Listen to this message:
Edward Donnelly
We turn in this second hour to Colossians, one of Paul’s shortest letters written from prison in Rome to the young church in Asia minor. The founder and the pastor of the church, Epaphras, has visited Paul in Rome and he has told the Apostle that there is much in the church for which to be thankful, but these new Christians are threatened by danger, potentially by a very serious danger, and the young pastor needs help from the wisdom and insight of the senior man. This is Paul the Apostle’s response to Epaphras’s account of the situation in the church which he serves. This brings us to the famous question of the Colossian heresy. What was it? Scores of trees have been felled to produce paper to discuss the Colossian heresy. Peter O’Brien in his recent magisterial commentary on Colossians tells us that forty-four separate suggestions have been made as to what this heresy is.
The difficulty is that Paul doesn’t describe the heresy directly, but he does make a number of references to it especially in chapter two. I’m not going to give you the detailed references because it’s all in a very small compass. He talks about the basic principles or elements of the world: words like fullness, complete, perfect, judging in food and drink, festival, new moon, Sabbaths, false humility, worship of angels. Regulations: do not touch, taste, handle. Appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and the neglect of the body. So those are some of the elements floating around in this false teaching. He says in chapter two four, “I say this less anyone should deceive you with persuasive words.” So apparently, it was a plausible teaching. Verse eight of chapter two, “Beware lest anyone teach you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of man.” We can’t precisely define this heresy, and it probably doesn’t matter. One writer, and I think he’s right, says it was a mood rather than a movement.
In other words, it wasn’t a precisely worked out heresy. Teachers had come and they had just distilled an unholy, jumbled mixture from the spirit of the age and popular philosophy and Christianity, and they had pulled it together into a witches’ brew: Jewish mysticism, some proto-Gnostic thinking, Frisian magic, eastern mystery religions, and so on and so forth. We do know some of the elements in it. There was a dualism, the spirit versus the body. The spiritual is good, the material is bad. There was an asceticism, legalism, ritualism. They were very interested in angels, whom they saw as mediators between God and humans. There seems to be reference to astrology, magic, gaining control over heavenly spiritual powers. They talked about perfection, about salvation through knowledge, about an advanced spirituality for an elite that the initiates could go further and deeper into the spiritual life. I think the key point to it all was, “Christ is not enough.” Christ is not enough.
They weren’t openly denying the Lord, but they were patronizing him. They were undervaluing him. They were saying, “Jesus Christ is all very well in his way and to a limited extent, but really, you need more if you want to be enlightened.” We get some of their buzz-words in the epistle, like plērōma (πλήρωμα) fullness, they were interested in fullness, or “teleos,” perfect, mature, complete. And to be full, to be complete, you needed more than Christ. The dangerous thing about this was, it agreed perfectly with the spirit of the age. It was completely and utterly contemporaneous. And that was why it was so popular and so persuasive. This is what these people were hearing in the marketplaces, on the forums, in the theaters, on the streets, in the schools of the philosophers. This was the world coming into the church. And Paul has to deal with this decisively because it’s going to have a devastating effect on the faith of the people.
We don’t need to go very far brethren to see the relevance of this for us today. Sadly, it’s relevant regarding those inside the church. There are those inside the church, some of them true Christians, who are suggesting that Christ is not enough. Some years ago, John MacArthur published a little paperback called, “Our Sufficiency in Christ.” Dr. MacArthur identifies the threats to today’s church’s psychology: pragmatism and mysticism. And he hits these head-on, and he says we’ve got to stand against these. Christ is sufficient; God is enough. This alone brings Colossians startlingly up to date, but brethren there’s a much more precise parallel and a much more alarming parallel because you and I are living through what some of us never imagined twenty years ago we would be living through. We are living through the revival of ancient paganism, and that is happening in the world around us with very strong Gnostic elements. These ghosts have come out from the coffin of history, and they are moving across our landscape.
Some of you will know of the excellent work done by Peter Jones from Westminster Seminary in California who specialized in this and has documented it. He’s publishing some books paroding the titles of the George Lucas films, the first little book is called, “The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back,” and the bigger book, “Spirit Wars,” documents this in great detail. This summer I was talking to a young lad, and tells me that Dr. Jones is bringing out a third book of which the supposed title is “The Return of the Rabbi,”
New Age spirituality is the first century revisited: magic, witchcraft, the occult, astrology, goddess worship, either the goddess Sophia (wisdom) or the goddess Gaia (the earth). Heavenly visions, mystical experiences, fascination with angels. How many books are there on angels? A downgrading of reason, a dislike for precise definition, searching for the god-within, spiritual elitism, perfection through knowledge, and so on. The “Jesus Seminar,” so called, is promoting for all its worth “The Gospel of Thomas,” the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, and is telling us that this is authentic Christianity. The parallels are quite uncanny. Read what Jones has to say.
Joan Carson in “The Gagging of God” page ten writes, “I sometimes wonder if philosophical pluralism is not the most dangerous threat to the gospel since the rise of the Gnostic heresy in the second century and for some of the same reasons.” And the people we want to reach with the gospel are brainwashed especially in our media-age. We need to be aware that we are facing renewed Gnosticism. The heart of Gnosticism was an attack on creation structures, and that’s what we are seeing, that’s what homosexuality is. It isn’t just “dirty people,” there is a satanic, philosophic background to it. It is attempting to destroy, to blur God’s creation structures. The attack on the role of men and women is attempting to blur God’s creation structures. The attack on the family, this is Gnosticism attacking God’s created order. I don’t think I am unduly chauvinistic, but I really could not sit this morning before breakfast and listen to a wee girl on the television news talking to us about helicopter, gun ships, and so on and so forth. I just went for a walk because I thought, this is absolutely ridiculous. What does this lady know of what she speaks? We are living in an age when this is happening before our eyes.
What’s even more worrying in a way is that our people who are already in the church can’t help being affected by this prevailing atmosphere. One of my young people a couple of weeks ago was telling me about a campus Bible study that she attended with intervarsity, and the Bible leader, wanting to make everyone feel at home at the beginning said, “Now what we want to hear from each of you today is what this Bible passage means for you. No one can be wrong, don’t worry. If this is what it means for you, this is what it means for you.” That’s pluralism. It wasn’t exactly preparation, but I had never seen any of the Star Wars films, even though they’d come out in 1977, not the sort of movies I’m interested in. I watched two of them a couple of weeks ago, never seen them before, quite astounding. It’s Gnosticism. “May the force be with you.” That’s first, second century. The wise-old warrior says to the young lad when he’s learning how to fight, “Don’t think, feel.” Whenever you think, you’re in trouble, whenever you feel, you’ll win. This is the atmosphere in which we are. We’re back in first century philosophy. And this epistle is an absolute gem, as we watch this master-under-shepherd at work. He sees in his mind’s eye these young, vulnerable believers, and he’s going to put down on this paper what is going to help these young believers and keep them from this miasma of error and falsehood. How does he deal with this situation, what does he do? How can we learn about pastoral ministry in a very similar situation?
I want to make three points, the first of minor importance. Simply, methodologically, Paul here does not choose to attack the problem head on. In fact, he does not expressly refer to the false teaching until chapter two verse four. These people are not wicked. They’re naive, they’re gullible, they’re innocent, but they’re not bad. He says, “I say this lest anyone should deceive you. Beware lest anyone cheat you.” The church hasn’t succumbed yet. This isn’t the Galatians situation, Paul is much calmer and more reasoned. He begins with a positive, encouraging note in his opening prayer. “We give thanks since we heard of your faith and your love, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ” (chapter two verse five). One nine, “We do not cease to pray for you.” He begins positively, encouragingly. As our pastoral theology professor used to say to us, “you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” And it’s true. So he’s not ranting and raving, he’s calm. Almost from the beginning he is attacking the heresy, we see that later, but he’s attacking with the positive assertion of truth. He doesn’t set out to analyze the errors and then refute them.
I put this before you with a measure of hesitation. I’m not saying that this always has to be the approach. Many of us no doubt have preached series of sermons on some particular error or heresy. We’ve begun by saying, “This is what is taught.” We did an example of that last night, “this is what Islam’s view is,” and there are times when that is the right and proper way to deal with these things. But there are several disadvantages with doing that. You’re enabling the error to set the terms of discourse and the agenda. You’re letting them get in first, you’re saying, “This is what they believe, now, how do we answer that?” You’re adopting a defensive posture. There’s also the danger that you may stir up more unhealthy interest in the error than you can satisfy. That’s the great flaw in sex education; we tell our young people about these things, “it will keep them from them,” of course, it has exactly the reverse effect. We need to remember too that these things, and this is a comforting thought, these things will pass. These things will pass.
I remember when I was first appointed professor of New Testament. I hope I’m still zealous, but I was very zealous then. There was a thing called “The New Hermeneutic,” some of you remember, and I thought it was my duty to prepare lectures on the “New Hermeneutic”. I read Cornelius Van Til, and I read an enormous book called “The Two Horizons.” I sometimes felt like walking into the kitchen, and saying, “Lorna, you are my wife and I am your husband, and we have three children, isn’t that right? Okay, my brain’s functioning okay, I haven’t gone mad, it must be this book.” But anyway, three or four months I toiled and produced I think three lectures on the new hermeneutic, which I duly gave in the college. Then five years later it was passé; it was gone. We moved on to something else; nobody hears about it now; nobody talks about it. I said to myself, “That’s the last time I follow a fad and prepare to answer it.” This of course is not going to go away as easily as that.
Generally speaking, what Paul is doing here is wise policy: it is better to teach positive truth than to refute error. It is better to inoculate our people than to heal them. And the joyous truth is brethren, if we inoculate our people many of them will pass comparatively unscathed through these things. You have simple, godly people in your congregation who don’t know that these things are going on, and they have actually been inoculated by the gospel. If you were to tell them what some of these New Age people think, they would think you were mad. That’s a blessed simplicity, a blessed innocence, and if we can inoculate our people, this will help them. It’s cheaper to build a fence at the top of a cliff than to pay for an ambulance at the bottom, and that’s a good pattern for our ministry: teaching our people, getting our retaliation in first so that they are equipped and prepared with truth and error just doesn’t appeal to them.
When we were growing up, we all had to memorize the Shorter Catechism from beginning to end. When I was fifteen I had to go in and sit down with a minister, and he started at question one and went to the end. If you could say the whole Shorter Catechism without a mistake, you got a Bible. I still got the Bible. And I am so thankful to God, although I didn’t like doing it at the time, that that mini systematic theology was pressed into my brain. Positive teaching insulates us and insulates our people from a lot of these things. That is a methodological point.
Our main point here is: how does Paul deal with this heresy? He preaches Christ in all his glory. Again, I know, stating the obvious, but that is what he does. He doesn’t answer the heresy point by point. He sets before the people the person of the Lord Jesus. Robert Raymond comments, “Simply overwhelming the heresy with the vaster riches and the surpassing greatness of the cosmic Christ.” He aims to fill the minds and the hearts of the Colossians with an overwhelming awareness of the Son of God in his person and in his glory. In this he is an example for us. To preach Christ himself, not just to preach about him or around him, but to present him as a living reality till our people’s consciousness is dominated, saturated with the person of Christ. So often we have a tendency to focus on doctrines and focus on duties without tying them in to Christ and showing how he’s central. We believe this because he teaches it. We perform this duty because it pleases him. We follow this course, because this is the way to become more like the Lord Jesus. This is his will, this is his purpose, this is for his glory. Sometimes we’re too abstract in our preaching, we’re not concrete enough. Most of us have been trained to think in abstract terms. Many of our people do not naturally think in abstract terms; they think vividly, pictorially, concretely; they love personal stories. Give them personal stories, give them the story of the greatest person who ever lived, present his story, him, in all the vividness of his person so that they can see him, and know him, and trust him, and we are actually placarding Jesus Christ in front of them.
We are to preach Christ in all his glory. We’ve noticed all of us the magnificence of Paul’s portrait of Christ in Colossians, especially in chapter one verses thirteen to twenty-three. We look at that now. It is simply overwhelming, it is quite awesome. Here is a picture of majestic dimensions. He presents Christ in his transcendent glory as the creator-God. Paul’s theology here is much—I shouldn’t say much—it’s fuller and deeper than it is for example in Romans or First Corinthians. He’s moving on here, he’s teaching us more of who Christ is, the image of the invisible God, the first-born over all creation. These are people who are being told, Christ isn’t enough. “For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things consist, that in all things he may have the preeminence, for it pleased the Father that in him all the pleroma should dwell, all the fullness should dwell.” The creator-God. He preaches him a savior, the son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin, having made peace through the blood of his cross. He preaches him as the reconciler of the cosmos, by him to reconcile all things to himself, by him whether things on earth or things in heaven. He preaches him as lord and conqueror and master of all the powers, for by him all things were created whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. He is the head of all principality and power two-ten, two-fifteen, having disarmed the principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in his cross.
He preaches Christ as the fullness of God himself, the image of the invisible God. It pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell, chapter two-three, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Verse nine: In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, bodily. It is an absolutely staggering conception of the son of God that is utterly majestic and overwhelming, transcendent, splendid. Here’s Paul’s answer, this is the one that they’re telling you is not sufficient. We criticize the liberals for their man-sized Christ, justifiably so, but can we be guilty of the same mistake? Can we fall into the error of making him smaller than he is? You know the evangelical Christ as need-maker: Christ will take away your tension headache; Christ will help you to sleep at night; Christ will help you improve your marriage; Christ will help you to lose weight. A need-maker, he’s valuable because of what he does for us. Or, and perhaps we’re more guilty, we can present him just unimaginatively, one-dimensionally, “Jesus is the savior. He died on the cross for our sins, trust in him and you’ll have everlasting life.” We overlook his Godhead, his eternity. Some of our people might not know that Jesus Christ made the world. We might be astonished if we asked them. They might not be aware of that. They might not know that he is sustaining the cosmos at this moment, himself, Jesus Christ.
Are our people astounded by the greatness of the savior? Friends, people need to worship. They need to worship. They need heroes. That’s why they’re turning to these absurd pop stars and sports people. They need greatness. They need awesomeness. They need to be made to look up. Evangelical churches shouldn’t be little, cozy, comfortable horizontal places where it’s all convenient and comfortable. There are evangelicals who are going back to ritualistic churches, to Eastern Orthodoxy and Romanism, because of the great Gothic towers and windows, and there is at least a sense of awe. So it may be. There is mystery. There is wonder. There is reverence. It’s false a lot of it, but they’re looking for that. They’re hungry for that, and then they come in to these pallid little churches where it’s just all very manageable and humanistic and well-meaning. We’ve got to preach the Lord Jesus in such a way as to evoke awe, and wonder, and admiration so that we feel like John, “I fell at his feet as one dead.” “Depart from me,” Peter says, “For I am a sinful man oh Lord.” The glory of Christ. And I say to you that Christ preached in this way will by himself sweep away the mists of heresy. Let me quote John MacArthur, “Paul demonstrates that the best defense against false teaching is a thoroughly biblical Christology: his place in the universe, his work in salvation, his preeminence as God, his utter sufficiency for every human need.” You preach a savior like this, and then ask your people, is he not sufficient?
You know the story of when of the day when Spurgeon burst out laughing. He was very depressed and downcast; he was having a hard time. He didn’t know how he was going to cope, and the verse came into his mind, “My grace is sufficient for you.” And he burst out roaring with laughter at the ludicrous contrast between “my” and “you.” And he said, “Lord I felt like a little boy standing at the edge of the ocean with a teaspoon. And the ocean says, ‘my water is sufficient for your teaspoon.’” My grace is sufficient for you. And Spurgeon said, “Yes Lord, I expect thus right. I expect your grace is sufficient for me.” Is our Christ sufficient? Is our Christ sufficient? We can imagine the Colossians after they read this letter laughing at the false teaching. What are you talking about? What nonsense is this? That’s what we’re to do so that our people will see the New Age and so on for the nonsense it is, for the counterfeit it is. And there will be no room for anything but longing to know Christ better.
When we fall in love, we don’t need to be urged to forsake all others. That is the one thing we are absolutely determined to do and delight in doing, and not to forsake all others is unbearable. It is unthinkable. We want only the beloved. And then this will give a depth to our ministries, and a grandeur, and a dignity. It is a great thing to be a preacher of the Lord Jesus Christ in all his glory. It is a noble calling to be able to stand up and to give our lives to setting forth the second person of the Godhead in his majesty and power and beauty and holiness and compassion. This will strengthen us. We are privileged men; this is our calling in the world. We’re not here to just run around and please people, or bring little trite messages. We are heralds of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a task. I wish we would give ourselves to that, preaching Christ in all His glory.
I came across another reference to Spurgeon last week. Someone was commenting, I think it’s in the introduction to Iain Murray’s book on Spurgeon on hyper-Calvinism. They were referring to Spurgeon’s eloquence, and he told the story of a rich, arrogant, young unbeliever who had no time for Christianity. And the minister took this unbeliever to a garrot where an old bedridden Christian woman was lying in pain from head to foot. And the minister said to the old lady, he said, “Here’s a young man who has everything this world can have. Would you change places with him?” And the old woman said, “Change with him?” The writer says when Spurgeon spoke those words, “Change, change with him?” An electric thrill ran through the whole audience. And that’s what we want to get our people to see, “Change Christ?” What are you talking about? The glory of Christ.
One other point we want to make and devote the remainder of our time to it: Paul not only presents Christ in all his glory, but he emphasizes in Colossians realized eschatology. He emphasizes realized eschatology. You will be aware of the basic structure of New Testament eschatology. There is the already and there is the not yet. There is the what we have in Christ and what we will yet receive in Christ, and it is an essential distinction to keep clear in our minds and understand the difference between the already and the not yet. And the great need of our era has been to stress the not yet. That has been the demand of our time. We have to stress it against the advocates of the higher life. The people who talk about full surrender and sinless perfection and unbroken peace and joy, we say to them, not yet. We’re to stress it against the social gospel, people who hope to bring in the kingdom by human effort, not yet. We’re to stress it against the charismatic movement with its delusive promises of health and wealth and higher spirituality, not yet. We’re to stress it against Reconstructionism, which tells us that there’s a Christian century, and they’re going to build a Christian nation. And we say, not yet.
We as reformed creatures have borne a valuable witness and in many cases an unpopular and costly witness by stressing the not yet, and it’s right that we should have done so. It’s important for the spiritual sanity of our people, and we’re going to have to keep on stressing it, stressing the not yet. But you see where I’m going, brethren? Have we lost a balance? In guarding against one extreme, have we gone to the other extreme? We were right to stress the not yet, but have we neglected the already? Have we presented the Christian life as only struggle and conflict? It’s helpful to note the balance of the apostle. There is no one more emphatic about the not yet than the apostle Paul. Read Romans eight, the sufferings of this present time, the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs, we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body. If we hope for what we do not see then we eagerly wait for it with perseverance, not yet, not yet. If this morning I had been lecturing to you on first and second Corinthians (maybe we’ll do that sometime), I would have been saying to you that those epistles stress the not yet. He was dealing with a charismatic situation in Corinth, he was dealing with a different situation. And in Corinth, over and over again from first Corinthians one onwards it’s the not yet, it’s the foolishness of the cross, God has chosen the weak of the world and right on to second Corinthians, where he says in my person I embody the not yet.
Here’s the point: in Colossae he’s facing a different pastoral problem, and he is flexible enough and discerning enough to change. He’s not a one note man. Here the need is to stress the already. This is what these people need to hear. If you like, his text is Colossians 2:10, “You are complete in Christ.” “Peplērōmenoi,” a perfect passive participle. You are having been permanently continuously and unalterably filled in Christ so that you are complete in him. Christ is sufficient for here and now, already sufficient. Have you ever thought about the appetizing positiveness of his opening prayer from verse one, nine onwards? Paul doesn’t say, “I’m praying that you will make a few minor improvements in your Christian life, because of course we know that we have to wait until glory until we’re able to be substantially changed.”
“We ask that you may be filled with the knowledge,” filled, same word, “with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” Verse ten, “Fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing with the knowledge of God.” He is praying for spectacular spiritual growth in these people, for spectacular spiritual growth. He is praying that they will be transformed. This is the man who wrote first and second Corinthians and Romans eight. He indicates later the awesome privilege (I’ll leave you to look up these references for yourself) the privilege of knowing the gospel, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations but has now been revealed.
Let me just give you a few references of a chain of statements. Look at these statements men and see how they’re crafted for the pastoral situation, see how they’re arrows heading into the heart of the need. They’re loaded with key terms, thrusting at the heresy. One twenty-seven, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” One twenty-eight, “That we may present every man,” teleos,/i>, “perfect in Christ Jesus.” Chapter two verses two and three, “Attaining to all the riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, of Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Two nine, “In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” In that one word he demolishes all Greek philosophy. In that one word, bodily. It’s the same as John, the shocking introduction to John’s gospel. The word became flesh. Just hitting the culture head on and saying, this dualism is wrong. In him dwells the fullness God bodily, verse ten we referred to, “You are completed who is the head of all principality and power.” Verse seventeen, “The substance is of Christ.” Look at the beginning of chapter three, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above.” Your life is hidden with Christ in God. Verse fourteen, “Above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection.” Teleotis. The bond of maturity, the bond of completeness is not knowledge, it’s not some little agnostic cult, it’s love; it’s the bond of completeness.
You see what Paul’s doing men? He’s saying, you have so much in Christ here and now. The words he’s using: mystery, fullness, deliverance, triumph, knowledge, perfection. What can the false teachers possibly promise you? You have it all! More than we can ever absorb or receive, should we live for a thousand years on this earth we couldn’t begin to exhaust the treasures which are available in Christ. Should we not be challenged there? Have we lost a balance? Is this part of the appeal of the charismatic movement? Is this a wake-up call to us? People are hungry for the reality of God. They are hungry for a present experience of his grace and power. Do we believe that people can have present experiences of his grace and power? Do we believe God can transform? Do we believe he can answer prayer? Have we slipped into the not yet mentality so far that everything’s not yet, practically. And if people don’t have this hunger for God satisfied in sound, biblical churches then I’m afraid they will go looking for it elsewhere. I don’t think they’ll find it. Well, they may in God’s mercy find it in other places. Who are we to limit the power of God? But they will look for it. Do we need to stress more the already?
I would urge you brethren not to be frightened of the already. At the heart of joyful New Testament experience is what we have now in Christ. The best way of protecting our people against error is to develop in them an enthusiasm for the riches that they have in the Lord Jesus. Here’s the problem: it puts us, as men, as Christians, on the line. It brings us up to the mark. We need a deeper Christian experience for ourselves. I can hide behind the not yet. I can turn the not yet into a comfort zone to explain away the poverty of my spiritual experience, and that’s reassuring for me. I wonder, do we do that? I’m not the man I should be, I don’t know Christ as I should, but after all, in glory we will know him better. That’s a cop out. We need to know the sufficiency of Christ. We need to prove the sufficiency of Christ for ourselves. Can anyone doubt that Paul knew of what he wrote? We need to be able to say from experience that these blessings are fruitful. That is scary.
Fruitful in every good work, does that describe you and me? Increasing in the knowledge of God, the full assurance of understanding, seeking those things which are above, putting on love, the bond of perfection. If with any degree of integrity, we’re going to preach the already, we have to have at least some experience of the already for ourselves. We simply cannot persuasively command to people theoretical blessings of which we ourselves know little or nothing. So to preach the already with honesty really demands a spiritual transformation. I would say also it stresses the importance of function, of true experiential preaching and spirit-filled worship. There’s a great debate raging about the place of preaching, and the value of preaching. Some of us where talking about it today, how preaching is being downgraded and marginalized. How do we meet that? Well, we could argue from Scripture very properly. We could refer to history very properly, to revival, but the best way is by actually preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit. You men will know that once we have preached with the unction of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, never again for the rest of our lives will we undervalue preaching. Once people have sat under preaching delivered with unction, gripped by the felt presence of God, already they will never again doubt it. They’ll not be running after other things. They’ll not be saying we need the drama and the music. They’ve met with God. They find themselves in the age to come; they’re in the already; they know that heaven has come down to earth.
We need to be clear in our minds brethren that when we talk about unction, this is not just a little reformed hobby-horse, a pleasant little extra that some of us have a thing about. It is an urgent necessity for the spiritual contentment of our people. It is indispensable so that against the New Age promises they may know that God is in this place, and the best witness to the false spiritualities of our time is a true spirituality. To bring people into the presence of Christ. Paul says, the unbeliever comes in, first Corinthians fourteen twenty-five, and the secrets of his heart are revealed and falling down on his face, he worships God and reports that God is truly among you.
This is a demanding agenda that I’m setting before us. We desperately need the empowering and the help of the Holy Spirit to change us, to bring us into the already, and to come upon our preaching that we preach with the power of the age to come. How this letter encourages us! What a glorious power it sets before us. We can be intimidated by the dazzling array of the world around us, its man-made philosophy. Brethren the answer isn’t simplistic, as I hope we’ve seen, but it is simple: preach Christ in his glory. Paul puts it this way, chapter four verse three, let this be our prayer: Pray also for us that God would open also for us a door for the Word to speak the mysteries of Christ that we may make it manifest, as we ought to speak. Amen.
Let us bow in prayer,
“Our Father in Heaven, how wonderful is our savior, how little we know of him. Strengthen in us a passion to know him better, to see him more clearly. Oh Lord change us as men we pray. Help us to seek those things which are above, help us to give ourselves to entering into the fullness of Christ more and more. Come upon us as we stand before our people, come upon them, may our gatherings for worship be filled with your presence. May our people know in reality your power and love and grace, that the lies of Satan are seen as the cruel, tawdry things that they are. That more and more, we may long to be found in him that in all things he may have the preeminence.”
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