Most of the Diocese is only surviving relative. And among the prophecies we have, ladies and gentlemen, in this publication, this tabloid is the name of the Antichrist who is alive today in Germany. I'm not going to give you the name. Come back tonight and I'll give it to you. How's that? It's not unusual around the first of the year to find all sorts of prophecies that people want to make. But we have to discount them because no one knows the future.
We human beings have a natural limitation in that regard. Man is ingenious. We can discover a lot of things, but one thing we cannot discover is what the future holds. Only God knows the future, only God knows the secret things, and he sometimes chooses to reveal those to us. That's the idea behind the word mystery, which we find in this context of Colossians chapter 1.
In verse 26, the word is defined, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations but has now been manifested to his saints. And so a mystery is something that we could never know on our own. But God has chosen to reveal it to us. The word mystery is used in the New Testament with several lines of truth. The particular one here in Colossians chapter 1 is that God is calling out a people for his name's sake from the Gentiles as well as the Jews.
And God no longer makes a distinction between the two ethnic groups. We are now one in the body of Jesus Christ. God has determined that Jesus Christ will be preeminent in everything. He is preeminent in creation, in the church, in salvation. He is preeminent in our ministry or our service for him. And he is preeminent in the mystery. And we continue that theme this morning from our last look at Colossians chapter 1. One day all of us belonging to Jesus Christ will be like him.
He speaks in verse 27, of Christ in you the hope of glory. The hope of glory speaks of the ultimate experience of our salvation. Our salvation is completely assured now but we have not completely experienced it yet. We still have a hope, an anticipation of something to experience. He calls it glory. In Romans 8 verse 29 the apostle writes, for whom God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. That's what glory refers to.
To be conformed completely to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ so that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Lord Paul uses that same term regarding Jesus that he uses in Colossians 1, the firstborn, which means he is before everyone else. He is above and beyond everything else. He is the firstborn, the one of a kind. The God is so pleased with his son that he wants a whole heaven full of people like him.
And so one day you and I are going to be glorified and be like the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn't mean that we'll be God but it means that we'll be without sin and even our very bodies will be conformed to his body of glory, fitted for eternity. So that is a marvelous mystery that has been revealed to us. In the Old Testament the hope of the saints was in a coming earthly kingdom and in the resurrection of God's people to be a part of that kingdom. That was their hope.
But God has given to us another revelation. He has given to us a secret that the Old Testament saints did not know and that is that we will one day be like Christ and we will reign with Christ in his kingdom as co-heirs of all things, the hope of glory. As we enter 1996 it is good for us to focus our minds again on the fact that this could be the year when Jesus will come. This could be the year when the thing that we hope for is going to be realized. I've been with Christ to be like him.
But what about between now and then, whatever it is, if it's not this month or June or December or 1996, what about that period of time between today and then when we'll be like Christ? That's what our text today, verses 28 and 29 deals with. It deals with that process of life transformation and maturity that prepares us for the ultimate experience of glory. And so I pose this question, how is it that this Christ in you, the hope of glory mystery is realized?
And if you stop and think about it and try to condense what he says in these verses, you find that what he says is this, it's realized through the ministry of the church in our lives. It's realized through the ministry of the body of Jesus Christ in our lives. The pace and the effectiveness of God's present design in your life and mine depends upon our relationship to the local church. Some of you don't believe that.
Some of you don't see the church as being that crucial, that focal, that central to what God is doing in the world. But I'm going to tell you it's true that the pace and the effectiveness of God's present design in our lives depends upon our relationship to his church. The apostle writes about that. He's the apostle of the church, remember. He's one of those above whom it rests. He helped build the foundation of it.
And he says, and we proclaim him, this Christ who is in you, the hope of glory, admonishing every man and teaching every man with our wisdom that we may present every man complete in Christ. And for this purpose also our labor, striving according to his power, which mightily works within me. I want you to notice that the apostle lays before us here first of all the message of the church's ministry. It is Christ, and it says we proclaim him. We proclaim him in contrast to the false teachers.
Remember the Colossian church was under attack by cultists, by false teachers who were teaching something other than the gospel. And so the apostle says we in contrast to they proclaim Christ. We proclaim him openly and plainly. Not like them. Those cultists with their message sneak in the side door. They use subterfuge. They plot. They whisper their message in the hallways.
He says in contrast to their secretive ways, we publicly, unopened, we plainly proclaim Jesus Christ, the glories of his person, the sufficiency of his work. Curtis Vime says at its deepest level the apostle conceived of his message not as a system or as a collection of rules and regulations, but as a living and glorious person who is the fulfillment of the deepest hopes of mankind and the source of new life for all his people.
The apostle lays before us here the message that we as a church must proclaim it is Christ. It is Christ. Nothing less than that, and there can be nothing more than that. Our message is Christ and helping people to come to know and to grow in him. And then the apostle goes on to talk to us about the methods of the church's ministry. We proclaim him admonishing every man and teaching every man. The word admonish means to put into the mind. It's the word newthero.
It can be translated counseling, but it's not talking about psychology. It's talking about placing truth into the mind. It means to correct by warning and by instruction. And it seems to me that there's a better focus here. There's a focus on nonbelievers in this word and a focus on believers. And nonbelievers, two nonbelievers, the word admonish means to warn about their eternal destiny. They don't want to think about it. They don't want to have it in their minds.
But we as a church are to warn them. We are to keep putting into their minds what their destiny is apart from Jesus Christ. That's our job. Whatever tool we may use, whether it be a Jesus film or it be a tract or a personal witness or bringing them to church or a song that is sung to them, whatever the tool, we are to keep putting it into their minds. You are in danger. Your soul is in jeopardy. You are heading toward hell. We are to admonish nonbelievers.
Some say, well, that's kind of hard, isn't it? Jesus, the loving gentle Jesus didn't talk that way. Oh, my friend, that's what you think. You haven't read Jesus very much. There was an incident in Jerusalem, apparently, during Jesus' life. We don't know anything about it from history except that it's mentioned in Luke.
And apparently some Galileans were at the temple offering their sacrifices and pilots, soldiers, fell upon them and killed them so that their blood was mingled with the blood of the animals that they had brought for sacrifice. And Jesus mentions that to the crowd around him. He says, do you think that those people were greater sinners than the rest of you? He says, I tell you this, except you repent, you will all likewise perish. And twice he warns, except you repent, you will perish.
You see, Jesus kept putting into the minds of his hearers, you will perish in your sin, except you repent, except you believe. And that's our job. But the word also has application to believers. So we also have a tendency to lose things in our minds, don't we? Our minds are like great computers. I don't know about you, but I easily lose things in computers. I can't find them.
Fortunately, I have in my computer, find, and I can type in what I'm looking for and it will go in there and find it for me. But worse than that, I lose things in my mind. I forget them. It's in there somewhere rattling around, but there's so much room. There's so much room it gets lost. And so I need somebody to keep coming to me and putting it back in there. For example, we forget that sin has consequences. And so we need to be warned that sin is destructive to believers.
Sin destroys our lives. It destroys relationships. It destroys our walk with God. We need to keep hearing that. We need to be admonished. We need to be warned about false teachers, never more than today. But there are so many, there are so many vehicles that they can use for their message. And some of them are very effective. And so we have to be warned again and again about false teachers. Keep coming back to the Word.
If they do not give heed to these words because there's no light in them, this is the measurement of truth and of teaching. So there's admonishing that needs to be done in the church. Between now and the time that we see Jesus, we need to keep admonishing, warning, and putting things in the minds of people so that God's work in our lives can continue. So not only that, we need to teach. He says we proclaim him admonishing and teaching.
To teach involves planning, it involves calculated instruction, it means to arrange truth so as to influence the understanding of people. There are those who have the idea that teaching is just dumping facts on others. It's just like putting it into a truck and you back the truck up to somebody in the classroom, you pull the lever and the truck goes vzzt and everything is dumped on them. And you've taught them. That isn't teaching.
Neither is teaching giving people all the actions and saying, well now here's option A and option B and option C and option D. Now you pick whichever one you want. It doesn't make any difference. Not many teachers who believe that's the way to teach. That's good to have people understand what other people think and believe, but ultimately teaching is telling people that's right. And it's doing that in such a way that it persuades them. They're adopted.
That's why we believe that teaching ought to transform the lives of people. It's not enough for it just to be given to them. The teaching whether it be in the little ones in our church or in our youth ministry or in our small churches must involve life transformation, communicating truth in such a way that it influences the way people think and the choices they make. It means to shape their will by the knowledge you give to them.
Now this Christ filled message that is used for ammunition and for teaching is universal in scope, it's for every man. Notice he says that, that three times, every man, every man, every man. It's universal. There's no one who doesn't need it. It's not for a clique, it's not for a peculiar group. You see these cultists had their little cliques and they would teach their secrets to their little cliques and nobody else could hear it.
Paul says, hey no. We openly proclaim Christ to every man, every man, teaching every man, admonishing every man. It's universal. But the word also means that there's an individual responsibility. Just as every person needs to hear, every person then is responsible to respond. Everyone is responsible for what he or she does with the message. He says as we teach and as we admonish people we're to do this with our wisdom. In other words we're to do it with a realization of where people are.
You don't go down and teach children the same way that you preach in church. You don't approach young people in the youth ministry like you approach an adult small church. It's not teaching with wisdom. Teaching with wisdom means you understand who your hearers are. You understand their aptitude, you understand their capacity and you teach, you admonish right there. Teaching and admonishing is not one size fits all. Did you get a Christmas gift like that this year? One size fits all.
Hardy har har. All size but one, mine. And you see teaching and admonishing is the same way. It doesn't fit everybody. So we need to understand who we're trying to talk with and be a dear mother and deal with wisdom. The third thing I want to point out very quickly is the mark of the church's ministry. Talk about the message and the methods but the mark. What is the goal? What are we aiming for? Paul says that we may present every man complete in Christ.
He's not talking in the word complete about sinless perfection. That's what we'll experience someday. But between now and then we're in the process toward completion and the word complete means to be full grown. So he's talking about spiritual maturity. He's talking about reaching adulthood. It can be compared to an ear of corn. Isn't it marvelous when you go to the store and you find there's this special on corn in the summertime and you can get a dozen ears for a dollar or maybe even less.
And you get them home and you strip them back and what do you find? You find half corn and half cob. Or you find worms in the corn. Not always but sometimes that happens. The word here describes an ear of corn in which all the kernels are filled out right to the very end of the ear. It's mature. He says that you and I are to be corning, I mean we're to be filled out to the end of the ear. We're to be mature.
Paul says when I introduce you to Jesus Christ I want you not to be juvenile or immature. I want you to be mature on that day when we're glorified. Now this maturity has to do with faith and character. And somebody who's just saved is not going to be mature. But it's also true that somebody can be 25 years old in Christ and not be mature.
Now the one you anticipate, you expect that a new convert is not going to be mature but when somebody's 25 years old in Christ they should have been mature a long time ago. How do you measure maturity? What is maturity? I only have time to give you the scriptural reference and to make six statements. But I want to give you six measurements that I believe the New Testament teaches for maturity. And I invite you to look up the references and judge it for yourself.
Number one, mature believers comprehend truth. First Corinthians 2, 15 through chapter 3 verse 3. Immature believers do not understand. They do not grasp it. They cannot feed on the meat of the word of God. They can only take the milk, the simple things, but mature believers comprehend the truth. Finally mature believers endure trials. James 1, 2 to 4. Trials come into the life of the mature believer and as a result of his maturity he endures them.
And when mature believers will likely fall and stumble until it grows, the mature believer endures trials. Number three, the mature believer experiences intimacy with God. Ephesians 4 verse 13. The full knowledge of the Son of God is what the mature believer experiences. It's an intimacy with God. And Pastor Rick is going to talk about this more tonight.
And before mature believers withstand false doctrines, Ephesians 4, 14, the wind and the waves of false doctrine come against him, but the mature believer withstands them. The wind and the waves do not uproot him and carry him away. Number five, mature believers evidence humility. Philippians 3, 15, they have this mindset that Christ had of maturity. They haven't arrived yet. They know that. There's a humility about them.
They're not boasting that they're better than their other people, but because they're mature they're humble. Number six, mature believers discern moral values, Hebrews 5, 14. Because their faculties, their senses have been exercised through the process of life, through their walk with God, they can judge between good and evil. They don't stand here and say, well, what's right and what's wrong? What do I do? What do I not do? They're able to discern good and evil. They discern moral values.
Now I'm not saying that's the complete picture of a mature person, but I think those are six important measurements. And notice the apostle Paul was willing to give himself to this work and you and I must do the same thing. In 1996, I want us to set our goals as a church, threefold. Number one, to grow in our faith. Let's get this process going in our lives if it's not already ongoing.
Between now and the time that we see Christ and experience this hope of glory, let's grow in our faith and become full-blown like an ear of corn. Secondly, let's grow into all the world. The apostle says, we proclaim Christ, admonishing and warning every man. Let's make this a year when we will go into the world and pray and witness to people. And let's target people that we want to see run to Christ and pray for them and witness to them.
And as I prayed earlier, we have the great grand crusade coming up in six months. What a great opportunity that can be if we will use it to take people that they might be able to hear the gospel. And in that kind of a setting, I don't know, God just uses that, doesn't he, with some people. So let's make this a year when we are going into the world. And number three, get involved in your church. Make this a year when you get involved in your church.
Now tell you why, because your spiritual maturity depends upon it. One cannot become complete in Christ apart from the process laid out here by the apostle, which takes place within the context of a local church. Well, I have crammed a lot into these few minutes, but I invite you to bow with me as we pray and prepare our hearts for the Lord's table. The Lord's table is an ordinance given to the church. It's for the Lord's people.
It's a time for us to acknowledge that we are a body, we are a church, and Jesus Christ is the focal point of it in his completed work. As we come to his table, may our hearts be prepared. And if there is some sin in our lives that has not been thoroughly dealt with and repented of, this is the time to do it. These are holy things. This is a holy action that we're about to undertake. So let's be a holy people.
Father, I pray that we will make 1996 a year when this process of maturity will take place in our lives. May we grow in our faith and grow into the world and get involved in the church. May this be a year when we'll be more like Jesus. As we come to this table this morning, we acknowledge to you first of all that there are areas of our lives where we're not much like Jesus, where sin has dominated. We confess our sins. We acknowledge our failures to you.
But we thank you that in Christ we are nonetheless, by your grace, accepted and welcomed and graced. And as we partake of this bread, it is with that thought in mind. Gratitude that we are embraced because of the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. Amen. That new covenant involves the mystery of Christ in you, in you, and in you, the hope of glory. And so indeed may we be happy all the day as we have sung because we understand, we know we have the mystery revealed to us that Christ is in us.
The apostle Paul said, I strive according to his power that works mightily within me. And this week as we serve the Lord, let us remember it is in his power that we work and labor. It's hard work serving Christ. There are many challenges, but we have his energy, his spirit within us to strengthen us. And when one day our job is done, we'll enter glory. And what a day that will be. Let's stand together, please.
As you go, if you wish to give something toward the elders fund to help those in need, you may use the box at the rear of the auditorium and it will be applied to that purpose. And now Father, may the joy of Jesus Christ whom we proclaim be upon our hearts as we fellowship with one another, go to our homes and enter into this new week and this new year. And may the hope of glory encourage us as we work for Christ in this world. In his name we pray, amen.