Lesson 4

All right, so if you'll take your Bibles and turn to Colossians chapter 4. Colossians chapter 4. In the New Testament. Is it Colossians or Colossians? Colossians C-O-L-O. There's so many books. C-O-L. There's so many books. I think I'll help you. We'll get it real quick here. Some new things in mind together. See the Galatians, see the G, gods, electric, power, company. Just remember that. There you go. Yes, Colossians chapter 4. It is a small book, but it's a very powerful book. So we last left off last Sunday with the Gospel being spread around the world. And the local churches being established. And as the Gospel was spread and churches were beginning to be established in other places, there came a need for the Apostles to further instruct, to lead, and correct the many churches that were being formed. As you can imagine, they're popping up everywhere. But bodies need to be organized. They need to be developed. Little infants need instruction and guidance so they can grow up into what they need to be. And so we had a lot of places where there were new believers who believed the Gospel, yet they weren't ready to be on their own yet. They needed further instruction. The problem was the Apostles couldn't be everywhere at the same time. They would go around preaching the good news, but they would have to leave somebody with these people. And if there was nobody to leave, then they'd have to stay awhile or come up with some other way of communicating with these folks to help instruct them. And the way they came up to help instruct them was writing them letters. So they would write letters to these people, and then they would instruct the churches to share those letters with other churches because the Apostles were prophets in their own right. And a prophet is someone who speaks by the inspiration of God, which, by the way, we're going to learn about in our worship service this morning, the main teaching time this morning. And so these letters that they wrote to the churches would be read in other churches, and these letters, what's another word for these letters? Well? - Epistles. - Epistles, who said that? Very good, Gabriel. Epistles. So an epistle is a synonym for letter, okay? It's all it is. An epistle is a letter. So when you hear of the epistle of Paul, it's just a letter that Paul wrote, okay? Or the first epistle of this or whatever. It's just another word for letter. So you could say letter, and it's all the same thing. So since the Apostles were prophets of God in their own right, and they spoke by the inspiration of God's Spirit, then what they wrote to one church was applicable to all churches because it was God writing through the Apostle to his church. So in Colossians 4, if you'll look with me in verse 16, this is a letter or an epistle, whichever one you want to call it, that Paul wrote to the church of Colossae. Notice it says Colossians. That means he's writing to the Colossian people. Or you could say he's writing to the church at Colossae, okay? If he wrote an epistle to Maybank, it would be the epistle of the Maybankians, you know? So Colossians, the Maybankians, or as they wrote to my hometown, the Athenians. Turn to Athenians chapter 2, please. It's the same thing. So when we're turning to Colossians chapter 4, we're turning to a specific part of Paul's letter that he wrote to the church of Colossae or the Colossian people. Now look what he told them toward the end of the book or the letter in verse 16. He says, "And when this epistle is read among you, calls that it be read also in the church of Laodiceans, and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea." So you see how they're sharing the letters that they wrote? Okay. First Thessalonians chapter 5, if you can turn there, First Thessalonians chapter 5. Don't you just love learning the Bible? Man, I love learning the Bible. First Thessalonians chapter 5, and let's look here now in verse 27. First Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 27. Look what Paul says now in verse 27. Now, of course, if he's writing to First Thessalonians, it's the first letter that he wrote to the Thessalonian people, which was the church in Thessalonica, Greece. Okay. In fact, I had a man not too long ago who wrote me for help with his salvation, and guess where he was? Thessalonica, Greece. And it was amazing talking to a man, his name is Spiros. It was amazing talking to a man who was at a church that was helped start-- not at a church, but in a town or an area, country, city of Greece where the Apostle Paul wrote an epistle to. Except today it's not called Thessalonica, it's called Thessaloniki, but it's the same place. And absolutely amazing. And here he was, needing help, understanding the gospel. Well, that's the same thing as Paul writing these people, trying to help them as well. It's because the message becomes obscured. And if it's not passed down carefully from one generation to the next, or false teachers come in. But look what Paul told the church at Thessalonica. Chapter 5, verse 27, he says, "I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren." And so because of that, we have these epistles that are collected in our Bible today. So what we want to do real quick before we go any further, we're going to look at the organization of the Scriptures, the Bible. So we have a Bible here, and this Bible includes the writings of God's inspired prophets from the beginning to the end, okay? And we have them collected. If you look here now, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. And you go from Moses, then you go to the period of the Judges, and we have that written down. This is after the children of Israel came into the land of the Promised Land, and they were occupied under time of Judges for about 400 years, and we have those. Those are books of history. And then we go from the Judges to the times of the kings. That's 1 and 2 Chronicles, 1 and 2 Kings. And those were things written. And while the kings were ruling, God sent prophets to these kings and to the nations of Israel during that time to instruct them on how to live, to speak to God's people on the behalf of God. In this, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, which is where we're at right now, in our Sunday morning teaching, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, all the way to Malachi, which is the last book of the Bible. And we also have Psalms, which most of them were written by King David during his reign. And then we go to a period of 70 years when they came back, they were exiled for 70 years, and they come back from captivity after they were captured. And then there's 400 years of silence where God doesn't send any prophet at all. And during that 400 years of silence, they're waiting on the special messenger that Malachi told them would come. After the 400 years of silence, the special messenger that Malachi said would come came, John the Baptist. He said that the Savior, the promised Savior would come that was promised all the way back from Moses and passed down through the prophets. John the Baptist said he would come, he came. After the promised Savior came, he fulfilled what the prophets wrote about him. He then dies, he's buried, he's risen again, but before he goes, he ordains apostles. And these apostles now are going to be the modern prophets to the New Testament church. As the prophets wrote to Israel, now these prophets called apostles right to the church. And so we have here the church. And that brings us to where we are today. And so when you're looking at the New Testament, which basically means what was written to the church, that simply is a continuation of what these men wrote. We're looking at this breakdown. The first part of the New Testament are the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are the narratives that tell us about the coming of Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection. Those are the narratives. Those are historical and very informative works. After the Gospels, we then have the Book of Acts, which tells us about the Acts of the apostles, what the apostles did. And remember, that transitions us from the Old Testament to the Book of Acts. After the Book of Acts, which tells us how they went out and shared the gospel to the different nations and different cities around them and how the churches began to get established, we then see the letters that the apostles wrote to those churches to get them grounded in the faith. So we move the gospels to the Acts and then to the epistles or to the letters that were written. Okay? After the epistles, we have one very special book. That is the Book of the Revelation. And what the Revelation does, it puts a period on all of the prophetic writings in the New Testament. And so we begin with Genesis. Genesis tells us how it all began. And then it flows through all this Old Testament writing into the gospels, into the Acts, into the epistles, and then the Revelation, as Genesis tells us how it all began, Revelation tells us how it all ends. Absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. All this written over all these hundreds of years, well over a thousand years, and yet it all seamlessly goes together, put together piece by piece by piece, telling the same story to all of these different people. And so now we have this amazing collection. As these letters were written to the churches back then, and as they were written to the nation of Israel back then, they collected them, they kept them, and they passed them down from one generation to the next. And then when the apostles wrote the letters, they kept them, they collected them, they passed them down from one generation to the next. And now here we have the same collection that was passed down from one generation to the next generation to the next generation over all these hundreds of years, thousands of years now. What we do every time, like during vacation Bible school last week, we gave away a lot of Bibles to children, some who have never held one in their hands. And you know what happens when we print Bibles and we hand a Bible to the next generation? We're doing for them what was done for us. We're simply, we are the church still preserving the sacred letters, cherishing them, protecting them, willing to die for them, and then handing them down to the next generation so they can have God's message given to them as well. That's cool folks. That's really cool. All right. Now, if you'll look in the book of Luke, chapter 24, Luke chapter 24, I like looking in the comments where you all are turning to the, someone said it never occurred to me that the apostles were prophets, but of course they were. Yeah, I enjoy looking at the comments in the middle of instruction. I do read them. I read them all. In Luke chapter 24, this is after Jesus' resurrection, and he's speaking to some of his disciples about his death, burial, and resurrection. And look what he says here. In Luke 24, 44, it says, "And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms," King David, isn't that neat, "concerning me. Then open he there understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. He said, Jesus said, Moses, these prophets, and even the psalms, they were talking about me. And then he allowed them to understand those Old Testament writings, and now suddenly when they look at the sacrifices in the Old Testament, they realize, ah, that was talking about the sacrifice that Christ would make. When they saw Moses leading them out of Egypt, they said, ah, that was a picture of Jesus leading us out of sin, and in our bondage to sin and death and Satan. And he opened their understanding so they could get it. And now, thank God, he's opened our understanding, and we're still passing this along. But do you notice how Jesus summarized that Old Testament? Moses, the prophets, the psalms, it was all about me. And so now Jesus, of whom all of those writings were about, now sends his apostles to continue the explanation of the Old, and how it all comes together. And here we are with this precious book, and so we need to learn this book, learn it well, and use it as all the authority that God has given us in our life. This is what tells us what's right, what tells us what's wrong, how to live, how not to live, and the direction we should go. Now, with all that said, what we're going to do now, as I said before, the apostles in these epistles, these letters, wrote the churches concerning situations that they needed to understand. Things to give a foundation for how the church functions, and to give order to the church as well as understanding. So what we're going to do for the rest of this class this morning is look at one of those issues that God's Word addresses. And we have to understand, in the Scriptures, not everything is addressed directly. Many things are addressed indirectly, okay? And we learn through deduction. You know what deduction is? If we read something, then we deduct or we come to a conclusion from what we've read, okay? For example, let's say that, well, I have never, James Johnson, who is the truck driver, the other truck driver in our church, he loves to go out to eat. He loves it, all right? Now, he's never come out and said, I have never heard him say, I love to go out to eat. But what I have heard him say over and over and over again is, I'm here eating now. I'm going to go over here and eat now. This was good food here. They used to have a good lunch here. They don't anymore. And so, and he puts that out all the time. And so, through his writings, I can then deduct, this man likes going out to eat. He's a foodie, okay? And so, that's deduction. Now, we're going to see that here. Now, we never add to God's word. We never come in and say something that God's word doesn't say, okay? But we do say what God's word says, and we believe every word of it. Now, watch this now. This is one of the things that the epistles are going to deal with directly and indirectly. So, we learn both ways. And one of the things we learn is, is when to meet, when to gather as a church. Should we gather as believers once we hear the gospel? If so, when do we gather? How should that be? There's debates on this on, you know, should it be Saturday? Should it be Sunday? Or a lot of other people say, well, you don't have to gather at all. Organized religion's bad. Have you ever heard that before? Man, that's foolish, okay? All that's foolish. So, we go to the Scriptures, and we're going to see that what we're doing this morning by meeting together as a body of believers is not something we just came up with on our own. Look here now in Luke chapter 24. Luke chapter 24. Watch now how the gospels and the epistles flow together. Luke chapter 24. This is talking about the resurrection of Christ. Are you ready? Luke chapter 24. We're going to look at the first two verses. All right, let's look here now, verse 1. "Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared and certain others with them, and they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre." So, they found that Jesus had risen from the dead. Oops. When? Well, yes, early in the morning. But what day? First day of the week. First day of the week. That's when Jesus was raised from the dead. Now, in John chapter 20, the gospel of John, if you're in Luke, just flip to the right and you'll hit John. So if you're in Luke 24, just flip to the right and you'll run to the gospel of John and turn to chapter 20. In John chapter 20, we now learn something through deduction. We learn directly that Jesus rose from the dead the first day of the week. Now we're going to learn something indirectly, and I want you to tell me what it is. I'm not going to tell you what we learn indirectly. I want you to read and you to have deductive reasoning. Look now if you would in John 20 verse 19. "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst and said unto them, "Peace be unto you." What did we deduct from that? They were gathered on the first day of the week. They were gathered on the first day of the week. The church, after Jesus rose from the dead, began gathering on the first day of the week. What's the next thing we deduct from that? There's another, there's a, and don't worry about the fear of the Jews. We're not, we don't have that right now. But there's something else very important when we see this. What else do we see? Who else was gathered with them? Mm-hmm. That's exactly right. "Came Jesus and stood in the midst and said unto them, "Peace be unto you." If you'll remember before Jesus died on the cross, He told them, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them." And so what we're learning is this. Jesus rose from the dead the first day of the week. The early disciples met on the first day of the week, and Jesus met with them. They were gathered in His name, and He was there. All right, let's look here now if you would. In John, someone said, "Well, you know all that, yeah, they gather the first day of the week, but that's just a coincidence." John chapter 20, look now in verse 26. "And after eight days, again His disciples were within." Watch this now. "After eight days, again His disciples were within." I meant to bring a calendar, and I forgot it, but here we go. Sunday, Monday, I'm running out of space. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and go back here to Sunday. Now watch. Say this was a calendar, and it was all stretched out nice and pretty. They're meeting on the first day of the week. They're meeting in the morning. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, watch. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. First day of the week. So there's this pattern, which, by the way, is why they were circumcised on the eighth day. It was always a new beginning of a new week. So we have Jesus raised from the dead, which shows new life, a new beginning for mankind. So they meet on the first day of the week, and from there after eight days ever, every time since. A new beginning, a new beginning, a new beginning. We're here today on Sunday showing that we are new creatures in Jesus Christ, the old people we were are passed away. They're dead. We're now new and alive in Jesus Christ. Our sins are washed away. We're meeting on the eighth day, which is really the first day. Does that make sense? It's good. It all comes together, just like with God telling Abraham to circumcise his children on the eighth day. All right, now look here now, and let's turn to the book of Acts. The book of Acts. Oh, by the way, John chapter 20 verse 26, and after eight days again, his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus. Isn't that amazing? There's Jesus again. And guess what? Guess who's here with us right now? Jesus is here with us right now. And are you learning something this morning? Do you know why you're learning something? Because Jesus is teaching you. He's using his prophets, the apostles, that he spoke through. He's got a man up here simply explaining what they wrote. And so as Jesus spoke through them, then he is now speaking through them today to you, and we're learning together. Jesus comes when his children meet together, and he's still teaching them and feeding them and encouraging them and loving on them today. My goodness, that's good. Now look here if you would in Acts chapter 20. Acts chapter 20. Praise Jesus, amen, Michelle. Praise Jesus. Acts chapter 20. Boy, Jesus even showing up in Illinois, because we're all assembled together. Man, isn't that beautiful? All right, now look here now. Acts chapter 20 verse 7. Watch this now. Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them ready to depart on the morrow, and he continued to speak until midnight. Wow. Well, we're not going to preach until midnight tonight, okay? But the thing to learn is this. They're still meeting on the first day of the week, and when they met, they fellowshiped, they broke bread. We did that last Sunday. We fellowshiped, we broke bread, and we preached. Isn't that beautiful? Look now, 1 Corinthians chapter 16. If you're in Acts, just turn to the right, and by going to the 1 Corinthians, that's telling us it's the first letter that was written by an apostle to the Corinthian people and other words to the church at Corinth. And if it's 1 Corinthians, that means there's got to be a second one coming after it, right? So Paul wrote two letters to the Corinthian church, but look here what Paul told the Corinthian church, which were Gentile people, not Jews and Jerusalem, they're Gentile people, but look what he told them in 1 Corinthians 16 too. He says, "Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in stores, God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." So they were meeting, what do we deduct from that? They were meeting on the first day of the week still. The church is meeting on the first day of the week. They were commanded to meet on the first day of the week here. See that? Because he's telling them, with the authority of an apostle, "Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in stores, God hath prospered him." In other words, they're going to give their offerings, okay? And so there's order here. Look now in Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10. And we're almost done here. Hebrews chapter 10. It's going to be toward the end of the... There you got it, man. All right. It all runs together because my eyes... Hey, man, wouldn't that make a great name for a coffee shop, Hebrews? There is one. Have a blessed day. Is there? Man, that's great. Someone already got my idea. All right. A little late. Christian talking to coffee shops. Yep, that's good. All right, Hebrews chapter 10. Now this is an epistle written to Hebrew people, to Jews. But it concerns us too, but it's primarily written for Hebrew people who are struggling with their identification as Jews under the law and their identification as Jews who are Christians. What do we do with the law now? How does that work? So Paul writes them and explains Jesus fulfilled the law. And so all those Old Testament sacrifices, don't worry about those anymore. They couldn't help you. They all pointed to Christ. And that's basically what Hebrews is writing about. But when we're looking here in chapter 10, there's something in 24 and 25, that's very important to our lesson today. Paul says, or I say Paul, we don't know who wrote Hebrews, but the writer says, "And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works." How are we going to consider one another? Verse 25, "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together." You know what most people do when they come to church? We had, I think, three different sets of visitors the Sunday after someone tried to assassinate Trump. And I told them then, if you're coming because of what happened yesterday or the day before, you know, you need Jesus every day of the week, not just right after something happens to Donald Trump. And none of them came back the next day. We hadn't seen them since. None of them. I saw the same thing on 9/11. But here's the thing. When most people come to church, they think of what's it going to do for me? What am I going to get out of it? But interestingly, it says here, "Let us consider one another not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together." Because when we assemble together, we're provoking one another to love and to good works. You can't hug someone from the house. You can't encourage someone in the faith from the house. If you're not communicating with them, there's something about an assembly of people coming together that encourages one another. And I'm not kidding. When I walk in here in the morning, and I see a pretty much full class here, and I see Jonathan, because I think there was some sickness in the gerryminnis, I see Jonathan tuning in online watching. I've got a full class. I see the lakes tuning in online. They're assembling together with us virtually. It encourages my heart. When I know someone's out and they're missing God's word, it discourages me. Here's Jeff walking from down the road. All he's thinking in his mind is, "I'm going to go to church this morning." I see him walking, and my heart gets filled with joy watching him coming down the street to meet with the believers. That's the truth. It encourages one another. How would you like it if me and Brother Shepherd just, you know, we're just, "Well, I got some, you know, we got family coming in. We're going to stay at the house this week. We'll catch up with you all later." That would discourage. You know what that would do? That would then set the bar for everybody else. When you, as an individual believer, on the first day of the week, instead of setting that time aside, together with believers, you instead decide, "I'm going to do A, B, C, and D instead." If you physically can't make it, that's understandable. If you're sick, we fully understand. That's what we call God providentially hindering us, okay? It's the providence of God. It's an act of God or whatever. We can't make it. But a lot of people say, "You know what? My grandchild has a soccer game on Sunday. I'm going to go to the soccer game instead of go to church." That discourages people because you're telling those people, when you say, "I'm going to go to the soccer game on Sunday," you're telling the people, "To me, church is good." But if a soccer game comes up, that takes priority over meeting with the brethren and learning God's Word. That's what you're saying because that's what you're doing. It discourages other people. There's a lot of times I've heard people say, "Well, Brother so-and-so does this." Or, "Sister so-and-so has done this." It'll be okay if I do this. You're setting an example for other people. My wife and I, man, since I've been a believer, there were times when I was on patrol. And if I was on patrol, I'd be at the church in uniform. There were times when maybe someone got hit by a car. Well, thank God somebody's willing to do that because if one of us have a heart attack on Sunday, we'll be glad there's someone at the emergency room to help us, right? So we understand there's some things, all right, but we should never take a job that keeps us out of church all the time. We should never put anything in our lives before gathering together with the saints. And if I'm out of town, this is back before we were able to tune in on the Internet, if I was out of town, I would go, you know, like on vacation or something, which I don't ever do. But if I was out of town for some reason, I would go to church. If it was Sunday, I'd show up at a church, and I'd go to church and worship with them. Now if I go out of town, which I don't do on Sunday, but if I were to be out on Wednesday or something like that, I gather together with God's people online, and I attend with y'all and listen to Brother Shepherd preach. But you're considering other people. It's not just about you. It's not just about me. We're a body, and a body meets together. And I thank God for your faithful attendance to this class. I thank God for your faithful attendance to the church. But always remember, when you're missing, there's something missing here. And if you're missing here, then remember Jesus has showed up, and you didn't show up to learn from Him and to hear from Him. And let me say this. If you're watching online today, if you can, the people, many of the people that we have here, they're from out of state. We have some that watch from other countries that tune in. They can't make it here. It's just absolutely impossible. And they don't have a good church home in their area. But if you're here, and you can come to church, then consider other people and realize, you know, instead of me just showing up and watching, maybe I should show up and encourage somebody and let them know, "Hey, I'm here. I care. I care about y'all. I want to participate in the church." And show up and be an encouragement. You know, what if everybody, what if everybody who could come to church decided not to? What if we all, if we were from this area and we could drive to church on Sunday mornings, decided we'll just stay home and watch it online? You know, here I am. I'll sit on my couch, and I'll put a tie on, and I'll preach to you online. Y'all show up online. Man, you know what would happen after a while. I'll tell you what would happen. After a while, people would fall off. You know what else would happen? And we did this one time. Before we had the ability to broadcast online like this, and I've got to go, the ability to broadcast online like this, we had a person who wanted to listen to the message and said she couldn't come to church due to physical impairments. So what we would do, we would call her on the phone, set the phone next to the speaker on the microphone, and let her hear the message. It was a great idea. Except one day, we had to pick the phone up. And in the middle of the message, I forgot what caused us to pick it up, maybe to see, make sure she was still online or whatever, or still on the line. And the television was going. We could hear the television in the background. So, you know, are you listening to me or Matt Dillon, you know? I mean... So next thing you know, we're baking, we're doing chores, and we're listening to this in the background, and we're not setting that time aside to meet with God's people, to meet with God's Son and learn God's Word. So if you can come, I hope to see you here next Sunday. And if you can't, I hope to see you online next door here in just a few minutes. Thank you.