Colossians Part 4

Everything you teach, you tell us to be patient and to love the children. He said, “Uh, yeah, I believe you ought to love children in the abstract, but not in the concrete.” (end of a cutoff joke) And you love one another in the concrete, not in the abstract. I think I ought to get a raise in salary after telling a joke like that. I want to thank all the visitors for being here this weekend, too. All right, saints. We’re going to start over, I mean, we’re going to start again where we were last night. I am not apologetic for the message last night, but I will say that it was unique. This morning, I am sane and clothed in my right mind. Okay, we’re still on page four.

Now I rejoice in my suffering, that’s just about the middle of the page, beginning of a paragraph. I rejoice in them for the sake of all of you who gather in Colossae. For it is by my sufferings that I do my part in my flesh on behalf of the Lord’s body, which is the church, to fill up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions. And though we should read that a hundred times, we will never fully understand the depths of that statement.

Now, in any translation, the next words will be, “of this: I became a minister,” but no one knows what “of this” is. Was this the suffering, or was it the ekklesia of, or was it the Lord? So, I resolved the problem and put all three of them in there. Of this suffering of this ekklesia of this Lord, I became a minister according to the stewardship which I received from God. It was for the benefit of all of you and the ekklesia in Colossae that this stewardship was bestowed upon me. All this has come about so that I might make full use of the word of God. Well, we have some more of this mystery here hanging.

Paul has been made a steward of the gospel of the mystery of the Lord. And then he says to the church in Colossae, “I was made a steward of this for your sake.” Was I made a minister of Jesus Christ for the sake of the brothers and sisters in Chicago? I never saw so many blank faces in my life. Do you not know? Oh, Carmen, you’re just too enthusiastic about everything. I have no idea, but Paul of Tarsus, if he were standing here, even though he had never seen you before, he would say, “It is for you, the church in Chicago, that I was made a minister.”

I don’t even know how to interpret that other than to say to you, the man was obsessed with the church. And somehow or other, he could ignore the fact that he had raised up four churches in Galatia, four churches in Greece, a church in Asia Minor, and that he was in Rome, and they were in Colossae, Asia Minor, and yet he could say, I was given the stewardship of these things for your sake. But this I can say that I have been given that stewardship, and the only place it is worth a hoot is in the churches. This stewardship is not worth anything outside the churches that I work with. Nobody’s interested, nobody cares, and if I try to speak on it, it falls like a great big wad of lead foil right in the middle of the room; folks don’t know. And I realize when I walk out of there that I was not given these things for them. I cannot say that I feel that it is exclusively for Chicago, but I can say that when I’m here, that’s the way I feel. When I’m in Chicago, I forget there are any other churches. In fact, if you didn’t live in such an abominably horrible-looking neighborhood, you were living out in Winnetka. Well, just for the record, I spent a week in Winnetka preaching in the church there. Y’all just don’t know how high-fluting I used to be. There’s another little town next to it that’s just as fancy. What’s the name of it? Willow Meadow, I think.

What conclusion can we draw here? And I’m going to come to one, and that is, we need more brothers who’ve been given the stewardship of the gospel that is for the churches. If you see such an animal running around, you give me a phone call, would you? Call collect if you need to, if you want to. Brother, they don’t come around very often in this century. I could not name you over four men who had been given the stewardship. And quite frankly, a couple of those I don’t even want to name, I would name Bakht Singh. You’ve never heard of him, India. He’s dead now; he died a couple of years ago of Parkinson’s. He was probably the greatest Christian worker of this century. He eclipsed Watchman Nee, and we never heard of him. He was almost worshiped by the brothers and sisters in India, but he lived a very hidden life. By the way, when he came to the Lord, his wife had disowned him, and so did his family. He never remarried, and he lived in a room about 6 by 8 his whole life; there was nothing in it but a bed and a Bible from a little chair. I understand, I never saw it. And he traveled all over India raising up churches that somewhat matched the people of India, although I have to say there was a little Plymouth Brethrenism thrown in there. Brother Watchman Nee will be remembered in our century as one who was such a steward. Interestingly enough, Prem Pradhan was and didn’t know it. He just was so much out there all by himself that he never had any idea who he was, didn’t know how unique he was, and didn’t know how unique his gospel was.

Now we stand on the threshold of the 21st century, and I stand there trembling. First of all, I’m not even sure I’m going to make it to the 21st century. I’ll do my best, but I’m definitely going to try to make it until July 1999. Do you know why? Because that’s when you and I are going to go to Santa Barbara. And next year, the brothers are going to meet together in Denver, and that’s 97. So, in 1998, we’ll get to have a sisters’ conference. Where are we going to have it? We had it in Orlando, didn’t we? You’ll have it in Puerto Rico.

All right, there is so much more to talk about of the stewardship, and if you can ever get a hold of a double volume by another brother who certainly gave us a lot of revelation, but he felt the only task he had was to preach it rather than to experience or practice it, and that was T. Austin Sparks. If you can get a hold of his little two-volume set, The Stewardship of the Mystery, it’s the best thing he ever did. You’ll really enjoy it.

Okay, let’s read some more. I’m going to read that last sentence again. All this has come about that I may make full the Word of God. Okay, we’re going to talk about this. This is a little scary. Harry Truman was asked what he learned while he was president of the United States. He said, “I learned two things. Never speak ill of J. Edgar Hoover and never attack the United States Marines.” He said something derogatory about the United States Marines; they almost impeached him. He also said something derogatory about J. Edgar Hoover.

Well, brothers and sisters, there’s something that you never say anything derogatory about, and that is the scripture. Do you understand that? And I’m not, but I want you to know that when you read this passage and someone tells you that this passage is in reference to the Bible, it is not. And most references in the New Testament to the word of God are references to the gospel. Let me do that again. Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit are the proclamations of the gospel. That’s what most of them are in reference to. Brother Mike Brodie said there are three people who get together every day and weep. One of them is Mary, the second one is the Bible, and the third one is the Holy Spirit. Mary, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit sit down and cry, and this is what they cry over. Each one of them says, “I came here to glorify Jesus Christ, but others have turned glory on me.” Mary, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is here to glorify the Father and the Son, and other than that, He keeps as close to the background as He can.

Mary, I don’t have to tell you about Mary, the mother of God. A simple comment that was made by St. Augustine of Hippo and others interpreted as meaning literally that she was God’s, the mother of God, that God has a mother, which makes her greater than God. And of course, the scripture, which in our day, especially, and I rarely use that term in our day, because all days are about as miserable as the others. You say nowadays, everybody’s going to pot and the churches. Well, it was 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 500 years ago, but there’s been in this, since the 1830s, an incredible emphasis on knowing the scripture to the point it has virtually dethroned Jesus Christ.