that dirt piling. We came back the next spring. And we looked over there, and these trees were budding out, and flowers were right in the middle of the city dump was this beautiful garden of Eden right in the middle of all of it, because somebody had planted the seeds in the sewer and they grew out of the sewer.

That’s what they did. And I want you to know, and I, you know, what we did, I said, boys, get to show us what I said. We’re taking mom some flowers home. We would overstart digging. Next thing you know, a whole city was over digging flowers that we didn’t get much because everybody run over and started digging all that up. But I want you to see that’s what can happen in your life. If you listen to the gospel and you do what God says, you will see that this is a fruitful message. It will produce fruit in your life. It will change you. Change the way you live, the way you think, what your prayers are, what you do, what you don’t do, what you don’t allow.

The gospel is powerful. And you just can’t imagine how whole and full and strong and courageous you’ll feel. You won’t be afraid of the world, you won’t be afraid of death, you won’t be afraid of anything anymore. Because you’ll have something inside you will make use. Proverbs 8 28.1 says, bold as a lion. You become courageous, and you won’t have to worry because you know God is taking care of everything. And so the writer shows us that these people had gotten this because notice they heard it, they learned it, and they knew it. And I my grandmother always told me when I was younger, I had a learning problem, and she’d always say, something, brown, he said, Gary, I can’t learn you anything. Well, you know that’s the truth.

You can’t learn anybody. You know what? We can teach you, but you’ve got to do the learning, isn’t that right? You’ve got to get in and dig it yourself. I can talk to you until my head falls off, and you won’t know a thing until you say, okay, I’m I’m gonna get me a Bible, I’m gonna check this out. I’m kind of amazed. Oh, I didn’t know all this stuff. I’m gonna get after it. And when you do, you’ll get excited. And next thing you know, no people think you’re some kind of nut. They’ll think you better calm down, you’ve gone crazy. No, you’ve just figured out what it’s all about. And so notice he says, once they heard this and knew this grace of God, which is in the truth, and had learned it, of this preacher who came over there.

So you see, Paul, God gave Paul a message. He went to Essence and preached it. This Epaphors came over a hundred miles to the to the west, to Esse probably, and learned from Paul. He went back into these three cities and established churches in these cities, and he is called a faithful minister. You know what that means? The message God gave to Paul God gave to Paul. Well, God gave the Holy Spirit. They wrote it down in the Bible. Men spoke by inspiration, and Paul got this message from God. He gave it to a Pamphirus. The paper went over there and gave it to them. And so he was called a faithful man because he got the message right. As long as you stick with the book.

4. Filled With Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom

Don’t get away from the book. Just keep reading your Bible. You’ll be amazed what will happen to you. Just stay with it. And so this man was called a faithful minister because he had the message right. Now notice what he does in verse 3, verse 9. He says, Well, this cause also, since the day we heard of it, do not cease to talk about their faith and their love and what they had learned. Do not desire, do not cease to pray for you. Now she’s going to pray for them now. And desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Now notice something here. Here are three terms. You’ll find them together in the Bible almost always together.

They’re kinfolk. These three terms are levels of learning. Knowledge is the accumulation of information. I’m talking today, and you might, you probably won’t, but you might learn something new. You may gain some new knowledge today. And that means you’re accumulating information. Understanding is the second level of learning. Understanding is the comprehension of it. You heard it, and something about it, you saw it, and so you could put into your own words and you understood, so you comprehended what I was saying. And thirdly, wisdom is the application of how you go about using the information. I could tell you a lot of stories to illustrate that, but it would take up my time. I don’t have much of. But I want you to think about how I say this about one time.

My wife was, my boys and I were laying on the floor in the living room. We’ve been out in the yard playing basketball. We came in, we took our shoes off and got some popcorn and cokes. We laid down in the living room floor watching the ball game. We got popcorn on the floor and coke cans and our shoes laying around. My wife got up and she started running the vacuum. Women don’t like a messy house. You notice that? You better be wise and learn that. So my wife had the vacuum. She was running, and I was leaning up there watching TV on the floor, and she hit my arm like that. I looked at her and she kept on backing. I thought, well, she’s not looking at it, so I thought she’s trying to send me a subliminal message, you know.

And so I went back to watch the bugging. Well, she got me again. Well now, this time I knew I’m not the dumbest guy. I got up here, baby girl. I said, boy, get up, get them shoes. I said, give me that vacuum cleaner, honey. And so she sat down on the couch and turned the TV over and started watching the Waltons, you know. And so I we cleaned it up there and we sit down, and the boys got back in the floor, and the boy said, Okay, Dad, back to the ball game. I said, No, sir. In this house, we watch what mama wants to watch on TV. And it’s all caught. I said, Boys, hush up now. We’re going to watch what mama wants to watch.

And so she sat there following watched the waltz in about 30 seconds that she turned it back to the ball game. But you see, wisdom made me, I’ve been studying my wife for a long time. I’ve accumulated information, see. And I understand when she bangs you a couple times with the vacuum cleaner, it’s time to do something, you know. Have you guys noticed when your wife rattles the dishes and the dishwasher real hard when she’s loading it? You better know you’ve done something wrong, old buddy. You better get up and do it. She’s ringing the bell for you, you know. And so, but you’ve got to have the wisdom to see. Most of us know something about it, but we don’t have any wisdom. Wisdom is somebody says common sense.

You know what the problem of common sense is today? It’s not very common. People don’t have any common sense. But when you look at what the Bible says, and you see the apostle is thanking God because they had these three qualities. They had, first of all, they were feet that they might be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding. And I want to say to you, when you think about that and what that says to you, that what Paul’s praying for, he’s praying for us to have insight. Insight. Let me let me suggest this this away to you. Do you realize the way you perceive things and the way you see the Bible and the way you think about things, all that affects everything you do.

You ever thought about that? I was driving downtown Madison one day. There’s a curvy road. We live on the river, and it’s a curvy road down, goes down the river. And I was going downtown in my car, and this older gentleman passes me on a curve, and a car was coming, and he almost ran me off down into the river. And he just kept on going. I thought, I’ve got to catch up with that old boy before he kills somebody and tell him to be careful. So I speeded up and got down to the bottom of the hill. There was a couple cars at a stop sign. He had to stop. So I jumped out and ran up there to say, sir, would you be more careful?

Well, I looked in the car, his grandson’s head was buffed open. He was rushing to the emergency room. You know what I did? I ran, I said, Yo, get out of the way, everybody. Get clear out. Now see, I want to kill the old boy one second. And the next, I didn’t really want to kill him. But I wanted to tell him something. But the next second, I want to do everything I could to help him. What caused me to change so much? I made a drastic change. Why? Perception. Insight. Being able to see clearly. Paul is praying. You know what? If we have all spiritual blessings in Christ, we’re the rich. You can’t give me a dime and make me any richer. I’ve got every blessing.

You can’t make me any richer. What can you pray for somebody that has everything? Pray that they see it right. You’ve got it. But the question is, do you see what you’ve got? Do you understand what God has done? And so the apostle is praying for these people to have the spiritual insight to see the way things really are. If we can see the way things really are, and understand that, let me tell you, we’re going to be different than we were when we come in this door. And I tell you, don’t come and go through that door without changing. I’m afraid we do that. We get in habit. Well, I’m going to church. We forget we’re going Isaiah 2 up to the mountain. We’re going up to the house of the God of Jacob so he can teach us of his ways and so we can walk in his pathways.

So Isaiah was given this law with glut, told about this law with blood from Jerusalem, where we are today. But here we are. We’ve come up to the highest mountain we can get on today, the government of God, the kingdom of God. And we should come in those doors as we’re coming into the kingdom of God, into his house. And we should listen to his word, and we shouldn’t, you know, James says that the Bible is a mirror. You know how, well, I don’t like to look in the mirror myself. Matter of fact, I don’t, I don’t comb my hair. I I don’t, I don’t, I don’t look in the mirror at all, really. I don’t. But what most people do with the mirror, you know what they do?

They look at it and see what they are, and then they go, Well, look at that person over there. Look what they are. Well, look at that mess over there. We never see the old boy in the mirror. Do you see the old boy in the mirror? Uh uh or the young lady in the mirror, I should say. You see, we ought to open the Bible and see ourselves. And when we come in here, we ought to open our heart up and say, okay, God, here I am. I’m naked and open before you. Tell me. Tell me what I need to do. So I can be clothed with Christ. So I can live in a way that will glorify you. That’s what we’ll. And so we then we sit here and listen, we’ll say, okay.

5. Walk Worthy of the Lord

I see. I need to get excited. I need to be stirred up. This stuff is, this is wonderful. I tell you, this is the greatest stuff in the world. You won’t ever, this book is supernatural with a supernatural author. This has the breath of God. He’s breathed into this book. You won’t read any other book. Don’t waste a dime by another one. You’ve got all you need. Now, I said that I buy a lot of other books. But I’m saying this is the book that I’m trying to figure out. I buy other books to help me understand what these words are about. But now notice what he says. He says, after praying for them to have the right kind of insight, he says that notice what he wants them to do is the read.

Here’s the reason why do you want to know your Bible? Some people know the Bible so they can argue with other people. They just like to argue and get in a good argument and try to put somebody in their place. Here’s why you want to know your Bible. That you, that ye may walk worthy of the Lord under all pleasing. I should say, God, I want to walk in a way that pleases you. Now, I’d like to please other people, but I’m going to tell you what, I make a lot of enemies at what I do. So I’m trying to walk in a way. I’m trying to walk worthy in a way that would be pleasing to God. That’s my goal. I’m trying to please God.

And I tell you what, I tell the elders all the time, I will sacrifice myself in every way. There’s nothing too hard. Whatever I need to do, I’ll do it as long as it’s true and right. I don’t care what you all asking me what you want to do, I’ll do whatever. That’s what I’ll do. And so he says, if we can understand that we can walk worthy of the Lord and all pleasing, and then being fruitful in every good work. Notice, fruitful in every good work. When I first obeyed the gospel, I was singing, and one old boy listened to me singing. I’ve got a loud voice, but I don’t know much about music. So he said, Gary, why don’t you come over and make a song leader out of you?

I said, I don’t know. I don’t know much about music. I don’t. He said, Oh, constantly. I said, okay, I went over and for two hours. He tried to get me to be a song leader. After two hours, he said, you know what? Could you come back next Monday and we try it some more? I said, okay, sure. So I went back next Monday after two hours, we’ll try it again. He said, Gary, he said, I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings for anything in the world. But he said, I’m going to tell you. If you’ve got any talent as a song leader, you better bury it, oh boy. You can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Well, let me tell you, there’s some things I can’t do.

But I’m going to tell you what, I’m going to try to be fruitful in every good work. I’m not going to say, well, I can’t teach. I can’t lead to sin. I can’t preach. I can’t, I can’t do personal work. Have you tried it? You see, sometimes we don’t try. We need to be fruitful in every good work, and then notice after he says that, increasing in the knowledge of God. Every day, good people, I try to study my Bible every day until I learn something I didn’t know. Sometimes it takes me a little while, sometimes I do it pretty quick. But I want, I keep every day, I keep trying, I try, I try to gain an inch every day. If I gain an inch every day, if I’ve got to put a if I just put a lunch box on the wagon every day of something new that I’ve learned, when I get through my, I’m going to have a wagon load of stuff.

But you see, you can’t get to heaven on a pogo stick. You can’t say, well, I’ll study my Bible four hours once a week, and that’ll be it. No, you. On Sunday, you just can’t do it. You’ve got to every day get a little bit. You’ve got to grow every day in the knowledge of God. And then he says, He wants them not only to walk worthy and to be fruitful and increasing in the knowledge of God, but in verse 11, strengthen with all might according to his glorious power under all patience and long suffering with joyfulness. Now notice here, the apostle tells us what he wants of these people is for them to pray that they might be strengthened with all of his power. You know what our trouble does many times?

We know what’s right. We’re just too weak to do it. I told somebody I hurt my leg yesterday. I was trying to put my suitcase in Adam’s car, my wife’s suitcase. And when I went to pick her suitcase up, I couldn’t do it. And so I had to get my old knee up there and get my knee onto it when I did that. Oh, I thought that was the wrong thing to do. I got some brand new knees. I haven’t broken yet. And so I thought, uh, I’ve been kind of limping around ever since that. But you see, I wasn’t strong enough. We ought to, we ought to pray to God. It’s not a power problem. God has got the power. We’re just not connected to it.

We need to pray. Pray to God to help us to be strong. So we can do, notice, strong with all might according to his glorious power, and notice with all patience. That’s the ability just to hang in there and self-control, steadfastness, and long suffering, which is the ideal of just staying at it, enduring, uh, and notice and do all that, and doing it with joyfulness. So here’s the here’s the patience. Get a hold of yourself. Long suffering is to be patient with other people. They’re going to bother you. And then you do all this while you’re controlling yourself, being patient with other people, and then you do it all with joyfulness. Will you tell me why most of us look like we’ve been sucking on a dill pickle all day long?

You ever notice that about us? We look like we were baptized in vinegar. We should be the happiest, most joyful. Have you ever noticed somebody in a smile in a store? You want to talk to them. You don’t mind standing up by somebody in line. I’m going to go over that other line. I’ll get in that long one. I’m going to get by that old boy. You see, if we can see that we ought to be, we ought to be the happiest people. And we ought to endure everything with joy because we know whatever we go through, it’s going to work out for good somehow. Now I can’t see how in the world.

6. Qualified, Rescued and Translated Into His Kingdom

This can’t be going. There’s no way this could turn out good. It’s just not. Yes, it will. God’s going to work it out. And so you just go at it trusting God. But now notice, finally, in verse 12, Paul now says, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet, that means suitable, fit, or right, or qualified, to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints, uh, of the saints in light. Number one, we should thank God because first of all, God has qualified us to be his people. Qualified us. I leave the country every year, go off to some other country and stay, used to go and stay six and a half weeks. Now I’ve gotten older and I miss my wife too much.

I come back in about three or three and a half. But when I when I come back to the States, I get in the line that says, U.S. citizens, and they let me come on in because I’m qualified. I’m going to tell you something. I throw my passport and my citizenship in the sewer to hold on to my citizenship in the kingdom of God. Because that kingdom is never going to all America’s probably going to go by the way. We might be coming closer to it all the time. I don’t know. But I’m going to tell you, the kingdom of God will never pass away. And so Paul said, we’re thanking God. Because he’s qualified us to be partakers that had the right to be members of his citizen of the inheritance of the saints in life.

Who has delivered, and that’s the word rescued. There was an old boy who came to Madison one time, couldn’t swim. He said, Gary, I’d like to run some. I said, Listen, I’ll teach you how to swim today. He said, You got a pool? I said, Well, yeah. He said, You ain’t got a pool. You got a little bit of old yard, a little old house. You ain’t got a pool. I said, Well, I’ve got some friends that got a big pool and they got a big house and they’re on vacation. When they’re on vacation, it’s my pool. So I took him out there, we got in the pool. I said, Now, it’s three foot up here, nine foot down there, and slopes like that in the middle.

I said I take my shoes off. My old buddy jumps in the middle of the pool. I don’t know why he was thinking. He just sunk down. Standing on the bottom like a bullfrog. And so I thought, look at that nut acting like he’s drowning. All of a sudden I realized he wasn’t drowning. He was terrified. He couldn’t even close his eyes. I jumped in the water. He started trying to climb me like a tree. He talked to drowned me. I got on the bottom of the pool, got his feet up on my shoulder, and I walked over the edge of the pool, and he got out and got spit in the food. He said, I’m mad at you. I said, What in the world? I just saved your life.

He said, Yeah, but it took you ten minutes to do it. I said, it was only about 15 seconds. But I said, I know it seemed like a lifetime to you. He said, Well, you know, he said, I was in the bottom of that pool. I was thinking. If Gary Sandusty doesn’t get up and come into this pool and do something, I’m helpless, I’m hopeless, I can’t do anything for myself. I can’t even close my eyes. If he doesn’t do something, I’m going to die. I’m going to tell you something. We’ve all been in that boat. We just don’t know it. We’ve all been lost from God. You may still be. But I’m going to tell you, we ought to thank God that He has rescued us.

And not only that, the Bible says, but He says He’s delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated or removed us into the kingdom of His dear Son. So He’s taken us, just like in the Old Testament, God moved people out of the foreign end of their own land or move them back. God has taken us up out of the kingdom of darkness and he’s moved us over and set us down into the kingdom of light. In the kingdom of his dear son. And what’s happened there is in whom that is in Christ. We have redemption. That means we’ve been bought back. A price has been paid for slaves to sin. Through the blood, it cost him a tremendous amount through his blood. Even the forgiveness of sins.

Conclusion

Our sins can be. You know, people search all over and spend a lot of money trying to have a good conscience. Their conscience bothers them, and they go to psychiatrists and all kinds of people and just spend tons of money trying to find some way to find peace of mind. And I’m going to tell you what, you can have your sins washed away and become a part of an eternal kingdom. Have an inheritance in the saints of light. All these things because of Jesus. Let’s go to our Father in prayer. Thank you, O God, for this day and for these good people who come together. For your people who love you and serve you, for their faith that they have in your Son, and for the desire to love each other as a family, and for the great hope that drives us and motivates us every day to one day be with you where we will never shed a tear and never say goodbye.

Thank you so much for all that you’ve done. Help us to see it. Help us to perceive it, and see what rich blessings we have because of Jesus. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen. Take a break.