"As Unto the Lord" Colossians 3:18-4:1 - Harbour City Church

Applying Colossians to Key Relationships: Scripture and Prayer All right, good morning again, everyone. It's a real blessing and joy to be worshipping together with you on another Sunday. We're going into Colossians chapter 3, verses 18 through to the first verse of chapter 4, and this is where Paul is getting really practical about how the gospel is applied in each of our individual lives and some of the key relationships that we might have. So let's give our full attention to the reading of God's Word from Colossians chapter 3, verse 18 onwards. This is God's word. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of thy service as people pleases, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily As for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ, for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. Amen. That is God's word. Let's go to him in prayer now. Heavenly Father, we pray that as we come before you this morning to submit to your word, that You would help us to do so with great joy and Thanksgiving by the ministry of your Holy Spirit. We praise You for being a good and faithful Almighty God, working all things for the good of those who love You. And we praise You for being the same trustworthy, steadfast Father in heaven. Even though we struggle with our sins daily, even though we've already been justified through the Lord Jesus, as we wrestle with the flesh daily, and as we stumble and fall, as we get distracted or discouraged, we thank You that You remain the same. That You continually, by Your Word, call us to come to You in faith and repentance again and again, as through Your Holy Spirit, You sanctify US one degree of glory to the next. We thank You for the complete and absolute assurance that we have in His finished work at the Cross, in His daily intercession on our behalf at Your right hand, and the great hope of the promise of His return one day with that glorious inheritance which He's keeping safe for us in the heavenly places. We thank you that on a Sunday, as we respond to the call to worship, as you draw us into your throne room to give you the worship that is rightfully yours, we're able to do so truly with fear and trembling, but also with great confidence. Confidence that because we come before you in the name of Jesus, you will gladly and warmly welcome us as your true children, covered by his blood and given his name. We pray that as we consider your word, as we consider how the gospel transforms the way that we think about some key relationships, that you would give us the strength and the courage and the great joy to live out the gospel no matter where we are, no matter what we do, for the sake of the glory of our Lord Jesus. And it's through him we pray. Amen. How Luther Revolutionized Worship in Ordinary Life About 500 years ago, in the summer of 1525, a disgraced former monk and a runaway nun did something that the medieval well found absolutely scandalous. They got married. Before this, the holy life, those who would set aside their lives in service of the Lord, was really reserved for the monastery, where people would renounce any ability to get married and they would hide themselves away in order to commit themselves to God. If you wanted to serve God, you would leave your family, you would leave your job, you would leave your life behind, and you would climb up into a stone tower and you would pray. But this former monk and runaway nun, Martin and Catherine Luther, they turn that whole idea upside down. There's a famous story of a man who came to Luther one day asking, how do I best serve the Lord now that he's been converted to faith in Christ? And that man expected Luther to say, give away all that you have, join the ministry and cloister yourself in the hidden life. But instead, Luther asked him, what's your trade? What's your job? What do you do? And the man replied, I'm a blacksmith. Oh no, sorry, not a blacksmith, A Shoesmith, a cobbler. And Luther's response was simple. Then make a good shoe and sell it at a good price. In the 16th century mind, this was a revolution because it meant that all the regular, normal things of life could also be done in such a way to honor and worship the Lord as well. It wasn't just in the big cathedrals. It wasn't just in the big grand halls where holy men would sit around talking about the finer points of philosophy and theology. It wasn't in those cloistered monasteries and nunneries alone where the Lord could be worshipped, but for all of God's people, no matter what their station in life, no matter where they found themselves, they had the freedom and the ability to worship God, to steward every gift that God had given them to His glory. It meant that when Catherine Luther was managing the household finances, when she was brewing beer in the shed to sell as she was raising their six children, she wasn't missing out on a spiritual life. She was exercising her spiritual life. When Martin Luther sat at the table hosting different people who would come to visit, when he wrote his commentaries with his children running around and playing at his feet, he wasn't distracted from God. He was being a father to his children. He was being a father unto the Lord. Paul is writing in our passage today to a group of people in Colossi who are being told that they need to have some kind of spiritual knowledge or some kind of mystical, ritualistic experience in order to be truly spiritual, in order to be properly connected to God and understand his ways. They need to unlock this hidden mystery, this hidden knowledge, or participate in this extra spiritual activity. And that's what we've seen in Colossians so far. In Colossians chapter 1, Paul highlighted the preeminence of Christ right. Christ alone is the only mediator between God and His people. Christ alone is enthroned in the heavens at the Father's right hand. And union to Christ by faith is at the very center of what it means to be saved. Know God, be spiritual. It is to know and experience your union to Christ by faith. And from there, Paul went on to clarify against that collusion, heresy, different people teaching the Colossians, OK, you know Jesus, but that's too basic. You need to then move on to the deeper mysteries, the secret knowledge and the secret rituals in order to grow in your faith. And Paul repudiates that that kind of evil, hidden Gnostic mystery knowledge is not of the Lord, it is of the devil. And then in chapter 3, Paul goes on to highlight, OK, instead of looking into the the mysteries and the hidden things and try to figure out all this occult knowledge, here's how the gospel actually plays out. Paul's Call to Spiritual Life in Daily Practice Here's what it looks like for the Christian to actually live in a spiritual way. For the individual, it is to take off the old and put on the new in the context of the Sunday. It is to gather together, encourage one another, put on love, sing songs and hymns and psalms to one another under the word of the Lord. But now again, in our passage, Paul is further highlighting some practical areas in the Christian life where the gospel can be applied very practically. And this is what it means for Christians, for you and I, to live spiritually. It is to see how the gospel radically transforms the everyday life that we live. It is not to go seeking the the mystery knowledge or seeking some emotional high or some emotional experience or some sensory experience. It's much more real. It is the way that the gospel of Jesus transforms this life that we currently live for the spouse, for the parent, and for the worker in this room today. Your ministry doesn't start when you just walk through the church doors or the roller door. Your ministry is what happens when you decide to love an imperfect spouse as is fitting in the Lord. Your ministry begins when you lovingly raise and discipline your children in the Lord. Your ministry begins when you do all things in all of life as if you were doing it to the Lord, even if it means working with a difficult boss or a difficult colleague, knowing that all of this life is really an opportunity for us to live out what we have waiting for us in the heavenly places. And so as we think about some of the different commands that Paul gives to us in our passage, let's not think about it as a checklist for us to go through and kind of tick off whether or not we've done it this week. But let's really view these things in light of the gospel. Right before we knew Christ, when we were dead in our sins, these relationships would be some of the most difficult. An abusive, monstrous husband. A painful, difficult wife. Abusive monstrous parents traumatizing their children. I'll disciplined and rebellious. Disrespectful children. Domineering and abusive manipulative bosses. Lazy stealing employees. If the gospel doesn't transform these most foundational building blocks of what it means to be human and live in this world, then everything else is just a bunch of words. It doesn't really mean much. The gospel must transform and it begins with the most foundational. Transforming Marriage Through Christ's Love and Sacrifice Firstly, what we see is that the gospel reorders very ordinary relationships and we get those three different types of relationships in our passage. Firstly we have the marriage relationship, then we have the parent and child relationship, and then we have the master and servant relationship. In verse 18, we have in today's society that very controversial passage averse wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Not as controversial, but definitely very neglected in today's society is husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. In this first set of relationships, it's really important for us to kind of think through, OK, how did the fall affect the marriage relationship? How does it play out in today's world? How does the gospel bring healing and restoration, and how does that help us to reflect the love of Christ in our own approach and our own understanding to marriage? We're in the beginning, in Genesis 1 and two, God makes man male and female. He creates them. And the marriage relationship was made to be this awesome team partnership between husband and wife to work together to achieve the mission that God gave to them. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue and have dominion over all the earth. Work and keep the garden to make all the earth fruitful. Make the whole world a fruitful, light filled, glorious place where the presence of God is tangibly felt. That was the original design and intent between husband and wife. But what we see in Genesis 3 as a result of the fall is instead of that harmony right? Two different people created different but made equally in the image of God. Rather than it being a complementary relationship, we see the beginning of the battle of the sexes. Adam just stood idly by, passive and not doing his job in leading. And Eve's desire is to be for her husband or over her husband. That's really the beginning of the battle of the sexes, this discord between male and female, two parts of the one humanity originally designed to work together in harmony, to enjoy God and to glorify God together, now at odds with one another. And we see so many examples all throughout Scripture, Firstly in Adam and Eve. Adam the passive weak husband, when instead he should have been the leader that God called him to be. And Eve going off and taking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and eating. We see another example later on in Genesis between Abraham and Sarai, where Abram is scared for his life because as they go down to Egypt, the Egyptian king sees Sarai and thinks she's very beautiful and wants to take her as his own wife. And Abram being scared says oh she's my sister. Great husband sold off his own wife to save his own skin. Another example that we see in the Kings is the relationship between Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab was a king of Israel, a very evil 1, and Jezebel was a foreign queen who corrupted and destroyed the northern state of Israel. Again, the desire to rule over paired with a weak willed, spineless man. And even in today's society, so much of the tension between male and female really comes down to the pattern that we see at the fall. Because men are weak and a spineless and a passive and do not step up or stand for something. Many a time women feel like they need to step up because someone needs to. Someone needs to do it. And if these spineless, weak willed men are not going to do their God-given job, then I guess we'll do it. And so the battle rages and very, very painful and very, very difficult when that enters into a marriage as well. The gospel is absolutely critical in Christians redeeming and enjoying marriage in order for the marriages in our church and for the single people, the marriages that you might look forward to one day. In order for those marriages to not simply be another iteration of the broken pattern that we see in the world and society, the gospel has to be at the very center. And so how does the gospel transform this most fundamental relationship? Well, an even more famous passage on this topic would be Ephesians 5. So if we go to Ephesians 5 and we go to verse 22. Paul fleshes out this idea in a little more detail. He says in verse 22, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. And then on the flip side for the husbands, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and blameless without blemish. And if we skip down to verse 32, Paul wraps that section up by saying this mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. What Paul makes really clear here is the command to the wife to submit to their husband and to the husband to love their wife is not because that's just what good Christians ought to do. It's not simply a matter of doing on the surface what appears to be the right kind of behavior. If it's just about doing the right thing or saying the right thing or appearing to accept the commands of God, it's never going to be enough. What Paul makes really clear in Ephesians 5 is that this behavior, this pattern of marriage, it has to be a reflection of an understanding of the gospel. It is the gospel that drives both male and female, the husband and wife to love and serve one another. Because there's an understanding of how we've been first served by God, because we know that Christ laid down his life for us. He sacrificed himself for us. He submitted himself to the Father's will. He gave up his very self that we might know the love of God because he spared no expense, even to the point of his own suffering and crucifixion. That's the kind of love that should shape the way that we also think about human marriage, because human marriage is meant to be a reflection of the love between Christ and his church. That is the the driving force and motivation. That's how it begins to get transformed. The more that we understand together the love that God has for us and his Son, the more we're able to see that gospel transform the way that we think about our own marriages. And of course, it is an extremely challenging thing to do in real life. And the really amazing thing about the gospel which Paul is talking about is it's not just fancy ideas and big words to sit around talking about. The gospel, when applied, is every single day in these kinds of relationships, in all the small decisions that we make in that moment of frustration, to hold the tongue and to not lash back. To choose to be patient, to choose to put the needs of the other before our own. To initiate a conversation or reconciliation, even though you might feel like you're the one that has been wronged in all of these small choices, it has to be motivated by the gospel. Because by our own strength, by our own sheer force of will, by our own sense of I want to be a good person. It's never going to sustain us for long enough in those moments when we long to be selfish, long to seek our righteous justice. In those moments when we long to be right and have it our way. The challenge is to consider, how has Christ first loved me, and how does that love shape the way that I ought to love my spouse? Many of us in our church also not yet married, and as you consider and pray about what it might look like for you also to be married, the great challenge is to not fixate on marriage as an end in and of itself. The end is Christ and the Church. The real deal, the actual real substantial thing, is your union to Christ by faith. It is a good thing to pray for and desire a spouse and family, because these are good gifts from the Lord. But they are not ultimate. They also are just a reflection. They're just a shadow. Why settle for the shadow when you have the real thing? In any case, focusing on Christ himself, thinking about what it means to enjoy your union to Christ by faith, is really important in any lead up to marriage anyway. The more you're able to have your thinking and your approach and your prayer about a future marriage aligned with the gospel, the better start to the marriage you will have. This is very practical. Very, very practical. This is what it looks like for the Christian to live a spiritual life. Not in a cloistered tower, not in a mystical experience, not in debating finer points of theological discussion. It's in the everyday moments in your relationships to choose. Will you fight for your own or in Christ? Will you put the needs of your spouse before yourself? Modeling the Heavenly Father in Parent-Child Dynamics The second kind of relationship that we see in our passage is between children and their parents. We read in verse 20, Children, obey your parents and everything, for this pleases the Lord. And also fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. And again, we see it all throughout Scripture. Because of the fall, parents and in particular fathers are instructed to discipline their children and raise them in the ways of the Lord. But what we see as a result of the fall is that just does not happen. A few examples might be Cain and Abel. The first two children ever born in the human race results in murder. Cain murders his younger brother, and you know, that's already pretty bad in and of itself. But you need to wonder, what are their parents doing? Where are Adam and Eve? Why are they just allowing their first two children to go out and murder each other in a field? Why does Cain not understand that when it comes to giving a sacrifice to the Lord, blood is required? Why is Cain not being raised in the ways of the Lord? Why does he not understand the gospel? Why also? Is murder allowed to happen? Perhaps in the same way that he was passive with Eve, Adam also is passive. We don't know because Scripture is not explicit on that point, but we can guess. Parents are not raising their children in the ways of the Lord, and the children are growing up wicked and rebellious. Another example would be Jacob and Joseph. They always say that parents should not show favorite favoritism between their kids because it builds resentment and all sorts of, you know, janky childhood issues as I'm sure many of us have experienced in some way. Well, good job Jacob. He showed a lot of favoritism not only to to Joseph but between his wives, and that also is a major issue. Another example is David and Absalom. What kind of a father was David? If you look at his story and the story of his children, there's only one conclusion. He was an absolutely shocking father. All between his different kids, right? Half brothers would rape their half sisters. They'll kill each other. One of his sons begins rebellion to overthrow him. He's an absolutely shocking father. Even though he was the man after God's own heart, and even though he led Israel to many victories, he did not raise his children well. Same thing with Eli the prophet. Eli the prophet was a righteous man, but his two sons took all the fatty portions for themselves and they slept around with all the temple workers. Shocking father. It's a state of parent child relationships all throughout the Bible and in our society today as well. When you see some of the things going on on social media, in the news, we just wonder what are the parents doing? Where are they? There's an epidemic of absent fathers as well. It makes us consider What does it look like for us to raise children in the ways of the Lord? What does it look like for us to be good children to our parents as we understand and apply the gospel to our own lives? Again, the solution at the very core, it has to be the gospel. In Matthew 6, our Lord teaches us how to pray to our Heavenly Father, and this fatherly relationship is the very cornerstone of us better understanding and better applying the right form of parent child relationships in our own lives as well. He teaches us to pray to our Father in heaven. Hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Firstly, there's that sense that yes, our our Father in heaven is God, He is holy, and His will is before our own. And yet in the prayer, there's also this great comfort and confidence that He would give to us Our Daily Bread, that He would forgive us our sin, that He would deliver us from evil. A Father who is one who is present, one who is firm and disciplines when it is required, but one who loves, One who nurtures, one who brings in his children close into His arms day by day, unconditionally. With our Heavenly Father, our relationship and our standing with Him is not conditional on our behavior. There are not just bad days when he's grumpy and tired and we have to tiptoe on egg shells around him. But as a glorious Heavenly Father, he is always on point, always ready to listen, always ready to apply grace, always ready to draw us near no matter what kind of a day or week we've had. It is from the safety of this kind of relationship that we then move out to seek to apply to our own parents, and also for the parents, our own children, what the gospel might look like in practice. Gospel driven, safe and secure in unconditional love. The final category that we see is between servants and masters. Serving Christ in All Work and Authority Relationships Verse 22 bond servants obey and everything. Those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eyeservice as people pleases, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Word. And very importantly, verse 23, whatever you do work heartily As for the Lord and not for men. So just a little bit of context in regards to slavery. In the 1st century Roman Empire, there were these things called bond servants. And bond servants were legally owned by other people and they often came as a result of conquest or debt. They would sell themselves into the ownership of another in order to have their own debts covered or birth children born to enslaved parents. However, when it comes to their legal identity and their social status, although they didn't have any legal rights, their masters were legally required to look after and provide for them. Sometimes they will also given this this thing called the peculiar, where the master would allow the servant to manage a certain aspect of the household's business, and if they're savvy enough, the bondservant could eventually save up enough money to buy their own freedom. So in ancient Roman slavery, it's still slavery, but it's not based on ethnicity or race. There's actually still social mobility inbuilt into the system. The role of the bondservant depends entirely on their skill set. There are some who were cooks and cleaners, there were some who were teachers, accountants and architects, some who worked in the imperial household. All these belonged to their patron, the one who was obliged to look after them, to care for them and to enable them to participate in social mobility. And on the flip side, it's total allegiance and exclusive belonging to their master. This is really the result of the fall. As soon as the fall occurs, all of us fall into slavery to sin, death, and Satan. Even before the flood, the strong begin to dominate the weak. Even in Israel there were bond servants where Israelites would sell themselves into the bond servant hood of a fellow Israelite if they had a debt that they could not pay off. This belonging to another person is certainly a result of the fall, because there are those who have and there are those who have not. There are those who are strong and there are those who are weak. But even in this there is the Gospel at the very center. In Leviticus chapter 25, it details the year of the Jubilee. Every 50 years all debts would be cancelled and so all bond servants would be declared free. All land which different people could buy up would be returned to their original Israelite owners. It was a great reset for the nation, reset for all those who had been servants for some time. And this is really a foreshadowing of the great freedom that ultimately Jesus would bring about in his death and resurrection, and also the great freedom that Jesus is going to bring about at his return as well. The challenge here is given Romans chapter 1. Paul introduces himself as a bondservant of Christ. He's making it really clear to the Roman Christians he belongs. His allegiance, his ownership, his everything is to Christ and Christ alone. In Acts chapter 10 Cornelius the Centurion after he becomes a Christian now needs to think about as a master what does it look like for me to in Christ love all my bond servants, love all those under my care. Acts chapter 16, Lydia the merchant, the very wealthy lady who was at the beginning of the church in Philippi, she also needs to think about as a Christian, what does it look like for me to lovingly care for and provide in Christ for all those in my household as well? At the end of the day, for the masters and the servants, if your identity is in Christ, the perspective shifts to no matter what I do, no matter what station I find myself in, I do it unto the Lord as if I'm serving Him, not by way of eye service as people pleases, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. What we see is in each of these different relationship examples, the gospel has to be at the very center and as the gospel transforms the way that we think about these relationships, our place and who we are in each of these relationships. That is where our true spirituality is exercised. Living Out Spirituality in Every Aspect of Life I'll close with this one example. In the 14th century, during the construction of one of the great European cathedrals, A visitor came to the building site and he saw three different stone Masons working on identical blocks of granite. And he asked the first stone Mason, what are you doing? And that first stone Mason grumbled, I'm chipping a rock to pretty much just feed my belly. I'm just doing a job. This sucks. I don't want to be doing it. It's a hard, hot, thankless job. And this is the worker who sees only the grind. The man then went to the second stone Mason and said, what are you doing? And the man replied, I'm the best Mason in the whole country, and I'm carving a perfect edge so that my name will be remembered for all time, and this is the one who seeks self glory and recognition. But the third man was walking, working on a small, intricate piece of scrollwork that eventually would be placed underneath another block, a place where no other human eye would ever see it. And the visitor asked him, why are you working so hard on something that will be hidden in the shadows? And the Mason looked up and he smiled. And he said, because the king will see it, because the king knows. And I'm doing it for him, for us as a church, as we consider Paul's words today in Colossians 3, every corner of our homes, every aspect of our lives is that great cathedral that God is building to his own glory. When you are a wife who honors a husband who doesn't always deserve it, the King sees it. When you are a husband who dies to himself and lays down his preferences in order to honor and love and cherish his wife, the King sees it. When you're a a parent patiently correcting a child for the thousandth time, or a worker doing an honest day labor when no one else is looking for a difficult boss, the King is watching. Because you and I belong to the Lord, we do it all unto Him for His glory and before His face. This is who we serve, because that is who we are. Don't look for spirituality in the weird, dark, mystical places. Exercise your spirituality in real life, in all the real life relationships and decisions that you make every single day, and the Lord will be with you. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your word and for the way that it brings clarity to the way that we ought to live as Christians and what it means for us to grow in our Christ likeness. It is not to delve deeper into strange and occult mysteries. It's not to participate in superstitious rituals and chantings and bells and smells. It is to apply the Gospel in all that we do. It is to choose to serve Christ in every small decision that we make, day by day. It is to put the needs of others and the will of our Lord before our own. Whenever we're confronted with those two choices, help us by your Holy Spirit to represent Christ faithfully, not because we're good people and that's what we ought to do as good people, but because we're saved by the gospel. We pray that this gospel would so compel us to live a life that shows forth the character of a risen Lord. It's in his name we pray. Amen.