Walking in Wisdom
The Bible reading comes from Colossians chapter 4 verses 2 to 6. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious. seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Good morning. get myself organized here. The reading was from Colossians 4 verses 2 to 6. Just before I start. Just to let you know that a few verses that I read out this morning. through the message will be from the Amplified Bible. Why the amplified? it gives a little bit more meaning. Often in the old, in the original biblical scripts there's not an English word that describes some of the words that are used, whereas the amplified puts in extra words to emphasise the meaning. So, can I have a volunteer, see who knows their Bible. Can I have a volunteer quote John 3.16? Stand up and do it. Olivia. Right. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Some people say, we know what believe means in that. But some people say, Satan believes in Jesus too. The amplified on the other hand. I'll read it to you just to demonstrate. Because I like it when it gives extra words for you to think about what the possible meaning is. This is the same verse out of the Amplified. For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world. that he even gave up his only begotten, unique son, so that whoever believes in, trusts in, clings to and relies on him shall not perish or come to destruction or be lost, but have everlasting eternal life. So for me, with sort of limited brain power. that just gives me a little bit more to think about. So that's what I'm this morning when I um quote a few Bible verses through the message. So this morning there's three main points. The first one. how to pray. It's not. an expansive list on how to pray, but it gives us some ideas. The second one. What to say? And the third one. I'm not going to tell you yet. I want to see who's awake later on. Righto. versus two to four. in Colossians 4. cold focuses on prayer. In the Amplified it says, earnest and unwearied and steadfast in your prayer life, being both alert and intent in your praying with thanksgiving. The same time pray for us also that God may open a door to us for the Word, the Gospel, to proclaim the mystery concerning Christ the Messiah on account of which I am in prison, that I may speak boldly and unfold that mystery, proclaim it fully and make it clear, as is my duty. When are we ready? When I read that verse 2. Be earnest, unwearied, steadfast, intent. You'll never guess what came into my head. as don't take me too seriously here, but one of my thoughts was that verse is exclusively for women. Do you know why? Because I've been told very much so that women can multitask, they can do many things at once, men can't, they can only do one thing at a time. And here we are, a verse that says, Be earnest and unwearied and steadfast in your prayer life, being both alert and intent. And then to put the icing on the cake, he says, with thanksgiving. And that verse is for all of us. There's a few words. in that verse that aren't really... There's a few words in some of the verses through here, but in that particular verse, there are a few words that aren't used very much today. Ernest. Now, we're not talking about Mr Holt. earnest. It means serious, sincere, intense in intention. and weird. I don't feel unwary. but unwearied in prayer, not feeling tired or showing tiredness. Steadfast in prayer, unwavering, loyal in purpose, alert, watchful, quick to notice, ready to act. intent, determined, deliberate, calculated action. A can be hard sometimes. Sometimes you just feel like you're not getting anywhere. but Paul stresses for us to be. really sincere about our prayer life. Remember at this time. When Paul wrote this, he was under arrest. He was in jail because of the gospel. As far as I can tell, he was only under house arrest, which is better than being in a jail at that time. What put him in jail? The Gospel. if it was nowadays. a lot of people in the same situation would call themselves a victim. and they would be focused on themselves. Poor, me. What was Paul's focus? Spreading the Gospel. And that was the very thing that put him in jail. He was under house arrest. which meant... he had. a food ration because he was a Roman citizen, but I would imagine the food ration that he had would not be meat and three veges and a bit of ice cream and whatever to finish. It would be the bare essentials. Other than that, he was on his own. He was responsible for his own food and clothing and yet he was under arrest. So he had to rely on friends to supply those things. So was pretty rough for him. And yet, his number one priority was to spread the Gospel. Just looking at verse four, that I may speak boldly and unfold that mystery, proclaim it fully and make it clear as is my duty. That was Paul's focus. That leads us on to verses 5 and 6. which says, behave yourselves wisely, living prudently and with discretion in your relations with those of the outside world, the non-Christians, making the very most of the time and seizing, buying up the opportunity. Let your speech at all times be gracious, pleasant and winsome, seasoned as it were with salt so that you may never be at loss to know how you ought to answer anyone who puts a question to you. Paul urges us to be careful with our speech at all times. When things get bit pressured, it's so easy to bite back. But Paul's number one priority, and as ours should be, is to spread the Gospel. we are supposed to reflect Christ. The second half of verse 5 says, making the very most of time and seizing, buying up the opportunity. Psalm 90 verse 12 says, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. We're not here forever. Our time is limited. Paul says, focus on God, spread the gospel whenever you can. I follow politics fairly closely, both America, Europe and here. And we would all know that the decline. in our society in governments over particularly the last five, six, seven, eight years. and it's going to get worse. we are to make the most of what time we have here. That second half of verse five says, living prudently and with discretion in the Amplified. prudent. What's that mean? someone who shows good judgment and restraint. If you get in a situation where you're under pressure, it's easy to fire back an answer that later on you'll be sorry for. But Paul says, Show good judgement and restraint. Discretion. What's that one mean? Well, I'll give you the opposite of discretion and you can work out what it means. The opposite of discretion is rash, careless, tactless and obtrusive. poll wants us to be the opposite of that. James38. says, but the human tongue can be tamed by no man. It is restless, undisciplined, irreconcilable, evil and full of deadly poison. We can see in society today a lot of people don't tolerate other people's opinions. They call them all sorts of names. We are not to be like that. In verse 6. It says, let your speech at all times be gracious, seasoned as it were with salt. seasoned with salt. Back in Paul's day, they used to use salt a lot to preserve the likes of meat and keep it fresh. We just throw it in the fridge. But what he's saying here is don't let your speech go off. don't have rotten speech. keep it fresh, keep it caring, keep it energetic so that we can reflect Christ. and spread his word. So. This isn't, the message that I'm giving today is not a deep dive into this scripture, but just how we can apply it to our lives. So back to the three main points that I had. The first one, how to pray. So we've just quickly looked at Paul's guidelines for praying. The second one, what to say. Paul's given us a warning to watch our tongue, to be careful in what we say. And the third one, still a mystery. Do you want to know what it is? Joan does. Righto. The third one is, don't downplay. Now where did that come from? Where does that fit in? How does that work? I think as I was reading through this and preparing, I read those five verses and I thought if you don't have a basic understanding of God and His nature, God's attributes, then you can't really grab onto what Paul was saying here fully. So I thought, well, I'll give you a crash course and it will be brief, it won't be very deep, it will be quick. of understanding God's nature so that we can better understand and apply what Paul's Basically, God is a holy God. absolutely holy and we are a sinful people. Since Adam, we have been a sinful people. God wants a relationship with us. The Holy God. wants a relationship with us sinful people. He created us to bring glory to Him. So what's God like? There's three words here. I was going to use them myself, they're big words, I was going to use them myself to make it look like I knew what I was talking about and really wise. But I knew everybody would see through that and say, what a goose that bloke is. So I'm going to ask you, there's three big long words that start with O, that disguise God. One, what is it? Omnipresent? Omnipotent? Omniscient. Very good. I thought Olivia might have got the trifecta there, but ... omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Omnipotent. All powerful. God is all powerful. I've shared this with you before, back in Genesis, creation, where God has said, let there be light. Guess what? There was light. Through the power of His Word, He created light. I cannot get my head around that. No work was done. It was the power of God's word, God's spoken word that created light, that created the world. I can't fathom it, it's just mind boggling to me. and God's written Word has that same power. Omnipresent. God is everywhere at the same time. Wow. He's here, he's there, he's the other side of the world. He is everywhere, all at the same time. Omniscient. All-knowing. was going to say, I won't. That I'm married to someone who knows everything. But I won't even mention that, I won't even go there. God knows everything. Go back to Genesis at creation. This is something that I thought of back a while ago. at creation. God knew about computers. Think of that. Man thinks he's very smart to have invented computers. But God knew about it back then. That's mind blowing. eh With those three words in mind, how do we approach God? We just walk up to him and say, hey God. I can remember back when I was at school, probably secondary school, and if you watched the news, you'd see an interviewer and they'd say, we are now having an interview with the Prime Minister and we are very privileged to have the Prime Minister here and there was a huge amount of respect and it was... um a very special thing. Nowadays, it is not. The media virtually demands that our politicians, our important people be accessible all the time. social media the same. And to a certain degree, I believe that has made our politicians go from up there down to there. A lot of politicians now, they, sorry I'm not getting political, they release statements on social media. and I think that's wrong. But it is that. lowering of the important people, you know, the people that are in important places in the world, politicians, etc. that has crept into the church, I believe. and we have done the same thing to God. We try to make God so accessible. How can I put it? We try to make God... we come to God too casually. whereas God is unbelievable and we should treat Him as such. Doesn't mean we can't come to Him. but a lot of people treat God as a shopping list. There's a lot of other words that describe God too. Gracious, merciful, wise, just and righteous. two very important words not on that list. God is loving and God is holy. And the Holy God loves us more than we deserve. Holy God loves us so much. This brings me to... a thought that I had. I'll read Romans 38 and 39 just to bring that thought out. For I am persuaded beyond doubt, I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things impending and threatening nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation. will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now that verse and other verses are often taken out of context. particularly at funerals. And I think we've probably all been to a funeral where we've been told this person lived a good life, they did a lot of good deeds, therefore they are in heaven. That's a lie. you don't get to heaven by being good. A lot of people believe that as long as they do good things and the good things outweigh the bad things, then they'll get to heaven. That's not what the Bible says. Romans 3 23, since all have sinned and are falling short of the honor and glory which God bestows and receives. All have sinned, not one of us is without sin. Sinners cannot have a relationship with a holy God. Thank God he has a plan. He had a plan to bring us into a relationship with him. He sent the sinless Christ to live among men. As was said before, Isaac said Christ was the only good person to live on this earth. He lived a perfect life. He never sinned. guess what? that upset some people. to the point of death. If we take Christ's example. we could also be. persecuted. made an outcast. and the way society is going. I think that is not too far away. Back a while ago, only a month or so ago, I see a bloke on the news in Sydney. and he was walking, it was a Palestinian protest I think, and he was walking around draped in the Australian flag and he was arrested. In Australia. it's coming. There was another bloke the other day walking around Sydney Opera House with uh what do call it, placard. And it had a gospel message on it. And he got told by the police that he wasn't allowed to do that. He wasn't saying anything, he was just walking around showing people. He got told by the police that he wasn't allowed to do that in Australia. So it's coming, get ready, get into God's Word. Romans 5.8. But God shows and clearly proves His own love for us by the fact that while we're still sinners, Christ the Messiah, the Anointed One, died for us. He took our place. There had to be shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins and Christ did that for us. He did everything. we don't have to do anything other than accept that we are sinners. Go to the foot of the cross and ask for forgiveness. As I said before, God's Word is powerful. He's promised that if we do that, then we will spend eternity with Him. We can have a relationship with Him. I'll just reread the five verses out of chapter four. Don't worry about putting them up Matt, because I'll be reading out of the amplified. Keep in mind, God loves each one of us, keep in mind what God is like. Be earnest and unworried and steadfast in your prayer life, being both alert and intent in your praying with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray for us also that God may open a door to us for the Word, the Gospel, to proclaim the mystery concerning Christ, the Messiah. on account of which I am in prison, that I may speak boldly and unfold the mystery, proclaim it fully, make it clear, as is my duty. Behave yourselves wisely, living prudently and with discretion in your relations with those of the outside world, the non-Christians. Making the very most of time and seizing and buying up the opportunity, let your speech at all times be gracious, pleasant and winsome. seasoned as it were with salt so that you may never be at a loss to know how to you ought to answer anyone who puts a question to you. God is an amazing God. He could just write us off as lost, but He loves us that much that He's made the way for us. just finish off with a prayer of David from Psalm 63, the first eight verses. Oh God, you are my God. Earnestly will I seek you. My inner self thirsts for you. My flesh longs and is faint for you in a dry and weary land where no water is. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory, because your loving kindness is better than life. My lips will praise you. So I will bless you while I live. I will lift up my hands in your name. My whole being shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness and my mouth shall praise you with joyful lips when I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the night watches. For you have been my help and in the shadow of your wings I will rejoice. My whole being follows hard after you and clings closely to you. hand upholds me. Let's pray. Now Father God we just thank you for your spoken word and your written word that it is faithful. We acknowledge that you are such a holy God. But Lord, we thank you that... we can be clothed in the righteousness of Christ because of what He did on the cross. just help us to use our time wisely. Show us your strength. Give us your strength. Just help us to be your servants here in Jesus name. Amen.