Delivered from Darkness, Walking in Light

Delivered from Darkness, Walking in Light

“Delivered from Darkness, Walking in Light”
(Colossians 1:9-14)
Series: The All-Satisfying Christ (Colossians)

Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD

Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson

• I invite you to open your Bibles to the passage that was read for us earlier, Colossians chapter 1 and we’re going to be looking at verses 9 through 14.

We’re preaching through Colossians, verse-by-verse, in a series called, “The All-Satisfying Christ.” To have Jesus Christ is to have everything. To have Jesus is to have the all-satisfying One who quenches our thirst for purpose, for meaning, and for significance. In a word, Colossians 2:10, the Christian is “complete” in Him, in Christ.

Now the passage that we’re studying is actually a prayer. It is a prayer that Paul prays for the Christians in Colosse. So Paul is in prison in Rome at the time. And the guy who preached the Gospel to the Colossians, the one who was in all likelihood the church planter at Colosse, a guy named Epaphroditus, shares with Paul how the church is doing. And Paul takes time to listen to Epaphroditus and probably asks a few questions and then Paul writes this letter to be carried to the church.

And in verses 9 and following Paul tells them how he prays for them. That’s why he writes there in verse 9, “For this reason, we also, since the day we heard it,” heard of their love and their faith, Paul says, “Since we heard about that, “we do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will,” and so on.

So the passage is a prayer and we’re going to study this prayer together this morning. And let me say that I find it helpful to read prayers in the Bible. There are several places in the New Testament where we can read Paul’s prayers for various persons and they are helpful to us in a number of ways, one of which is to provide for us a prayer that we may personalize and use as we pray for others.

We’re often feel challenged to pray meaningful prayers for others. Don’t we sometimes feel hypocritical if we say we’re going to pray for someone and then we offer a quick, hurried prayer that seems devoid of any real content or power? Or we forget to pray altogether. So Joe asked us to pray about a situation and we say we will and then we forget. A few days later we see Joe and he’s headed our way and we’re reminded we were going to pray for him so we offer a quick silent prayer to the Lord so we can say, “Hey, Joe. I’ve been praying for you.”

Sometimes our prayers are just real general and vague: “Lord, bless all the missionaries, amen.” Or they’re just routine. We say the same things. You see this sometimes in the smaller church fellowship where there’s like one man who prays the same prayer every Sunday. He prays to what I call “The three Greeks.” You know the three Greeks? “Lead-us, Guide-us, and Direct-us.” So he stands and says, “Lord, lead us, guide us, and direct us, and we’ll give you all the praise and glory, amen.” And we wonder who are these three guys—Lead-us, Guide-us, and Direct-us?!” By the way if you say just one of those, you’ve said all three. Lead, guide, direct.

But I confess that I find myself doing that. It’s easy to slip into a routine prayer and just go through the motions. So I find it helpful to turn to a passage like this and pray for someone using the words of the Bible. So I recommend it to you, too, this morning. You might just make a note of this and mark this passage for future use as you pray.

We’ll, speaking of prayer, let us pray to God right now and simply ask Him to open up His Word to our understanding.

• Pray.

Our message is entitled, “Delivered from Darkness, Walking in Light.” If you are a Christian that is exactly what happened to you. Paul says in this passage, down in verse 12 that the heavenly Father, “has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light,”—verse 13—delivering us, “from the power of darkness,” conveying us, or bringing us, “into the kingdom of the Son of His love.”

So God has delivered us from darkness that we may walk in the light. That makes sense to me. Before I was saved, I was in spiritual darkness. And so were you. We can relate to darkness. You get up in the middle of the night and try to walk across the bedroom, you can’t see anything. You bump around in the night and try to feel your way around. You stub your toe and you’re like, “I can’t see!” And then someone turns a switch on and the light floods the room and you can see. And you’re like, “Man, everything is so clear now.”

And spiritually, apart from Christ we bump around in the night. We’re trying to feel our way around and try to make sense of what we think we can see. And we’re just in the dark and then God turns the switch on through the power of the Gospel and we can see. And things are clearer now and we can sing, “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” Delivered from Darkness, Walking in Light.

In my study this week it seemed helpful to me to divide this passage evenly and sort of draw a line between the 6 verses. So verses 9 through 11 emphasize one main action, namely what we do, and then verses 12-14 describe another action based upon what God has done for us. So two main actions from this passage, Paul teaches first that every Christian is to grow in our sanctification. So if you’re a note-taker and you like to write stuff down, write down, “I must grow in my sanctification.”

I. Grow in Your Sanctification [9-11]

And before we look again at those verses, verses 9-11, which teach about this matter of sanctification, let’s review what that word means.

Sanctification is simply a process of growth. That’s what that word means. To speak of our growth in Christ is to speak of our sanctification, the process of becoming more sanctified, more like Christ.

Sanctification is related to another word, the word Justification. Justification is not a process, justification is a one-time event. It occurs once. To be justified is to be declared “not guilty” by the Judge of the Universe, by God. When we come to faith in Christ, God declares us righteous. We were once guilty and, because of Christ and our belief in Him, God justifies us, declares us righteous, regards us as no longer guilty of our sin. And justification is complete.

Unlike justification, sanctification is never complete in this life. While sin no longer reigns in our lives, sin remains and we battle that sin throughout our lifetime—but we battle from a position of strength. We have all the resources we need to defeat sin and to grow in our Christian living and become more and more like our Lord.

That’s sanctification and no Christian in this room is perfectly sanctified. We’ve all got room to grow. And we’re all to be growing all the time. And we will continue to grow until that perfect, final state known as Glorification, when we are completely sanctified in every way—and glorification is the final state in the new heaven.

So Paul is writing about the Christian’s sanctification in verses 9 through 11. Every single one of us who professes to be a Christian—and raise your hand if that is you—me too. We are to continue growing throughout our lifetime. We ought to look more and more like Christ than we did a year ago, two years ago, more like Christ this month than six months ago. We ought to look more like Christ this week than we did last week. We’re to grow in our sanctification.

And there’s a sub-point here. Paul provides the essential foundation to spiritual growth in verse 9 and here’s the sub-point, he prays that the Colossians would:

Be filled in your learning (9)

9 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;

Paul says, “We are praying for you,”—we, meaning he and Timothy and probably a few other guys mentioned at the conclusion of the letter—he says, “We are praying for you that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will,” filled with knowledge.

Now that word “Knowledge” there is the word “e˙pi÷gnwsin,” derived from the Greek word “Gnosis,” from which comes “Gnosticism.” I mentioned “Gnosticism” very briefly in the introductory message a couple weeks ago, Gnosticism. And I know that word sounds strange, okay? I mean the first time I heard the word Gnosticism, I thought it sounded like a disease. Somebody preaching referred to “Incipient Gnosticism” and I thought, “That sounds like a sinus condition!” But it’s important for our study because it is a false teaching Paul is countering in this letter to the church.

Paul is already beginning to address a false teaching that had begun to take form in early thought and expression. It’s a false teaching that was in the early, nascent stages, just beginning in an embryonic form, not yet a full-blown false religion, but there were early expressions of Gnosticism that Paul recognizes right away as something that needs to be addressed in this letter.

Think of the false teaching of Gnosticism as a belief in Christ, with other beliefs added to it. This is a false teaching that said to have Jesus is not everything. False teachers were peddling the idea that, “Jesus is good, yes, but you need more than Jesus. You need something something more, something deeper. The gospel that Epaphroditus shared with you Colossians was not really complete. Epaphroditus didn’t tell you everything. So you need some of this special, secret kind of knowledge that we are passing along to you.”

And Paul will go on to address this false teaching more fully in chapter 2 where he writes in chapter 2, verse 4, “Hey, don’t let anybody deceive you with persuasive words,” and chapter 2, verse 8, “Beware lest anyone spoil you, or cheat you so as to plunder you of your riches, spoiling you through philosophy and vain deceit” and then the key verses, chapter 2, verses 9 and 10, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” all, there is no Jesus plus other stuff, in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, verse 10, “and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.” Epaphras gave you the whole gospel, the whole truckload. Everything is there. You’ve got it all. You are complete in Him.

So Paul is already hammering this false teaching as early as verse 9 where he writes, “We are asking God that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” In other words, “You’ve already got the true gospel. We’re simply praying that you would be filled with the truth you already have.”

See, you receive the truth of the Gospel at salvation, the good news about God and how He brings about salvation. You receive this truth as a complete gift. It’s like a gift-wrapped present and everything is included.

Every get a gift as a child and the batteries were not included? And mom or dad is getting in the car and making a late night run to the store to buy some batteries. But the gift of the gospel is a complete gift. It is a complete gift and everything’s included.

But you’ve got to go on learning about the gift you possess. And so it’s like opening up that gift and looking it over and studying it, and learning more and more about this precious gift you have received.

So if you have come to faith in Christ, God has gifted you with the Gospel, the good news. It is a complete gift. You have everything you need, but you need to look carefully at everything you’ve got. Think of the Bible as the “Instruction Manual” that tells you all about the gift you’ve got, because that’s what it is. The Instruction Manual will tell you everything is there and how it all works. So you read through the Instruction Manual of God’s Word and you learn all about the God’s will and you grow in wisdom and spiritual understanding.

So Paul is like, “You already have the truth. Don’t let false teachers tell you that you need something else. You have the truth so I am praying that you will be filled with the truth,” that is, “that you will grow in your learning and understanding of the truth you already possess,” allowing the truth to completely fill you as you grow. In fact, verse 10 indicates that it is the very truth the Colossians already possess which leads to growth, like rain brings a harvest or like sunlight grows a tree. The truth which they possess in entirety must so get in them and fill them so that they produce, so that they grow.

Picture a football player’s toddler son playing with his dad’s football uniform. Here’s a 4-year-old boy and he’s trying to put on his dad’s football jersey and shoulder pads and helmet. He’d be completely buried in all of the clothing and gear! He’s not grown to the point that he could wear of all that. He’s got to grow quite a bit to “fill it out.”

So we come into he Christian faith and we’re like a little kid trying to wear professional football clothing and gear. We’re tiny and we’ve got a lot of spiritual growing to do. We’ve got a lot of “filling out” to do as we grow in the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

And to the degree we are filled with learning we may be fruitful in our living. That’s the second little sub-point. Paul teaches in verses 10 and 11 that we’re to bear fruit.

Be fruitful in your living (10-11)

The “filling” of knowledge in verse 9 leads to action in verse 10. Paul says:

10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in (or better, “by increasing in,” (an instrumental dative) or, “by means of”) the knowledge of God;

This “walking” is a metaphor we still use today. We say, for example, if you’re going to “talk the talk,” then you’d better what?—“walk the walk.” If you say you’re going to do thus and such, then live it out. Walking worth of the Lord just means that Christians, those who have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ, Christians should live in a way that brings a smile to the face of Jesus.

I want to live in such a way that my life brings a smile to Jesus’ face, not a frown, but a smile. Do you want to live that way? Yeah, it’s the way Christians are to live. We have been forgiven of all our sin so we want to live such a way that is pleasing to Him.

And again, note the connection between verses 9 and 10. Right learning leads to right living. Information you take in through learning should lead to transformation through living. Right content leads to right character. We study the Word of God and we learn about Who He is and what He has done and it leads to a way of living that causes Jesus to smile.

So Paul is saying, “That’s what I’m praying for you. I’m praying that you will grow in your sanctification, being filled with right learning that leads to right living, that you may be fruitful in every good work and strengthened, verse 11:

11 strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and long-suffering with joy;

Christians are to grow and become stronger in the faith. God’s glorious power empowers us to grow. And there are a couple of evidences of such growth there at the end of verse 11: “patience and long-suffering.”

Someone said patience is to endure difficult situations while long-suffering is to endure difficult people. God empowers us to be a patient people and a loving and merciful people. It’s a supernatural work that God does in and through the Christian.

The two words there at the end of verse 11 in the New King James Version, “With joy” can go either with what precedes it or what follows it. It could be either “Having joy as you endure difficult circumstances and difficult people” or, “Having joy as you—verse 12—give thanks to the Father,” and so on. In either case, the Christian is empowered to live his or her life “with joy.”

You can tell the true Christian from the one who merely professes to be a Christian by the joy that is in the true believer. You know joy when you see it. It doesn’t mean to just put on a false smile and ignore pain and suffering. True joy is that which remains constant in the face of pain and suffering. True Christians have true joy. Do yo have that joy, true joy in the Lord?

Verses 9-11 are about our growing in sanctification. Then Paul turns his attention away from what Christians do, to what God has done for them. And so in verses 12-14 Paul writes that we need to:

II. Give Thanks for Your Salvation (12-14)

God has saved us through the power of the Gospel and we ought to always thank Him for this precious gift. Do you thank God regularly for saving you? If you’re a parent, don’t you love to hear your child say thank you? Look at verse 12:

12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.

The Father qualifies us or authorizes us, those of us who are Christians, the Father has authorized us to have a share in the kingdom of heaven. We are partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.

And God qualifies us to be partakers of heaven. God qualifies those who are unqualified. I think that’s important to remember here! Apart from Christ, there’s not a soul in this room who qualifies to go to heaven, okay. We are all unqualified to be partakers of the inheritance, or shareholders of heaven. Not a one of us qualifies to be partakers or shareholders of, the inheritance of the saints in the light, the place where the light shines eternal bright and fair, the place of heaven.

Not a one of us qualifies. We are all equally unqualified. But God qualifies us.

It’s like qualifying for a loan when you have bad credit. You’ve got bills stacked up six inches hight atop your kitchen counter, and you’re not gainfully employed and your credit history is disastrous and you have absolutely nothing to offer the lending institution. You’re an absolute zero. And you appear before the banker and your head is down and you know it’s bad news, but then the banker says, “We’re going to bless you anyway. You’re qualified. In fact, not only have we qualified you for this loan, but we’re also going to pay it off for you. You don’t deserve it and all you need to do is receive it.” Man, that’s what God has done for us in the Gospel!! He qualified me to be saved. Everyone say, “God qualified me.” God qualified me. Verse 13:

13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,

Amen, we mentioned that earlier. God has conveyed us, or brought us into, the kingdom of the Son of His love. God delivered us from darkness that we may walk in the light.

God did that. Paul writes, “He has delivered us from the power of darkness.” Paul doesn’t write, “You delivered yourselves from the power of darkness.” No, you were in darkness. You were spiritually blind. To be in darkness is not only to be without God, but to be against God, to be a rebel in the night. You couldn’t find a light switch, because you weren’t even looking. You were just bumping around in the night and then God turned on the lights: “He has delivered us from the power of darkness.”

See, God must do the work of getting hold of our hearts and awakening faith. He is the one who qualifies us and delivers us from the power of darkness.

I read this quote this week in my study and it really got me to thinking. It’s something written by Oliver B. Green, the old evangelist who founded “The Gospel Hour” radio program years ago. I want you to hear this:

Oliver B. Green, “If unregenerate man (this is a lost person) should enter heaven, heaven would be hell to him.” I wonder if you’ve ever really thought about that. I mean to be lost and to be in darkness is not just to be without God, but against God. Natural man, apart from regeneration, is against the things of God. So if a lost person, if an unregenerate man were to enter heaven somehow, heaven would be hell to him, because his heart hasn’t been changed.

I think that’s important to remember in our sharing the Gospel this week and in our missional work in this community. Everybody seems to think he or she is going to heaven, but why would we ever think heaven would be a wonderful place if it is occupied by the One against whom we have committed treason and rebel against every day in this world?! We need a new heart.

So Oliver B. Green goes on to say, “The natural man must be changed because the natural man is not subject to the will of God.” Heaven is, “a prepared place for a prepared people.”

God delivers us from darkness. God changes our hearts that we will believe in Christ and receive Him as Lord. And Paul rounds out this passage then, in verse 14, by speaking of Christ as the one:

14 in whom we have redemption [through His blood; not in NU or M], the forgiveness of sins.

Some of the translations contain the phrase, we have redemption “through His blood,” the forgiveness of sins. The Christian’s redemption, the Christian’s forgiveness, comes by way of the cross.

If we believe Jesus died on the cross for our sins, we may be redeemed, released from the debt we owe God. Without Christ we owe a debt we cannot pay. Jesus pays the entire debt for us. And it is on that basis that God the Father qualifies us. The Father qualifies us to be blessed because Christ has taken care of the debt.

Paul writes that it is in Christ alone that we have our debt paid. He writes in verse 14, “In whom,” we have redemption. “In whom,” and there is the first of over a dozen occurrences in this letter of the believer’s union with Christ. Some 15 times throughout this letter to the Colossians we’ll read the two-word phrase, “in whom” or, “in Him,” or, “in the Lord.”

Salvation comes to us only “in Christ, in Him, in the Lord.” There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we are saved. We are saved only “In Him.” God delivers us from darkness and “conveys us into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.” 

God does that. We don’t do it. We don’t qualify ourselves. God qualifies us in Christ, in Him.

Now that’s the Gospel and yet so many people think that the way we get to heaven, or the way we become “partakers of the inheritance,” or the way we are “conveyed into the Kingdom of His Son” is by doing good deeds and giving our very best.

So there’s this false understanding that the way a person goes to heaven is by being good and doing good deeds and being nice and giving things away and so on. And this is popular belief even in our own community among those who say they are Christians. And you start talking about Jesus and how one is saved and somebody says, “Well, you know you’ve just got to believe Jesus and be a good person, do good stuff, and hopefully in the end you will been good enough and done enough good stuff.”
Well, we may be very sincere and try our very hardest and give it our best shot, but that doesn’t get us to heaven.

Last Sunday evening Michele and I were making our way to the fall meeting of the Board of Trustees at Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. So we traveled to the airport in Evansville and boarded our plane to fly us to Detroit where we would make our connection flight to Raleigh Durham. But the flight to Detroit was on a half-hour delay. So when we got to Detroit we had just minutes to make it to the gate and board our flight.

An airline worker called the gate and said we could make the flight if we got there within 12 minutes. So Michele went on ahead to the gate while I waited for the carry-on bag that had been placed on the cart and stowed with the other luggage. It seemed to take an eternity for them to get the bags to us and finally I got it and began the grueling sprint from Concourse C to Concourse A.

So I’m running as fast as I can and my heart starts pounding as I’m running up the escalator and I’m running around people and running through that ridiculous light tunnel that connects Concourses B and C to Concourse A. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone through that tunnel at the airport. I think it’s supposed to calm you, but it has the opposite effect on me. There’s this intense music and the lights are blinking as if to say, “You’re not gonna make it!”

So I finally make it to Concourse A, and I’m huffing and puffing, and I round the corner at the gate, in time—in time to see that the gate is shut and the plane is backing away. We missed it. That was our only chance to get out of Detroit Sunday evening.

Now I want you to know I was very sincere in my efforts to get on that plane. I tried my hardest. I gave it my best shot. You could even say, “I got pretty close.” I mean, I was at Concourse C and I made it to Concourse A in record time. But I still missed the flight. Once the gate shuts, it’s all over.

So we may be very sincere in our efforts to be good and to qualify ourselves for heaven. We may try our very hardest and give it our best shot. We may even be so bold as to say, “We’re closer than others,” but none of that matters when the gate is shut and the plane is backing away. None of us is getting on that plane.

The only way to make it to heaven is for God to qualify us for the trip. He takes care of everything, booking, ticketing, baggage. He’ll make sure you get to the gate on time. He’ll even carry you there! He delivers us from the power of darkness and conveys us or carries us over to the Kingdom of the Son of His love. God does all of that for us in Christ, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

• Let me invite you to stand for prayer.

“Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but, through you, I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment and offering forgiveness. I turn from my sin and receive you as Savior.”

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