Marks of a God-Given Ministry — Part Two
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Marks of a God-Given Ministry — Part Two

 (ID: 1035)

Paul’s words about his own ministry give a pattern both for his time and for all servants of the Gospel, even today. For Paul, Alistair Begg explains, suffering was a sphere of ministry that Christ’s servants must be prepared to endure for His sake and the sake of His church. We will suffer as Christ did as we proclaim the mystery of the Gospel now revealed, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Series Containing This Sermon

A Study in Colossians, Volume 1

Christ the Foundation Colossians 1:1–2:15 Series ID: 15101


Sermon Transcript: Print

I invite you to turn with me in your Bible to the letter which Paul wrote to the church at Colossae, to the first chapter, beginning from Colossians 1:24 and going through to the final verse of the chapter. I’d like just to reread those verses so that they may be fresh in our minds this morning.

Paul says, “Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in [all] its fullness—the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”[1]

Incidentally, someone was asking me recently about “saints” and saying they’d come up against someone who was saying that saints were a special elite group of people of whom that had only been a few, and etc. Here, again, is a very straightforward statement which gives the lie to such a notion, declaring that the saints are those who have been set apart to Christ, and it is to these people that “the glorious riches” of the gospel, “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” is made known. So, of course, if we say that there only are x number of saints, then it would only be to this small group that “this mystery, … Christ in you, the hope of glory,” has been made known. But as, of course, we see, this mystery of the gospel has been made known to all the nations and not to a little group. The saints are those who are the body of Christ, essentially.

“We proclaim him”—Jesus—“admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.”

Amen.

Now just a prayer together:

Father, we bow before your Word this morning, and we thank you that it is your Word. And we pray that your Spirit may take your Word and use it in our lives to the glory of your Son, Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.

The five verses to which we return this morning provide us with one of Paul’s clearest statements concerning the nature of a biblical ministry. And the perspective which he takes in these closing verses of this first chapter of his letter to the Colossian Christians provides a pattern not only for his own day but also for every day and provides a pattern for all who would follow in his footsteps, for all the servants of the gospel.

And I want us to pick up where we left off last time. And so, just to bring us up to date as to where we are: we noted last time, on your outline, the source of his ministry, looking especially at the opening phrase in the twenty-fifth verse. You may recall that we said that Paul had not chosen his task; it was one to which he was appointed. Nor had he imagined his message; it was one which had been entrusted to him.

The Sphere of Paul’s Ministry

We then went on from there to note, secondly, that the sphere of his ministry was within, first of all, the context of the church. In verse 25 he says, “I have become its servant,” referring back to the final word in verse 24—i.e., “the church.” As he speaks of the church, he says, “I have become the servant of the church.” You’ll perhaps recall that looking at the life of Epaphras and then at the life of Paul, taking the whole of chapter 1, we saw that a minister is someone who is servant of Christ, servant of the gospel, and servant of the church. So he has been set apart to a ministry amongst the saints.

And we noted in conclusion last time that the church is more than just a circle of friends. It’s more than a mere society of mutual interest. It’s more than just a kind of holy club. Rather, the church of Jesus Christ is the one instrument on earth by which the risen, ascended, living Lord Jesus Christ manifests himself, manifests the invisible God, to a world that seeks for God—and to a world, incidentally, that doesn’t seek for God, to a world that knows not God. But to a world in which God is invisible, the church manifests the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the image of the invisible God.

So when you come to church on Sunday, we don’t come to a building per se. We come together. And when we are together in Christ, then we are the church. And we’re not just here to hype ourselves up with a few songs and then split for the rest of the week. We are here to worship God, and people who come amongst us ought to discover that Jesus Christ, who once walked and moved in Palestine, still today walks and moves in Cleveland, and he is present amongst and in and through his people.

The church is the one instrument on earth by which the risen, ascended, living Lord Jesus Christ manifests himself, manifests the invisible God, to a world that seeks for God.

That is why coming to church ought to be a very, very exciting thing. So if you came this morning, said, “Oh, goodness’ sake, nine o’clock again, here we go!” then may the Lord forgive you. And I’m sure he will after last Sunday evening. And you should get your heart in line and get excited about it all over again. Evie’s song that she sings about

Walkin’ to church on a Sunday morning,
Walkin’ and hearing the church bells ring,
Seeing the folks who mean everything to [you],
[Hearing their voice] as [they] loudly sing.

Oh, it’s so good to be here,
Praising the Lord again.[2]

And I thank God for the privilege of his grace, which makes us a part not of a building but a part of his body. And he, Paul, is the servant of the saints.

Not only is he moving in that sphere, but staying with the sphere of his ministry, I want you to notice that he ministers not only in the sphere of the saints, but he ministers in the sphere of suffering. And verse 24 highlights this.

Paul’s commitment to Christ and his discovery of this task which God has for him has not ushered him into a life of ease. It has not brought him instantaneous success. He has not become Mr. Cool of the first-century world. He is not used to being applauded as he goes from place to place. In fact, he’s very different from most twentieth-century traveling evangelists, who many times would give the impression that to join, as it were, the Christian road show is to get involved in success and is to get involved in ease and is to get involved in applause and, really, to get involved in a great deal.

Well, you do get involved in a great deal, but not a “great deal” deal—a great deal of all kinds of things. And Paul says, “Since I got involved in this, I discovered suffering in a new dimension”—like the young man who went to work as an assistant with a minister, and as he was leaving, as he stood in front of the congregation, he said to them, “I never knew what sin was till I came to work with the Reverend Smith.” And Paul is saying the same thing: “I never knew what suffering was. I knew what it was to dish it out, but I never knew what it was to receive it.”

But will you notice what he says? Verse 24: “Now,” he says, “I am very, very tired of all the things I’ve had to go through for you.” No, he doesn’t: “I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions.” Why? “For the sake of his body, which is the church.”

Now, there’s a great difficulty which immediately presses itself upon anyone who is thinking in reading verse 24, and that is that a surface reading of verse 24 brings about the immediate interpretation that somehow, there is the suggestion here that there was something lacking in the suffering of Christ at Calvary in the atonement, so that he did so much, as it were, on Calvary, and then other people are going to fill up the parts that were missing.

Now, when you come to something like this in Scripture, what do you do? You phone somebody up, and you say, “What does verse 24 mean?” or you go to your Sunday school teacher. That’s usually what I would do. But what I want you to learn to do is this: to say, “Now, wait a minute. Is this something here with which I can look at, take out, and find running through the whole gist of New Testament Scriptures? Or am I coming up against something here which seems to jar, as it were, with the overall system that has been laid down, explaining what Christ has accomplished? If that is then the case, I am going to discover what is foundational, and I am then going to take this twenty-fourth verse, and I am going to examine it in the light of this foundational, all-embracing truth.”

Now, for example if we take verse 24 just in relation to the surrounding context in Colossians—even to the verses we’ve already discovered together—we would know instinctively that to suggest that there is something lacking in the suffering of Christ by his death and resurrection is an impossible interpretation. It is impossible because it is impossible in the light of what Paul has already said and what he is yet about to say. Because he has already pointed out that by his death on the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who is able “to reconcile … all things” to God—verse 20. And you’ll notice that he is the one who is “the firstborn from among the dead”—verse 18—“that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven.” How? “By making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Paul lays down here that by his death, Christ has reconciled all things; that by his death, he has removed all sin; that by his death, he has made possible the forgiveness of all transgression. So when we come to verse 24 and Paul says that “I would fill up in my flesh that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ,” we then know this: that whatever he means, he does not mean that there is a missing x dimension to that which Christ suffered on our behalf.

Now, you see, that gives the lie to the notion that has been taught for many a long day and remains taught today in some circles: that good works, suffering in purgatory, faithful attendance at Mass, the purchase of indulgences, or any other so-called merits can be added to the merits of Christ on Calvary. Now, will you grasp that? There is and remains a very real theological cleavage between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. You only need to go into Mexico, you only need to go to the Shrine of Guadalupe, you only need to go to Lourdes, you only need to read the encyclical statements which come out from the Church of Rome as the essential remaining Roman Catholic dogma to know this: that there is a great difference between the truth about which we’ve been singing—which is Martin Luther’s truth—in our hymn and the truth with which many people are confronted day-and-daily.

Now, you say to me, “Well, how do you work out the fact that so many people claim that they have had a born-again experience, and they settle quite happily with the Mass, they settle quite happily with Mary?” I think on the one hand, it is immaturity that, when it comes to maturity, will be dealt with. And on the other hand, one would have to say that their discovery of a new-birth experience somehow must be radically different from Martin Luther’s discovery of a new-birth experience. For the end of the line of that argument is that the Reformation was the most disastrous mistake that has ever hit the church in the last five hundred years. And it is totally untenable, it is totally unbiblical, and it is totally unnecessary, and ultimately unhelpful, in proclaiming the truth of Christ.

Now, I mention that today because this particular verse is one of the verses that is key in that system, suggesting that there is that which is missing, so that in the Mass, Christ is resacrificed over again—hence transubstantiation: it is the real body, it is the real blood of Jesus Christ which once again is offered up. What does Hebrews say? There is only “one sacrifice for [sin]”[3]—that he has been sacrificed “once” and “for all,”[4] “for all time,”[5] always efficacious to reconcile all, to remove all sin, and to introduce the possibility of forgiveness for all.

Well, if it doesn’t mean that, then what does it mean? Well, I could suggest that you read a number of books this morning, and you would get all the different theories on it. But let me tell you just a nice straightforward one which I am humble enough to believe is correct and accurate and helpful. And if you don’t like it, then you can go read the books and choose another one for yourself.

What this phrase means in verse 24 is that although the Lord Jesus Christ, by means of his afflictions, rendered complete satisfaction to God… In other words, in Galatians—and I’ll just give you a verse for this so that you have something to button this onto—Galatians 6:14, Paul says, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” In the cross, the sacrifice which Jesus made has rendered complete satisfaction to God but not to the enemies of Christ. The enemies of Christ ultimately hated Christ. They hated him with an insatiable hatred. They wanted to add to his afflictions. And the enemies of Christ hate Christ today. But Christ, as Paul wrote to the Colossians, was no longer moving bodily around. So the hatred with which people hated Jesus—the arrows which they would have loved to have driven yet into the body of Christ—they would now drive into the body of Paul and into the bodies of all who then would seek to live for the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it is in that sense that all believers to some degree are in his stead, supplying to the enemies the opportunity of hitting them instead of hitting Jesus. If you read a book—for example, the book about Kourdakov called The Persecutor, which came out of the Soviet Union, and the activities of that man Sergei Kourdakov as he beat mercilessly a young, committed Christian girl, as he clubbed her time and again, as he went in and broke up Bible studies, as he tore them apart, as he nailed people up, as he did the most unbelievable atrocities—what was he doing? He was doing what Saul of Taurus discovered he was doing on the Damascus Road. Do you remember what he discovered he was doing in persecuting Christians? What did the Lord say to him from glory? He said this: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”[6] In other words, “My servants, my followers, are filling up in their flesh by receiving the venom and the insatiable hatred of a world that doesn’t love me in their body, because I am no longer present to suffer in the physical.” And so it was that Paul discovered that in persecuting the Christians, he persecuted Christ. And then he discovered that to live for Christ was to suffer for Christ also.

So I hope you have that in mind. He says, “In my life, as they stone me”—and eventually, he faced death for Christ—he was not filling a missing part so that Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary could be filled up to the required limit, and then it would be efficacious. His sacrifice on Calvary needs no addition. But by his suffering and by the suffering church today, verse 24 is reapplied as the hatred meted out at Christ is endured by those who are his followers.

Well, we could delay on this, but we daren’t. So that’s the sphere of his ministry: amongst the saints and in the realm of suffering.

The Secret of Paul’s Ministry

Thirdly on the outline, I want you to notice, the secret which his ministry expounds. And here we look at verses 26 and 27.

The pagan religions and the Greek sects, the Dead Sea communities, even Judaism of Paul’s day, they all claim to have their mysteries—little secrets. And they offered different ways, different rites of initiation, that would bring the seekers into the privileged circle of those few who had discovered the mystery of their existence or the secret of their existence, so that, if you like, within the broad sweep of Judaism, there was this kind of mysterious dimension into which you could enter. There were in the Dead Sea communities, for example, the Essenes. And again, the Essenes were such a group that you could enter into this eclectic society by means of a certain rite of initiation.

Now, what Paul was confronting in Colossae was that the teachers who were coming around and unsettling the believers weren’t suggesting pagan opportunities but were using a pagan formula and so were suggesting to those who’d come to faith in Jesus Christ—indirectly as a result of the ministry of Paul and through Epaphras—suggesting to them that they might enter into this mystery of true Christianity, that they might enter into the benefit of really being a Christian, by the going through of certain things.

Now, we can only deduce from the text, as we read it through, what these things might have been. But, for example, I think there’s a fair possibility, if you look at 2:11, that one of the possibilities was that these people were suggesting that circumcision was one of the ways into which one might enter this secret, select group within the broad grouping of those who named the name of Christ. Because in 2:11 Paul says to them, he says, “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ.”

Now, again, I wouldn’t want to be dogmatic about it, but it seems that there is a reason for him to underline that. And it could well be that people were coming along and saying, “Now, I know you’ve placed your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. But there is a dimension into which you have not as yet entered. And if you want to enter into this, then this is what you really ought to do.” And then they would suggest to them a variety of rites of initiation by which they became part of the select group. You see it? A select group from among the masses introduced to secret mysteries unknown by the great crew.

Now, I ask you: Do you find anything of that today? It’s totally throughout the Christian church! I remember, as a small boy, worshipping with my mother and father. We sat in a church—something like this. We sat as total strangers. We were on holiday. And at the end of the time, a lady turned round, and she said to my mother, she said, “Are you…” And I find this hard to say this, because I’ll impugn myself with somebody here if I use the term, so I’ll think of another term. I’ll call them “the Raiders.” She turned to my mother, and she said, “Are you part of the Raiders, or are you just a Christian?” In other words, “Have you got into our little deal yet, or are you still just one of those Christians?”

And you share your faith as you go out from here this week, and you’ll meet somebody before Wednesday who will say to you, “Yeah, but have you had the such and such? Have you experienced the so-and-so? Have you had the one, two, three, four with the x dimension with the stereo, you know? And are you into the…” You say, “No, no, no, I don’t think so. No.” Well, I’ll tell you: don’t worry about it! Don’t! Because the person that you meet on Tuesday afternoon is going to meet somebody on Thursday morning who says to him, “Have you had the five, four, three, two, one with the…” And they say, “No, I don’t think…”

That’s exactly what was happening. Paul says, “There’s a group of people around you, and they’re here to tell you about secrets. They’re here to say, ‘Are you really a Christian? Now, I know Paul came to you. I know Epaphras came. I know you’ve been getting on with things. But listen: Have you had this? Do you know this? Have you done this?’” And so Paul says to them, “Listen, now: if you want to talk about secrets and talk about mysteries, how about this for a secret? I’ll tell you about a mystery,” he says. “And this mystery is a little different from other mysteries.” And when he uses the word “mystery” here…

And what a brilliant teacher he is! See how he picks up these things which are going around in the minds of people, buffeted by the mystery purveyors? And he says to them, “Mystery.” And their ears perk up: “Mystery. Oh, yes! He must be going to tell us about the mystery now.” Says, “Yes, I am going to tell you about the mystery. And listen to it: the mystery about which I am speaking,” he says, “is that which, before God chose to reveal it, it was a mystery. But now, in revelation, he has pulled back the curtains of the stage and revealed that which has been sitting there all along.” He says, “Beforehand, he had not declared to you the truth of the gospel. Beforehand, your forefathers the prophets looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. They were like men standing on a wall, keeking over the top, proclaiming one who was to come yet not knowing who that person would be.” He says, “But now, that which was mysterious six centuries before Christ is no longer a mystery. Now it has been revealed. And it has not been revealed by a rite of special initiation to a special small group within the large group.” He says, “The wonder of this secret is that it is an open secret. The glory of this secret does not lie in its exclusiveness, belonging to a few, but in its inclusiveness, intended for all.” Let me say that again: he says, “The mystery of the gospel is not found in its exclusiveness, belonging to a few, but in its inclusiveness, intended for all nations.”

And the secret, of course, to which he refers is nothing other than the gospel, entered into not by some semisecret rites but discovered by public proclamation—benefits which are available not just for some believers, for a spiritual elite, but for everyone in Christ. So he says, “You are in Christ? You know the secret. And the secret is this: Christ in you, the hope of glory. Here,” he says, “is where God has revealed the glorious riches of his grace.”

The mystery of the gospel is not found in its exclusiveness, belonging to a few, but in its inclusiveness, intended for all nations.

And again, in the phraseology that he uses there, he counters those who are saying, “The thing that Epaphras brought to you was okay, but if you would come this road and enter this door, then all the wonder of it all will fall on you.”

“Listen,” says Paul, “none of it! None of it! In Christ, all the glorious riches of the mystery have been granted and made available to you: Christ in you.”

In the second verse of the chapter, Paul has spoken about the believers as being those who are “in Christ.” Will you notice that? He says, “To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ.” Now, here in verse 27, he says, “Christ [is] in you.” “You’re in Christ, and Christ is in you.” And both facts are absolutely accurate. Because we have been placed in the Lord Jesus Christ and because Christ is today seated at the right hand of the Father, we share the access to the Father in Christ. Because we, by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, have been placed in Christ and Christ today has known victory over death and the grave, we then, in turn, share in his victory, because we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. But not only are we placed in him, but he is given to us to live in us.

This, you see, is ultimately the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. The people may come to church this morning, and they say, “I’ve been trying so hard to be religious. I’ve even come to church this morning in the hope that somehow, something may rub off on me.” Now, something may rub off on you, but I’ll tell you: you’ll never catch Christianity floating in the air. It is a personal, living relationship with Jesus, so that when we come in repentance and in faith and say, “Lord, I can’t cope with my life. Lord, I am a sinner. Lord, I know that I am wrong before you. Lord, I understand at least this: that when you died on the cross, you died for me. And I come to you today, and I acknowledge my sin. I ask you to be my Savior”—then you will be placed in Christ, and Christ will be placed in you, so that he indwells us by the Holy Spirit.

Our time is rolling fast by, but it really deserves attention, this. And let me just turn you to John chapter 14 and show you something very important and then back to Ephesians 3 and show you something.

What is the special activity of the Holy Spirit? It is to indwell the heart of the believing Christian, just as the Lord Jesus foretold. I want you notice something: All the way through our studies in the Holy Spirit—and we come to the last one this evening—we’ve been saying that it is biblically inaccurate to drive a wedge between the ministry of Christ and the ministry of the Spirit. Now, this shows it as clear as anything—John 14:17. I’ll pick it up from 16. Jesus is speaking. He says, “I will ask the Father, … he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” All right? The Spirit is going to come, and the Spirit is going to live in you.

Now, follow the thing through: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” See what he’s saying? “The Spirit will live in you. I won’t leave you. I will come to you.” So when the Spirit comes to us, Jesus comes to us. The Spirit comes to indwell us, as it were, in the manifestation of the life of Christ. “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you [will also] live. On that day you will realize that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” Why? Because he left the Spirit to be in us, so that when you find in the New Testament Paul speaking of God for us, he speaks of our being in Christ; when he speaks of the Lord Jesus, of God, being in us, he speaks primarily of the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Turn to Ephesians 3, and notice again in Ephesians 3:16–17. He’s praying. He says, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (in other words, “that your strength may come by the power of the Spirit in your inner being”), so that what may happen? “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

Now, my dear friends, would you get this this morning? There is no greater ministry of the Spirit than to bring to us the heavenly blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ. The ministry of the Holy Spirit to us, for us, and in us is ultimately to bring Christ to us. And we don’t have time to expand it now, but you talk to people today about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Some people will say, “I know the Holy Spirit is at work because of the dimension of praise.” And of course the Holy Spirit releases people in praise. Some people say, “I know the Holy Spirit is at work because there is such a sense of purity—the holiness of God.” And of course the Spirit will not be at work without that dimension of holiness. Someone else says, “I know the Holy Spirit is at work because everything was so unbelievably powerful.” So they will take the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and they will try to explain it in one of these areas: purity, power, praise, proclamation, whatever it is. But ultimately, the ministry of the Holy Spirit can be summarized in one word, and the word is Immanuel: “And you shall call his name Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’”[7]—so that the knowledge of the ministry of the Spirit is that bringing Christ to dwell within us by faith.

Paul says, “Listen: if you’re a believer, then Christ is in you. And because he is in you, he is your hope of glory.” Today you live in Cleveland, but before too long you’ll live in heaven. Today you’ve got troubles, but before too long they will be gone. Today you live with illness, but one day you will have a body that knows no pain. Today you live with the sorrow of deeds done and spoiled and areas that have been forgiven but you cannot forget, but one day you will live free from all of that. Today you “see through a glass, darkly,” but one day you will see Jesus “face to face.”[8] Why? And how do we know? Because Christ is in us.

My dear friend this morning, if you have no hope of glory, no assurance of heaven, no reality of that, then you need to look very carefully to see whether you are in Christ and to see whether Christ is really in you.

The hymn writer says,

When all of my labors and trials are o’er
And I am safe on that beautiful shore,
Just to be [with] the … Lord I adore,
Will through the ages be glory for me.

O that will be glory for me,
Glory for me, glory for me;
When by his grace I shall look on his face,
that will be glory, … glory for me.[9]

Just last evening I received a soccer jersey from home, sent to me by one of my friends via my good friend who’s here today. And it was the number 10 shirt, played in in the European Cup just a few weeks ago, worn by Murdo MacLeod. And as I took it out of the bag, I held it with a sense of reverential awe, and it was tinged with just a dimension of glory. But let me tell you: it’s just dross and nothing. It doesn’t even bear consideration in view of the fact that when Christ comes to dwell in our hearts by faith, heaven becomes our home, the Lord Jesus becomes our Elder Brother as well as our Savior, we become the heirs of Christ, and “eye ha[s] not seen, [neither has] ear heard, neither [has it] entered into the heart of man, the things which God ha[s] prepared for them that love him.”[10]

Our time is gone, and I so much wanted to get to “Strategy,” but we’ll leave it there.

Can I ask you this morning (Would you listen carefully to this?): Do you know Jesus? Some of you have been coming along here for the last six or seven months, and I’m so glad you’re here. Some of you have come out of a background of traditional “churchianity,” and I don’t know why you come. I know why some come, and I have a sneaking suspicion why others come. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t this: that there are people here this morning, and you’ve come along to church, perhaps, at the invitation of a friend or a loved one, and they’re concerned for you. As it’s going through various weeks and months, they haven’t been hitting you over head with a Bible. They’ve wanted to, but they haven’t. They’ve tried to tell you things that appear, many times, kind of double Dutch. And intellectually, you know a number of these things. But as you sit here this morning, you know this: that you are not in Christ, and Christ is not in you.

And so it would be foolish, in a sense, to move on to try and implement a strategy without having discovered the secret that makes the strategy possible. Would you allow us this morning to introduce you to the secret of life: Jesus? Would you allow us this morning to take time just to talk with you, to open the Scriptures with you? Not to share a denomination with you. Not to share a church with you. To share Christ with you. To give you a piece of literature that would explain in simple yet profound terms what it means to know Jesus.

If you would like to respond to that kind of invitation, I will be available in the rear of the church here. So will Mr. Kent. So will others. And we have literature that we’d be glad to give to you. And if you can’t take time now because you’ve got a wee one in the crèche or in the nursery or whatever it is, and you wonder how best to respond to this, then, if you know the person next to you to be a believer, you could ask them for help. You could even take one of those cards and just write your name and say, “Please, would you send me one of those books?” or “Please could I make time to talk with you or with someone else?” And then we’ll count it a great privilege to do just that. For what today is all about is about knowing and loving and praising and serving and going out to a yet-unknown Monday to live for the Lord Jesus.

Shall we bow in a moment of quietness?

Some of us, Lord, this morning, are running away from things, and our quest is for freedom. We’ve listened to the pipe dreams which tell us that freedom is getting loosed from our shackles, freed of parental restraint, freed from the stranglehold of a morality pressed upon us by our peers. Teach us this morning that freedom is found in becoming the slave of Jesus and having his power at work in our lives, that victory comes when we hand up the sword of our rebellion and we enthrone Christ as Lord. Will you take your Word today and write it in our hearts? For Jesus’ sake. Amen.


[1] Colossians 1:24–27 (NIV 1978). Scripture quotations in this transcript are from the 1978 edition of the NIV unless otherwise indicated.

[2] Kurt Kaiser, “Sunday Mornin’” (1975).

[3] Hebrews 10:12 (NIV 1978).

[4] Hebrews 7:27 (NIV 1978).

[5] Hebrews 10:12 (NIV 1978).

[6] Acts 9:4 (paraphrased).

[7] Matthew 1:23 (paraphrased).

[8] 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV).

[9] Charles Hutchison Gabriel, “O That Will Be Glory” (1900).

[10] 1 Corinthians 2:9 (KJV).

Copyright © 2025, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations for sermons preached on or after November 6, 2011 are taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For sermons preached before November 6, 2011, unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®), copyright © 1973 1978 1984 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Alistair Begg
Alistair Begg is Senior Pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Bible teacher on Truth For Life, which is heard on the radio and online around the world.