 Well, happy weekend, Radiant Church. You guys doing well? Awesome. Hey, I've got a quick report for you last weekend. Jane and I were in Kentucky and we crossed right over the border from Croydon, Indiana right into Brandenburg, Kentucky. If you've never been to Brandenburg, don't blink, you might miss it. But there's something really powerful happening in Brandenburg, Kentucky. We were there because our good friends, Dina and Jeff Hackert, who seven years ago, you guys helped plant Radiant Church, Kentucky. About three weeks ago, dedicated a brand new building and they have it packed out. They had over 800 people this last weekend in their brand new building and 27 people gave their lives to Jesus Christ. It was a powerful weekend. And last year in the middle of COVID, that church, which we all planted and started, which now is taking deep root, also planted another church about an hour away. So now we have a whole nother Radiant Church. So we have our first grandchild. Isn't that awesome? Look at that. Our first grand church. And so they are doing incredible. We had a great time with them, enjoyed ourselves. Could not wait to get back and start this new series. And so I wanna invite you to take your Bibles out and open them to the book of Colossians in the New Testament. And if you do not have your Bible, let me just give you a hint. You're going to want your Bible over the next 16 weekends. You might think 16 weekends, how in the world are you gonna pull out stuff out of the book of Colossians for 16 weekends? Well, you, listen, we've all spent a lot of time watching 16 episodes of crazy BBC shows. Whether it's on Netflix or what Jane and I are going back through the second time, I probably shouldn't admit this, but we're going back through the second time of watching Downton Abbey. Anybody watch Downton Abbey? And I love the Dowager, oh, it's so middle class of you. And we're going back through it and cruising through these seasons. Listen, and there is so much detail in the Word of God. And sometimes we just have a tendency to read through it, skim through it instead of stopping and savoring and grabbing ahold of all that is in there. So there's just a few chapters in the book of Colossians, but we are going to give our whole focus, this whole summer really going through this because I believe the book of Colossians really uniquely unlike a whole lot of other books in the New Testament speak to where we are at. We've entitled this series preeminent because of the definition of that word. The word preeminent means of supreme importance or rank. And Paul writes this letter to the Colossians in order to call them and remind them that in a crazy and confused world and make no mistake about it, if you think our world is crazy, if you think our world is confusing right now, it's no different than what they were facing in the first century, especially in the Roman Empire era. Paul says, remember who is above it all. Remember who's at the center of it all. Remember who created it all and remember who's the reason for it all. It's Jesus. And so we're gonna begin this series by reading the first 20 verses, but I'm gonna warn you, we're gonna read the first 20 verses in order to give us context, but tonight I'm preaching for the next two hours on two verses. It's not two hours, that's in my dreams, but at least for 40 minutes, okay? So here we go. Verse number one, look with me at Colossians. Chapter one, verse number one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Timothy our brother to the saints and the faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. Grace to you and peace from God our Father. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we've heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all of the saints and because of the hope that has laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world. It is bearing fruit and increasing as it also does among you since the day that you heard it and understood the grace of God and truth. Just as you learned it from Apaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love and the spirit. And so from the day that we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy. Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share any inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rules or authority, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. There's the word. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Now, if you go back and you read that, what you should, that first 20 verses, you're gonna find that phrase all things multiple different times. Because in order to understand Christ, the way that Paul wanted the believers that are living in Colisei to understand Christ, you need to understand that he is above all things, he created all things, all things are held together by Christ and they were created for Jesus. There's nothing outside of Christ that is above Christ, equal to Christ, competing with Christ, worthy of Christ. There is nothing, he is the preeminent one. And what I wanna title the message that I'm gonna give to you this evening out of the first two verses of this section is called Hope in a Confused World. Hope in a Confused World, because this is where Paul in Colossians chapter one is really bringing our focus in and we're gonna be digging probably for the next two or three weeks going through chapter one. So you're gonna wanna underline things because I'm telling you, ladies and gentlemen, you have come to the buffet this weekend. There is meat to be had to, I don't know if you've ever walked into an old country buffet but in your inner redneck jumps out because you see all that meat on the, it's like skip the salad bar, go right for the guy who's got the carving knife out and he's, how thick do you want that? It's like, I wanted about that thick. I don't want none of this paper. I want a big cut. Listen, there's a big cut that is to be had right here. And Paul is writing to believers. Let me give you an introduction about the book of Colossians in the city of Colisei. Number one, Colisei is a city that Paul has never been to. This is not a church that he planted but it is a church that has come under his influence. It was planted by a man named Apathras. Apathras was a man who was saved under Paul's ministry when Paul stayed in the city of Ephesus for several, for a couple of years. He was there teaching the word day and night. He was leading people to Christ. He establishes the Ephesians church. Ephesus is about a hundred miles away from Colisei but once Apathras is born again and discipled by Paul he takes the gospel back to the valley about a hundred miles to the east that he lives in to his home area and he brings the gospel to at least two cities that we know of. We know that he brings it to Colisei and we also know that he brings it to Laodicea. Let me show you up on a map here. This is the, oh it's right behind, oh there it is. Okay, this is Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. You can see where Ephesus is on the coast. Go inland, southeast about a hundred miles and you get to Laodicea and then another 11 miles and you get to Colisei. Colisei at one time was a very, very significant city in the Greek Empire, in the Greco-Roman world. Colisei was a very important city because it was at a crossroads between two major trade routes and so everyone who is bringing trade goods from India, from the Far East, all the way up into Europe they had to go through Colisei. But over time Laodicea was built and a different trade route was established and by the time Paul writes this letter Colisei is like one of those towns that in the fifties everybody lived in. You've probably driven down them before the interstates were put in when there were just two lane highways, everybody had to go through these small towns. So they had gas stations and businesses and restaurants and postal services and people lived there and then in the fifties and the sixties in the United States when they put the express, the interstate system in all of those towns kind of became obsolete. And so even today you drive through some of these quaint old towns and you see buildings that have been boarded up. You see gas stations that are starving for business and you wonder it's like, where did all the people go? It's because there was a change in the road system and there was a change in the economy. That's what happened to Colisei. Now it's an insignificant farming town. Laodicea by the way has become one of the most prosperous cities. And so this church is the product of a man named Apaphras who is the disciple or was one to the Lord under Paul's ministry. So therefore Paul as an apostle feels great responsibility for them. And so he's writing this letter to them and you'll see later on in the book he tells them, make sure that when you're done reading this letter, you pass it onto the church at Laodicea and then take the letter that I wrote to Laodicea and have it read in your church. So this is what Paul is doing. Paul's never visited it. He's writing this letter to them in the year about 60 AD and he's probably writing it from a Roman prison. Paul is in Rome under arrest in prison awaiting a moment to stand before the emperor whose name is Nero. Nero has become the emperor. He's become the Caesar. He's been in power for about five years. He's young when he comes on the scene. He's incredibly generous with the poor. He's trying to make some changes into the Roman empire and people have all kinds of hope for the future because he's kind of the original hope and change guy. When he comes in as Caesar, he's young. He's probably in his late teens when he comes into office. He's by this time, he's in his twenties and Nero is the emperor but about the year 60 AD when Paul ends up in Rome to stand before him Nero has had a switch thrown and he becomes actually one of the most diabolical, evil, sick and twisted emperors that Rome ever knows. Paul's in prison and he writes a group of letters to churches that are called the prison epistles because he's writing them from prison and Paul is in prison for one crime. He's in prison for one crime and one crime only for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. He says, because of the gospel, I'm in chains and he's writing this letter to the church at Colise and he's encouraging them, this young church who finds itself living in very confusing times, very confusing economic times. They've gone through about four Caesars or emperors in less than a decade and a half. So there's all these coups that are taking place in the political world. Some people see a whole lot of hope on the horizon. At least at Colise, they don't have much hope for their economy. They're under the influence of the Roman Empire and everybody in the Roman Empire about this time is trying to find hope. They're trying to find a reason to live and some are finding it in the political arena. Some of them are finding it through philosophy. The Greco-Roman philosophy, whether it's the Epicureans or the Stoics or Seneca or different philosophers who are trying to find the reason for life. This is what life is about. Life is about pleasure. So just get all that you can. Life is about spirituality. And so there's a lot of idolatry that's taking place. Where you got to find your God that's connected to your call or to your cause. And so if you're a business person, you worship this God. If you're into pleasure, you worship this God. You know, in Rome, they had all kinds of gods. And so they're very spiritual people. Greeks were very spiritual. The Romans were very spiritual. They're all trying to find their unique version of spirituality to make them happy or to give them hope. Some people are finding hope in what's called the Pax Romana which is the piece of Rome that comes by military conquest. You see, they believed when Rome actually conquers a people they bring civilization to them and make their world better. And so some people just believed, well, this is where we put our hope at. We're at the top of the food chain. And so our hope is that, you know, we're Romans and things are gonna be good. And we're always gonna be here. Our empire is the most powerful. And there was a lot of confusion though because there's a lot of military defeats that begin to happen that had never happened before. The economy begins to take a nosedive. Nero begins to become twisted. Now he's persecuting Christians. Now he's beginning to show signs of even mental illness. There's all these things that are taking place. And in Colisei, there's a temptation because they're living in times and because they're living in a culture that is being told, no, this is where you find your happiness. No, no, no, no. You gotta find your happiness over here. Go to the games. Go to the Coliseum or go to the Amphitheater. No, you find your peace over here. You find your hope over here in pursuit of pleasure. So, you know, do whatever you want to whatever feels good doesn't hurt anybody. That's where you find your hope at. No, you're gonna find your hope if you just get some more finances, if you just earn a little bit more money, or maybe it's fame, or maybe it's we just extend the borders and we conquer. Maybe it's safety, it's security, maybe it's family. Listen, it's confusing. And then the middle of that, Paul is writing to them about hope. The one thing that everybody on the face of the earth is searching for, hope. You know, the one thing about hope is that everybody's searching for it, but not everybody finds it. Hope is only as strong as what you put your hope in. So you can choose to hope that the economy will answer your problems. You can hope that you have money and retirement someday, and that that's gonna be your security. You can pursue hope in a lot of different arenas, but it will only be as strong as what you are putting your hope in. And what Paul is admonishing these believers at Colisei, this young, growing, deeply rooted church's east side, remember to put your hope in the only place that it belongs to put your hope in Christ, in the supremacy of Christ above all things. We're gonna dig way deeper into it, but I wanna focus in on verse number one and verse number two. These are verses that very often when you study the Bible, you don't pay a lot of attention to them because they're kind of the introduction. But what does Paul say? Paul an apostle of Christ, Jesus by the will of God and Timothy our brother, to the saints and the faithful brothers in Christ at Colisei, grace to you and peace from God our father. It would be a mistake to skim over these two verses because in these two verses, Paul begins by recognizing three and defining three distinct identities, three distinct identities that we need to have an understanding as we build foundation stones to understand the rest of what Paul is gonna say. He talks about apostles. He says, Paul an apostle. He talks about saints. And that will be an interesting conversation. And then he talks about the third category, which is faithful brothers. These are important. These are not just salutations. These are important and distinct identities that Paul is writing to this church and he's saying, look, this is who I am and this is who you are. And the reason why I think that these identities are vitally important to us is because part of the confusion that we oftentimes have, whether it's in first century New Testament era or whether it's in 21st century post-modern North American context is we cannot understand who we are unless we understand who Christ is. But if we understand who Christ is, we will understand who we are. So Paul talks about three identities. The first thing he talks about is an apostle. He says, Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. So Paul begins by talking about what an apostle is. An apostle, here's a definition for you. An apostle is one who is sent as an emissary of Jesus Christ. So this is who Paul is in relationship to the church. Paul calls himself an apostle. He's an emissary. He's one who has been sent on a mission on behalf of Jesus Christ for the purpose of establishing and strengthening church, the local church. This is built on an assumption that church is meant to be a community Paul uses the word ecclesia which means the government gathered of the saints that are gathered together. And when the saints of God are gathered God has given gifts to the church for the purpose of strengthening the church, equipping the church, teaching the church, correcting the church, sometimes starting the church. Oftentimes we get this mentality that church is just kind of we're all the church. And when we gather together it's just kind of it's like open a jello pack, add a little water and we've just got it. You know, it's like finger jello. It's like it can take whatever shape you want it to be. It's no big deal. But that's not how Jesus said he was gonna build his church. Ephesians chapter two, he says, the church is built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets. And Ephesians chapter four, he goes on in verse number 11 and 12 and Paul says, and he talking about Jesus himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and some teachers. Here's why for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry and for the edifying of the body of Christ. So Paul says, look apostles are a legit office. One that Jesus has commissioned and sent in order to establish the local church, strengthen the church and help equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. Now, we all know that Jesus called 12 disciples. 11 of them made the cut. Judas got replaced by someone else. But then Paul encounters Jesus on the road to Damascus. In Acts chapter nine, you can see the story. In Acts chapter nine, Paul is a Jewish scholar, theologian, spiritual leader. He's trained under the greatest theological mind in Judaism in the first century. His name is Gamaliel. He's like the scholar of scholars. He's like the Wayne Grudem of Judaism in his day. I mean, he's FF Bruce. He's NT Wright. He's that guy. And Paul was trained in Jerusalem under this man and he was zealous. You can go in Regalations chapter one. Paul was zealous for the law. Philippians chapter three, he lifts off his pedigree as a Jew. He says, look, I was a Pharisee of Pharisees which means the strictest of the strict. I was, when it came to the law, the 613 laws of Moses, I was blameless. When it came to being a Jew, I was of the tribe of Benjamin. I was trained under the greatest theological, the greatest rabbi of my era. And he was zealous about persecuting Christians because he thought Christians were an apostate break off of Judaism. And so he was irritated by Christians. He hated Christians really, really bad. And so one day he goes to the leaders in Jerusalem and he says, I want you to give me letters of commissioning to go to Damascus, which was the largest city at that time in that region, so that I can arrest Christians and bring them back for trial, have them thrown in jail, have them killed. What he was asking for was send me as an emissary or send me as an apostle of the council of the Sanhedrin for the purpose of destroying the church. Now here's just how brilliant God is. Jesus meets Saul of Tarsus on the road on his way to Damascus going north just before he gets to Damascus and Jesus appears to him like the lights on a 747. Imagine Jesus coming down and knocks him off of his horse. He gets up, horses are doing their little thing. Saul gets up, he's like, who are you? And he knows this is a theophany. He knows that he's either seeing an angel or God. And Jesus goes, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It's like, Mike drop, you've hated me. You're trying to destroy what I'm doing. Imagine what it must have been like to be Paul and realize the one that you have tried to destroy is actually indeed God, the Son of God and he's appearing before you. Everything that you've done has been wrong. Every theological precept that you have has been incomplete. Your bias, your hatred of Jesus, your hatred of the church has all been wrong. Paul's confused. Later on, when Paul's writing about this incident in the book of Galatians chapter one verse 15, he said, but when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away to Arabia and I returned again to Damascus. So Paul says, look, when in the right time at the right moment that I was unaware of, God decided to reveal himself to me, which he did like a 747. He revealed his son to me, knocked me down, broke down my pride, all of my arrogance, and he called me to go in to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, which he had prepared and he had decided to call me before I ever took my first breath. I just did not know it. The zeal and the passion that Paul had for God was just misdirected zeal, misdirected passion that needed to be corrected by an encounter with Jesus. I think this is important for us to understand because a lot of times we have passion, we're passionate about something, we're zealous, we've got all of this energy that we wanna direct into all kinds of different things and we've got this inner, I just know that there's something for me and what it takes in our lives very often is an encounter with the living God to understand that long before I ever took my first breath, he had a purpose designed for me and my life doesn't make sense outside of the context of an encounter and a relationship with the living God. I can't find my purpose without finding God. I'm not gonna figure it out on my own, I'm not gonna read some book at Barnes and Nobles, I'm not gonna listen to some podcast, I'm not gonna have a counselor or a mentor, look at me and do all the math. This is your gift, this is your calling, this is your passion, go do this with your life. All of that is wonderful and great but it will all die in this world but just one moment with God, just one moment with the living Jesus speaking purpose in your life begins to put it all together and all of a sudden you become somebody who's lit on fire. Paul took that same zeal that he had to crush the church and now he's not an emissary of the Sanhedrin, now he's an emissary of Jesus Christ, the resurrected Son of God, seated on the throne, ruling and reigning over all things. Jesus has now sent him and he has put everything into overdrive not to destroy the church but to build the church. Now he says in Galatians one that all the churches in Judea, none of whom have ever seen me, all they hear is that the one who used to try to destroy the church is now actually building the church because he's an apostle. That's what an apostle does. An apostle builds the church. Thank God for the gift of apostles. Some people ask, do you believe that there's still apostles? Well, there's apostles capital A and there's apostles small A. There will never be 12 apostles of the Lamb like the ones that Jesus called that were eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Jesus but there are people that operate in the apostolic ministry and calling which is to be fathers and leaders in the body of Christ to establish churches sent by Jesus in order to build the church. We oftentimes call them missionaries. It's interesting. I've had people who are outside of circles that don't believe in apostles say, well, I can't believe that you believe in apostles. And I say, well, do you believe in missionaries? And they say, well, absolutely. We send all kinds of missionaries. I'm like, can you find me the word missionary in your Bible, please? I'm just like, well, cause it's not there. At least what I say I believe is actually in the Bible. So if you wanna say, well, it's a sent one or a missionary, great, it's just apostolic. And some people are used apostolically, but here's the key. We need apostles because they help bring stability, establishment, leadership and doctrine to the church. And people who are outside of local churches outside of those with authority and those who are trying to figure out their theology and their doctrine on their own, they get crazy. They get as crazy as an elderly woman watching QVC at two o'clock in the morning. They'll buy anything. Okay, probably get some hate mail for that, but that's okay. Second group of people that Paul identifies here. This is key because this is us. He says, Paul an apostle by the will of God to the saints, everybody say saints. Saints, we've got all kinds of weird ideas about what saints are. I know that within the Catholic tradition, there are people that have either performed miracles or done incredible things that they've been sainted. And so we have Saint Joseph, Saint Timothy, Saint, Saint, Saint, and while I love so many of our Catholic brothers and sisters who are part of the body of Christ, let me just say that that is not a biblical understanding of saints. A saint is, let me give you a biblical definition of the word saint, because by the way, Paul is writing to the saints at Colisei. Saints are a way of describing the positional identity of believers in Christ. The positional authority of believers in Christ. In other words, when you get saved, you are put into Christ. You now are part of the body of Christ. He's the head, but you're in Christ. And now positionally, in other words, the way that you stand before God, the way that God sees you is your position. If you are a born again child of God, in God's eyes, you are a saint. Another way of putting what a saint is, is a saint is one who has been made clean by Christ's blood and set apart for a holy purpose. God's chosen and holy people. A saint comes from the word holy. So holy ones, he's saying to the holy ones. See, oftentimes we think saints are perfect, sinless people that have performed miracles and built hospitals and had unexplainable things that took place and may indeed be saints, but do you know that every child of God who has been washed clean by the blood of Jesus that has been born again has the spirit of God living on the inside of them. And because of that, you have been positionally set before God, spotless, washed, no shame, no sin, no guilt, no condemnation. He calls you a saint. There are only two class of human beings in the whole earth, saints and sinners. That's it. If you stand before God someday in judgment by your own good works, or you stand condemned by your rejection of Jesus Christ, you will stand as a sinner, because that's your identity. But if you have made Jesus Christ your Lord and your Savior, you've made him preeminent, given him the supreme place in your life, you bowed the knee to the Lordship of Jesus, then that means when God sees you, he doesn't see you through your good works any longer, he sees you through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Washed, cleansed, saved, filled with new life, your past is removed, you are a new creation, all things have passed away, behold, all things have become new, and he sees you as holy. That's who we are. And Paul's telling the church at Colisei, you, this is who you are in the sight of God. Think about these scriptures that Paul uses elsewhere. First Thessalonians 1.9, he's talking to the Thessalonians. He says, and how you turn to God from idols to serve the living God. See, there was a change that took place in them. They turned away from their old life of worshiping idols. They turned from their old life of seeking pleasure, of embracing philosophy like stoicism and Epicureanism. They escaped, they escaped from the burden of their sin in this world, and they have now become those that have turned to the living God. Listen to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6.9. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? So the unrighteous that sinners. Do you not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor the idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God? That's pretty clear. But then listen to this. Here's Paul writing to saints. And such were some of you. Were past tense. And such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified. In other words, you were sainted. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. He just lists off a whole list that basically describes culture. Then and now, you used to live your life for the pursuit of money. That's why you were greedy and you were a swindler. That's why you cheated on your taxes. That's why you didn't pay people when they did contract work for you. You swindled people. You were greedy. You lived your life for yourself. You never gave anybody a second thought. You were an adulterer. You lived your life. You had mistresses and you had a guy on the side. You're traveling on your business trips and you're going to the strip clubs and you're viewing porn. Or you're having an affair with the guy who's your physical trainer or your weight trainer at the gym because he's dreamy. You've got that going on. Some of you, you were drunkards. You're getting smashed. You're getting drunk. You don't remember anything. You were living your life for the weekend. That's where your hope was. You worshiped idols. You were spiritual. You were sincere. You went into all the temples and you worshiped all the Roman pantheon and the Greek pantheon and God's wherever you could find them. That's who you were. But it's not who you are. Who are you? You have been washed. Come on, church. You've been washed. Washed by what? Washed by the Lord Jesus Christ in his precious shed blood that washes away all of your sins. Left you white as snow. Made you brand new, sanctified you. Which means made you holy and set apart for God's work. Used to be living over here for stuff that was never gonna go anywhere. Things that was just rooted in this world. You were living for pleasure. You were living for yourself. You were doing whatever you could do to get ahead. But then you met Jesus and what did he do? He transferred you into his kingdom and when he did he washed you, he saved you, he justified you. He sanctified you and he did it by the work of the Holy Spirit. That's what it means to be a saint. If that's you, you're a saint. If that's you and you're born again, that means you're old is gone. You're not defined by these things anymore. Doesn't matter which one you find yourself on the list or if you need to add something into the margin and say that's what I was. But Paul calls you a saint. What's the third category? Faithful brothers. Paul an apostle by the will of God. To the saints and the faithful brothers. In Christ at Colise. That's important. In Christ at Colise. Because even though we're saints, Paul makes a distinction between just our positional identity and our behavioral identity. Our behavioral identity. It's one thing to be born against another thing. Does your behavior line up with what you believe? Remaining faithful to Jesus in the midst of a confused culture and a confused world. You see, what we believe should determine how we behave and why Paul stresses this to the faithful brothers in Christ is because our positional authority is in Christ. That's where we're saints. But our behavior on a daily basis is where we are determined to be faithful or faithless. Are we being faithful to Jesus? Is our public witness in the city, in our culture matching what we say we believe? Because if it isn't, we might be a saint but we're not faithful. This is where the rubber hits the road. We're called to faithfulness. We're called to be a people that in the midst of this confused world, that this way, listen, we might be right this way. God loves me. Nothing's ever gonna change that. I'm a child of God. My biology cannot be altered. I've received the implanted word of God that has saved me. I have eternal life. Nothing can steal that from me. But now what God is saying to us as the church is I want what you know to be true here and that Christ is so preeminent, so supreme in your life that it begins to change your behavior so that you're faithful to Jesus in persecution, so that you're faithful to Jesus in how you live your life, in the conversations that you have because your people who have hope. Because you are people that have, and we'll read it next week, faith, hope and love. What we believe, faith, directs our heart to what we hope in so that we can demonstrate to a world what it looks like to love God and to love others. See Paul's saying, church, you're in the world but you're not of the world. But you're in the world for the world. You are the salt of the earth. You are a city set on a hill. You are the people of God. And when the world looks at us, hopefully they see something in the community of the saints, in our faithfulness that directs their attention from all the other things in this world that are demanding preeminence, demanding that they be first place. And all of a sudden they see the cheap artificial nature of all these other things in our culture. And they go, that's not it. That's not it. That can't be it. That can't be it. I've tried that. That didn't work. But they see through our lives, our behavior and our proclamation. He is our hope. He is above it all, in it all. Everything was made for him. Everything is held together by him. He's the creator of it. He's above it all, reigning and ruling over it. And I'm faithful to him. My heart has directed my hope at the one who is seated on the throne or resurrected in Jesus Christ. Would you stand with me? He's above it all church. He's preeminent. He's supreme. He's ruling and reigning. Nothing, nothing is outside of his control. He's higher. He's stronger. He's wiser. He's greater. He's more loving. He's more compassionate. He's more true than we could ever fathom. He's worth it. He's worth it. That was good for them. It's good for us. Because what Jesus is calling you and I to is to live lives as faithful brothers and sisters. Faithful, faithful to Jesus. Would you bow your heads with me? Lord Jesus, we confess today, you are of the supreme position and rank with all authority in heaven and earth. And yes, Lord, even in our lives, you've made us for your glory. You've saved us for your glory. Our lives were made for you. Lord, today would you capture our hearts and help us to live it. Not just positionally right before you, but God, we want our lives to reflect what we believe. We want our belief systems to move down into our hands and our feet. Change the way that we see the world and live in the world. Holy spirit, only you can do this. You're the one who saves us. You're the one who sanctifies us. And you're the one who leads and guides us. Holy spirit, we invite you. Come and have your way in us. Come and have your way in us.