 pastor Deepika and God I thank you for just connecting us over together in this call in spite of the late star Jesus but I pray that you will speak to us today you will reveal yourself to us today God and we will understand more and more about you will get to know more about you Jesus and God let us spiritualize and the earth be open as she teaches us the truths in the Bible God help us to be fully condensed and should grow inch more like you Jesus I give you all the glory and honor and God I pray for good wife connection throughout the session that everything that we do and talk be done for your glory in Jesus name I pray amen amen thank you so much yes let's hope that there are no issues with the internet as I'm having to do the session from home so yeah let's just you know pray that everything goes smoothly and well all right so today we are starting off with Colossians so if you remember when we had covered the very first episode that we were doing together Galatians at that time we talked about how Paul's first missionary journey was into southeastern Asia Minor so when he starts off in his first missionary journey the Lord guides him to go towards Asia Minor and then we've also you know talked about how Asia Minor is basically the Anatolian Peninsula where you have Turkey and all the surrounding regions today so this is basically Asia Minor and a lot of Paul's ministry happened over here in this particular region so two very important provinces in this Asia Minor one is the Galatian province and the other is the Phrygian province that would be Phrygan so the you know the people of Phrygia so the Galatian province and the Phrygian province were basically next to each other so on his first missionary journey Paul plants a church in Galatia but at that time he is not led by the Lord to go into the Phrygian province so it's only later on when after the Efficient Church has been planted and and you know Paul starts doing his ministry work over there and there are a lot of people getting you know equipped in the Efficient Church to go out and do ministry one of the persons who gets trained under Paul a person named Epaphras he's the one who goes from this you know from this from Ephesus he goes into the Phrygian province and that is basically when he sets up this church in Colosse so it was not Paul himself who planted the Colossian Church it was Epaphras who did it and moreover we get to know you know in the letter Paul says you have never seen me he says so he never had in fact even visited them when he writes this letter so maybe after he wrote the letter maybe he had an opportunity to visit them at some point of time we do not know but at the time of the writing of this letter he had not even met them you know but they had high regard for him and they you know they would have respected this letter which he has sent them so that's a little bit of the background regarding this letter to the Colossians is writing to an audience with whom he has never personally met it is basically Epaphras who has done the ministry in that particular place so what about the people of this you know of this city you had Phrygians of course because this is the you know the Phrygian province you also have a lot of Greeks who have settled in this city and you also have a large number of Jews who have you know who are living over here in this Phrygian province of Asia Minor how did the Jewish population end up over here that's because of a Greek king in you know in in BC era before Christ was even born there was this Greek king named Antiochus the Great he takes a lot of the Jewish people from their homeland and he puts them in Asia Minor so these people you know got settled over there you know spent many years over there and so they became known as the Phrygian Jews so when this church was planted by Epaphras over here you would have obviously had some local Phrygians in the church they would have also been Greek people coming into the church and you also had Jewish people becoming part of this congregation now actually there's a mention made of them in Acts chapter 2 if you remember in Acts chapter 2 that's basically where you have the account of the Pentecostal event when the Holy Spirit comes down upon the people who have gathered in prayer in the upper room so at that time the when they all begin to speak loudly in tongues a large crowd if you remember is drawn towards that building because they're all wondering from where is the noise coming and over there if you look at the list of names which are mentioned you know of people from which localities have come over there we see even Phrygia being mentioned so the Jewish people in Phrygia and the Jewish people who have been displaced from their homeland and who are now living in all the other regions they all come over here at least to Jerusalem at least for the Passover festival because that's considered the most important festival of the Jewish people so at least for the Passover festival they all return back to Jerusalem and so when this event takes place and there's a lot of noise coming from the upper room a large crowd gathers over there to find out what is going on and among the crowd you also have Jewish people from this Phrygian province and so Peter of course you know speaks to them after I mean yeah after they all speak in tongues Peter comes to the crowd he says that you know we are not drunk it is just morning so it's actually the Holy Spirit who has come down upon us just as Jesus promised the Jesus whom you have crucified he preaches and a large number are saved on that particular day so there's a likely chance that even some of these Jewish people from the Phrygian region also you know might have got saved might have heard what Peter was saying and responded on that day so they would have taken the gospel back to this province of Phrygia so when Epaphras planted the church at Colossae there might already have been some believers in that place so these Jews who have now become believers also would have been part of the Colossian church so the Colossian church was basically made up of the local Phrygians it was made up of Greek settlers who have settled down in Colossae and also you had this Jewish people who have come to the true faith who have come to their faith in Jesus Christ so this is the kind of audience that Paul is writing to and he basically writes this letter during his you know first arrest during his first imprisonment in Rome he in fact writes most of his letters at that time you know while he is under house arrest in Rome so in fact there are three letters that he writes together a letter to the Ephesian people a letter to the Colossian people and also a personal letter to Philemen all of these three letters he writes them together and he puts them in the hands of Onesimus and Taikikus so they are the ones who go and deliver these letters to Ephesus to Colossae and also to Philemen so you know these letters were written during his imprisonment so one thing that yeah we maybe need to we also mention is that shortly after this letter was written Colossae experiences a major earthquake you know as we all know from last year this Anatolian peninsula is an area where you constantly have earthquakes happening because you have one of the epicenters you know of the earthquakes over there there's also some kind of a earthquake fracture line which runs through that peninsula so as a result of that there are generally many earthquakes so the earthquake of 60 AD was so major that they say that it literally flattened out the city of Colossae so the church in that place the believers of that place would have suffered you know when that earthquake took place and it says generally you know historians say that a lot of people relocated to many of the surrounding towns and cities until you know Colossae could once again be repaired and rebuilt so we are not very sure what the poor church went through you know after this earthquake experience but Paul's letter was written before the earthquake you know when this event had not yet taken place so these are just some of the interesting facts about the Colossian church let's get into the letter itself he is writing the Paul is mainly writing this letter to to tell the Colossians that Jesus Christ is supreme these people are kind of wandering away from the true faith into false teachings especially there's this new teaching which is coming up it's like the faint beginnings of the Gnostic movement which would literally take over later on you know I mean by the time John became old you know there was a lot of Gnosticism which had set in and there were a lot of false teachings going around now when Paul writes this in before 60 AD Gnosticism as such has not become established but the early forms of Gnostic teachings are already going around you know this whole idea that you would have spirit beings come to you and give you visions of some mystic knowledge which will make you you know superior to all the other believers all that kind of you know rubbish that was that John wants about in his epistles and in his gospel so those false teachings have started coming in so Paul is writing to say you know don't chase after angels you know to worship them these spirit beings to worship them Jesus is the one who is supreme he is the one who is your hope he is the one who is the center of your faith so hold on to him so that is actually the main emphasis of his letter so he starts off by you know talking about how glad he is for these Colossian believers he praises certain things about them and then you know in the second chapter he goes on to warn them you know from falling prey to false teachings all right so we will now look at the first chapter we will look at the things about the Colossian believers which pleased Paul you know that things that he was glad about so if we could have any one person read out for us from Colossians chapter one and maybe we can have the first eight verses Colossians chapter one verses one to eight please yeah you know if you could all have your bibles with you and you know if you could take the effort to unmute and read out uh yeah Colossians chapter one verses one to eight please Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Timothy our brother to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colossi grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ we give thanks to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ praying or is for you since we had of your faith in Jesus Christ and of in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven of which you had before in the word of the in the word of truth of the truth of the gospel which has come to you as it has also in all the world and is bringing forth fruit as it is also among you since the day you had and knew the grace of God in truth as you also learned from Apifras our dear fellow servant who is faith who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf who also declared to you your love in the spirit amen yeah yes thank you so it says here that Epaphras has brought them the true message of the gospel okay so he emphasizes that two times in this opening passage Epaphras has given them the true message of the gospel and he is glad that they are holding on to it so in the you know in the second chapter he wants them about the dangers of going away from this true gospel but right now here he praises them for holding on to this true message of the gospel which has been delivered to them by Epaphras and he says there are two things that makes him very very glad he says whenever he prays for them you know whenever he has his intercessory prayers for this particular church he is so grateful to God for two things he has heard about the faith which they have in Christ Jesus and he has heard about the love that they have for all of God's people so their faith and their love brings him great joy and he points out to them that the reason that they have this kind of a very vibrant faith and a very genuine love it is because of the hope which they have the future hope which they are looking forward to so it says in verse 5 Colossians 1 verse 5 the faith and love that spring from the hope so this faith and love which they are exercising it is springing up from the hope that they have of what is you know awaiting them in heaven in the future the great reward that is awaiting them and this reward this future hope is exciting them so much they are so you know glad about it that they are willing to make the sacrifices needed to exercise their faith and show their love it's not easy you know to have this kind of commendable faith and this very what genuine love it involves sacrifice anything that is truly godly involves sacrifice the really true things of God never come light you know it always involves us having to say no to our own selfish interests having to say no to the fears and doubts that reign in our hearts and saying no I will trust my god I will obey I will make the needed sacrifices I will show love to God's people these are all things which involve sacrifice they do not come easy why are these Colossian believers willing to make these sacrifices and exercise this kind of an active faith and active love it's because they are being stirred up by the hope that is there in their hearts so if we see you know in our church today a very very negative complacency where people are not very concerned about others if we see that they are not exercising much faith in the Lord and you know um making their sacrifices of obedience it's because they are not very excited about the things of heaven they're glad that they have a ticket to heaven they are glad that one day you know if when they die that the Lord will take them to live with him but there is no real excitement about what is awaiting them they are not even very passionate about the reward which is awaiting them and so that has led to a lot of negative complacency which is why today in our churches we don't see the kind of vibrant faith that these early believers exercised we don't see that very generous love which these people lavished on everyone we don't see those things in our current churches simply because we're not very excited about the about what's awaiting us in heaven so you see how it affects our everyday walk with God if our eyes are not focused on eternity and what is awaiting us over there we can get very complacent about spiritual things down here what are the things that we see believers getting excited about today in our you know current setup people are very excited about getting high paying jobs they are very excited about you know reaching high up in their careers I know going higher up on the career ladder being able to gain the status you know of being in very high managerial positions where they'll have a lot of people working under them these are things which excite people a lot they are very excited about purchasing all the fancy things you know that are now available to us because of technology they are very excited about owning the you know the expensive gadgets which are you know being released these are things which we see believers being very very excited about so in the you know in this whole you know chasing of all of these exciting glittering objects down here what is awaiting us in heaven seems to have just paled in comparison people hardly even you know think about the about what is awaiting them in eternity that's just a kind of you know backup secure security plan that is there oh yeah if I die when I die heaven is there but there's no excitement about the things of God and as a result of that we do not see the vibrant faith and the genuine love which the colossians and all the other early believers exercised so this should be a warning to us we need to look at this you know this letter look at these people and ask ourselves am I every day actively exercising my faith you know in in the way that I'm living in trusting God and obeying God in blaming the scriptures because I really believe in what is you know what is available to me in the heavenly realm the spiritual blessings that are mine not just the material blessings but even the spiritual blessings that that can be mine you know where God empowers me he equips me to do his work where the Lord uses me to reach out to the people and maybe in my office so are we excited about these things and vibrantly exercising our faith and also sacrificially showing our love to the people around us because it's easy to love some people but it's quite difficult to love some others so are we doing that if we are not doing that then maybe we can ask ourselves oh what is the thing that you are passionate about so if we actually honestly look at ourselves and ask ourselves what am I really passionate about what comes to the you know what what is exposed as being our highest priorities if it is just material things and worldly priorities then you know that will show that oh because of this my faith and my love have been dampened so and if that is the case then you know we need to take some corrective measures we have not yet come to the Thessalonian letter you know which we will be covering after Colossians but there's something that may are worse from there which can help us you know in in reigniting our passion for God you know some something that we are told to do and actually this is a verse with reference to the armor of God which we should be wearing so first Thessalonians chapter five verse eight I know if anyone could read out for us first Thessalonians chapter five verse eight please but since we belong to the day let us be sober putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet yes so these are the things that we are asked you know to put on as believers faith and love the two things that you know Paul praised the Colossian believers for these are people these Colossian believers were people who had put on the faith and love like a breastplate to guard them to guard their heart to guard their lungs to guard their vital organs you know that's basically why the breastplate was worn on the battlefield so that the arrows will not come and pierce your vital organs where your heart is where your lungs are the things you know which we depend upon the organs that we depend upon to breathe to live so in the same way a physical soldier would wear the breastplate to protect his vital organs these Colossian believers chose to put on the breastplate of faith and love it kept them alive spiritually they because they were exercising and walking in this faith and love on a daily basis they were alive spiritually alive active Christians you know they were just reflecting upon those two or those letters to the churches you know the seven letters to the churches in the book of Revelation yesterday I was just kind of reflecting upon that and if you notice in each of those letters Jesus generally begins with these words he says I know your works to each church that does those are the opening words that he says and then he gives some details about what he personally thinks about their works so he says I know your works and he goes on to say you know gives his opinion about their works it's the same over here with the Colossian church where Paul is saying you know I have seen your works your works are flavored with faith and love and he you know he praises them for that so we and our church what does God see and what does God say about our works you know the Lord is watching us on a daily basis so when he looks at me personally he says I know your works I've been watching you I know your works and what does he go on to say about my works in the same way what does he go on to say about the works of our particular congregation does he see the breastplate of faith and love you know that is what we should be wearing so that we can guard our vital organs and and you know protect ourselves in our spiritual walk others will be very very dead spiritually so this is there's something more that you know Paul says to the Thessalonians in first Thessalonians 5 8 he says you that they must also wear the hope of salvation as a helmet so you see the helmet that you're wearing is the hope of salvation the hope of the reward that is awaiting us the hope of you know the resurrected body that God is going to give us one day if it's the hope of the things that we will be we will be rewarded with on that day because again if you look at those seven letters to the revelation churches to each of them he says you know if you live in the way that I want you to then you will conquer that word conquer is used you know in almost all of the seven letters he says if you do this this this then you will conquer and in a couple of the letters he says then you will rule with me so there is a rule you know there is good so rather than being attracted to the positions of authority and power and status here on this earth if we can focus on the positions of authority power and status which are awaiting us in the future in eternity then maybe we would get our priorities right so we put on this helmet what helmet is this this is the helmet of the hope of salvation of the hope that is awaiting us in eternity where there are big things awaiting us so if we just you know waste away all our energies on the little accomplishments and the little you know glittering objects here on this earth what is going to be left we'll have no energy left for to prepare ourselves for the bigger greater rewards that are awaiting us in eternity so therefore you know when Paul is writing to the Thessalonians he says put on the hope of the of salvation as your helmet if you're wearing that helmet you'll always be excited about the things of God you'll always be eagerly anticipating what is awaiting you in heaven and then automatically all your other priorities will fall into place so we see you know something nice being said about this particular aspect in 1st Peter chapter one verses six to nine as well okay so we're just using this 1st Peter two examples from 1st Peter to to look at one example of faith and one example of love and what is the focus of these people you know what was what was the eye what were their eyes set upon so just basically you know with that in mind we are looking at this at these two first at these two 1st Peter passages so the first passage that I would like us to you know read is 1st Peter one verses six to nine look at the look at the kind of faith that these particular people had and what was driving their faith what made them so enthusiastic and made them exercise faith in this manner so that's basically what we would be you know looking at so if someone could read out for us 1st Peter chapter one verses six to nine please 1st Peter one verses six to nine in all this you greatly rejoice though now for a little while you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials these have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold which perishes even through refined even though refined by fire may result in praise glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed though you have not seen him you love him and even though you do not see him now you believe in him and are filled with an inexplicable and glorious joy for you are receiving the end result of your faith the salvation of your souls yeah this passage kind of touched my heart because of the wording that is used over here it talks about these believers who have gone through a fire you know it's not been an easy experience for them they have suffered grief in all kinds of trials they've gone through a fury experience and even after going through something like that you know they have held on to their faith and their faith has been proved as being genuine even after going through that fire they came out with a genuine faith because their faith was not just some light hearted you know wishy washy kind of faith they just got swept away and once the flames got hot these people held on to their faith because their eyes were focused on what it says in the second part of verse seven you know they were looking at the praise glory and honor which would be which would become theirs once Jesus Christ is revealed and they are so excited about one day getting to see him it says that even though they have never seen him you know they are they believe in him and are filled with an inexplicable and glorious joy and in that way because of this kind of attitude that they have this the eager anticipation that they have for what Christ is going to bring along with him you know this this eternal spiritual goodies you know these rewards which are going to be theirs it says because of that he says they are happy you know and they are excited about receiving the end result of your faith the salvation of your souls so these believers here are very firmly wearing their helmet of salvation their hope their thoughts their excitement it's all focused towards the future towards what is awaiting them you know so maybe you know those of us in this group who are actually you know ministers pastors and we get an opportunity to teach this is what we should teach you know to our congregations get them excited about what is awaiting them in the future so that they will not be so focused on the things of the world if there's nothing to be excited about in heaven obviously you're going to be more excited about the things over here on the other hand if you can show them what is awaiting them in heaven and get them excited about that then maybe they will get their priorities right and then we will have alive churches you know filled with believers who are excited about the things of God and then we will see things happening in our church our church will actually move forward make progress so these are things that you know we can teach our congregations so we looked at an example of the genuineness of faith which even though it was stride and fury trials it came out fully genuine because these guys were excited about Jesus coming back and the praise and the glory and the honor that would be resulting you know once Jesus comes and rewards them so in 1st Peter in this in 1st Peter chapter 1 in the later verse in verse 22 this is what you know Peter is saying to the people that he's writing to he says now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other love one another deeply from the heart he says you know I I mean you guys have been um purifying yourself by obeying the truth it's not easy obeying the truth is not easy it's going to involve a lot of sacrifice but these guys have done that they have held on to the truth they know that you know um obeying the truth is going to involve sacrifice and they have done that they have purified themselves one result of that is that because they have purified themselves through painful sacrificial obedience because they have done that they have a sincere love for each other it's not just this you know superficial love where you say high and by to people this is a sincere love where you're willing to forgive where you're willing to go out of your way to help someone where you're willing to actually spend time on your knees interceding in prayer for someone who's going through a time of need these are all these are all examples of sincere love which has which have come out of a process of purifying yourself through painful sacrifice sacrifices where you have been willing to do that to obey God and then out of that comes sincere love so you know it's in just one sentence Paul compliments these collisions and says my goodness every time I pray for you guys when I'm interceding for you guys I feel so happy when I think about the faith that you have the love that you have you know in just one sentence he just kind of compliments them about it but look at what these collisions would have actually had to do in the background to be able to have this kind of a faith and to have this kind of a love it doesn't come lightly these are things which you need to work on and you will work on them only if you're excited about them about what is awaiting you you know in the future so if our eyes are set on that future reward and what Christ is going to give us only then will we live in this kind of a faith and this kind of a love so in this collusion letter again and again he comes back to these three words you will see this happening you know throughout the letter faith hope love so the faith and love is what they're acting out and they're acting out the faith and love because of the hope which they have this theme gets repeated in this letter I think about twice or twice okay so which is why we kind of took time to dwell upon this because this is the foundation on which many other things are going to be you know many other teachings are going to be laid so moving on from there we will look at a prayer which Paul you know prays over these people yeah we only read up to verse eight right so Paul's prayer would be extending all the way up towards 14 we've seen this you know in other letters Paul prays in effort to the letter in the letter to the efficiency in fact prays two prayers and then I think it was in the letter to the Philippians that he has one prayer for them yeah which he prays over them here again in the collusion letter there's a prayer that he prays over these people if you notice whenever Paul mentions a prayer in his letter it's obviously something significant he prays things for them which are really important which can make a very big difference in their spiritual life so yeah it's good to look at this prayer that he prays for them so in it was basically in verse three that he told them you know that I know I pray for you and I'm when I'm praying for you I feel a lot of joy he says and now he's kind of explaining what he is praying for them he so in verse six he this is what he had said he said that the gospel has rarely the true message of the gospel has rarely borne fruit in the lives of these collusions he's happy and in verse six he goes on to say the same gospel has also you know borne much fruit throughout the world and so because the gospel is bearing so much fruit in the lives of these collusion believers he says in verse nine for this reason since the day we heard about you what's the reason the reason is the reason is you know there's so much fruit being born in your lives because so much fruit is being born in your lives and we have not stopped praying for you he says in verse nine and then he begins to you know give the prayer points which he has been praying over them so for that we would actually have to look maybe yeah all the way from verse nine to verse 14 let's look at the three main prayer points that are touched upon in this prayer that Paul is praying even as he's writing the letter yeah if someone could read out for us collusion chapter one verses nine to fourteen please for this reason we all so since the day we heard it do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you may walk worthy of the Lord fully pleasing him being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God strengthened in with all might according to his glorious power for all patience and long suffering with John giving thanks to the father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light he has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love in whom we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins yes so oh no i seem to be having a feedback over here of the audio uh yeah uh so um in verse nine he says we have not stopped praying for you we continually ask God for three things the first thing that he is asking the Lord for them is that the Lord would uh this is in verse nine so that the Lord would fill them with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding the spirit gives so that they may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way bearing fruit in every good work so basically Paul is saying i'm very glad that you are the gospel has borne so much fruit in your lives and now my continued prayer is this that you'll continue to bear fruit in every good work you know uh living in a way which pleases God living in a way that is worthy of the Lord how will you be able to live in this way pleasing him living a worthy of him how for that you need to know the you need to become full of the knowledge of his will if you don't really know what God's will for you is on a daily basis you will not live in a way which pleases him you will not live in a way which is worthy of him you got to be very aware of his will for you on a daily basis i mean we are all very familiar with the general will of God we know we should love people we know we should trust God we know we should obey him we know the general will of God but for me specifically what does the Holy Spirit want me to be doing today i need to be full of the knowledge of this will of God if i am then the way i live on a daily basis will be very different it'll be a very active Christian walk where i'm responding to the Holy Spirit on a on a r by r basis and he's pleased he's pleased with what i'm doing r by r throughout the day because i'm so full of the awareness of what his will is for me specifically and i'm walking in that that is walking you know at a whole new level you know in in our Christian walk so just simply going through the day you know in a very random way may not be as effective so he's saying i want you to become even more fruitful in your good works and that will take place if you are full filled with the knowledge of his will so we'll just dwell a little more upon this you know when we come back from our break so yes if you can all log back in at 10 o'clock please thank you