The book of Colossians was written to the church at Colossae by the Apostle Paul. And it was written while he was imprisoned during his first imprisonment. To give you a little background, Paul was not the one who planted the church at Colossae.
Colossae is located approximately a little over 100 miles east of Ephesus. Ephesus sits on a port. And Ephesus was one of the main cities of Macedonia at that time.
And Colossae had been a city that was located on a trade route in the hills of that region. But it was beginning to decline in its importance as a city. Today, Colossae would be located in what would be the region of Turkey in that area of the world.
Colossae was also located just about 10 miles from Laodicea. And those of you who are familiar with the book of Revelation will realize that Laodicea was one of the seven churches that Jesus addressed. Colossae had, they’re not real certain other than what Paul mentions in this letter of a man by the name of Epaphroditus who was evidently a leader in the church of Colossae and may have very well had been saved in Ephesus.
This is a different Epaphroditus than what you find in other writings of Paul. But he may have been saved in Ephesus and then taken the gospel to Colossae. He had taken the gospel there and the people had received it with great joy.
But now something was happening and Paul had heard about it. And the people were being influenced by false teachers. And Paul addresses various false doctrines in this letter that had begun to enter into the church through these false teachers.
These false teachers were called Gnostics. Gnosticism is with us today. Gnosticism is in the church today.
The Gnostics believed that they had special knowledge that the average person could not receive. They also believed that they had greater knowledge than even the apostles. And consequently you had to really listen to them and join their group in order to be part of this deeper knowledge.
The problem was it was all heresy and lies. And a lot of it had ties to the occult. Today in Judaism there are Gnostics in Judaism as well.
And if you’ve ever heard of the Kabbalah movement, these are mystics who combine occult techniques and occult practices and bring it into Judaism and tell the Jews that you need to do this in order to really know about God. The problem is the Lord tells us His Word is to be the foundation of our life. And it’s in His Word that He reveals Himself.
And it’s not some special forms of knowledge that only certain people possess. But He makes His Word known unto all men. That all men can be saved.
I remember a few years ago there was a man who wanted to come and speak at one of our conferences that our church here was putting on. And I would classify him as a Gnostic. And why would I say that? Well, he said that he had special knowledge that had been given to him from God.
And that if you had a King James Bible and a computer, you could get special messages that weren’t aware or made available to everybody else. Well, I find that anti-Christian, anti-biblical, and anti-God. God doesn’t demand that I have a computer that can somehow sort through words and pick out special messages by taking every such and such word and creating a new sentence and a new message.
That is a Gnostic. It’s one form of a Gnostic. In the Catholic Church there are Gnostics.
For example, part of the Jesuit society is steeped in Gnosticism. And they have certain beliefs that they have that unless you adhere to them, you really aren’t on God’s side. And if you look deep, they’re occultic beliefs.
Why would I say that we need to look at the book of Colossians today? As I mentioned, there’s a lot of Gnosticism and false teachings coming into the church today. And Paul addresses, and when we get a little later into his letter to the church at Colossae, you’re going to go, wow, that sounds like he’s writing it to things that are happening right today. Because the word of God is living, it’s powerful, and it touches us where we have needs.
So this book has been given to us to teach us the importance of God’s word and following only God’s word. Those of you who were in the adult class this morning were going through the book of Hebrews, and we were in chapter 5. In chapter 5, the author of Hebrews is warning against Christians become dull of hearing. And dull of hearing meant that they just didn’t want to take the effort or do what was necessary to get into the word of God and to really understand God’s word.
Because God doesn’t keep his word hidden from us, but he lays it out for all of us to understand. So let’s take a look and we’ll begin to read in the first chapter of the book of Colossians. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God and Timotheus, our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colossae, grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Colossians 1:1-14
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus our brother,
2 To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,
4 Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints,
5 For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;
6 Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth:
7 As ye also learned of Epaphras our dear fellowservant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ;
8 Who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit.
9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;
10 That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
11 Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness;
12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:
13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
14 In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:
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I’m sure that they probably heard of Paul because Paul has sent other letters to other churches in the region. And one of the things that he asks that they would do with these letters is pass them from church to church. The churches that Paul is writing to, guess what, they didn’t have the New Testament.
The New Testament was being compiled even as Paul was writing these letters, even as the apostles had recorded the events of Christ’s incarnation and his life as he walked on this earth in the Gospels and his death and resurrection in the Gospels. And even as it had been being recorded by Luke as he went on the missionary journeys with the apostle Paul and all of that was being recorded in the book of Acts. And then we had other things, prophecies that were being recorded by John and Jude and others that were going to be recorded, preserved and compiled and given to us as what we refer to as the New Testament or the New Covenant, the writings of the New Covenant.
Now, as you look at what Paul is writing here, he’s introducing them and some of them may know who he is and some may not, because he’s never been to this particular city. And he introduces them by telling them who he is. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ and it’s not that Paul made himself an apostle.
And that’s one of the things that you need to look at because there are those men that have come to Colossae now who are saying, you have to listen to me because I am an apostle. I am a greater instructor and have deeper knowledge than the apostles of Jesus. And they were coming and saying this.
So Paul introduces himself and he says, well, I’m an apostle of Jesus Christ, but it’s not by my will, it’s by the will of God. God has appointed me to this position by the will of God. And then he also introduces a young man that they may also know and that is Timothy.
Timothy had been left by Paul to be a minister in Ephesus, a church in the same region, I said, a hundred miles away. Timothy, he had written letters to Timothy from his imprisonments and he had instructed Timothy in how to be a minister and faithful servant of the Lord. Timothy had gone with Paul on some of his missionary journeys and we also know that Timothy had gone to Rome when Paul was in prison to visit him.
And so Paul views Timothy as his son in the faith, if you would. And he is writing saying, I’m an apostle that has been called by God and also Timothy is with me so that you can have an understanding of what our beliefs is and what my letter is going to be about to you. Then he goes on and he says, To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are in Colossae.
This letter wasn’t written to the unbelievers. It wasn’t written to the pagans. It was written to the Christians.
And it was written to them and he calls them out and he says, saints and faithful believers. There are those that have said, saints are only people that can be called saints that have done something extraordinary for God. For example, the Roman Catholic Church says, unless a miracle has been performed by you, you can’t be called a saint.
Well, that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says that every person who is a believer in Jesus Christ, you trust in the Lord, give your heart to Him, you are now a saint in the Lord. You are walking with God, you are one of His, He has transformed your character, made you a new person in Christ.
And it’s all based upon your belief in Him and what Jesus has done for you, not what you can do for Him. And because of what He’s done for you, you are now a different person and you can be called His saint or believer in Him. So this is written to the saints and it’s written to those who trust and have given their life to the faithful brethren in Christ, which are Colossae.
Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. And he reminds them of the two great things that God has done for us. He’s extended His grace, that is His unmerited favor.
It’s not that we deserve anything, yet God’s given us His grace. And then He’s also extended peace to us. We’re no longer entities or at war with God because we’ve been brought into fellowship or a relationship with Him through Christ.
And so peace and grace are something that the believer experiences, which the unbeliever cannot until he gives and yields his heart to Jesus. He is still warring against God with his attitudes and actions and life, so he can have no peace with the Lord, and also he hasn’t found the full grace that is found in Jesus Christ because he hasn’t given his life to Him. But Paul addresses these who are believers and reminds them of God’s grace and peace.
And may that come to them. We give thanks to God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you. One of the things that you see that the Apostle Paul does is he constantly is praying for believers.
He’s praying for people that may be in the midst of spiritual battles and he intercedes on their behalf. He’s heard of the things that are happening in Colossae. He’s praying for them.
He’s going to pray that they have greater understanding. He’s going to pray that they will be able to come to base their knowledge upon God’s word and not the ideas and thoughts of men. He’s going to pray for them that they would make a greater influence in their community and in their world for the gospel.
And he’s going to pray for them that they would be drawn closer to the Lord and that they would walk in a deeper relationship with Him and that they would mature in their life. This is what we should be praying one for another. And pray that God would use each one of us in the areas that He places us to touch hearts and lives for the gospel.
Paul intercedes on their behalf. And he intercedes because they are believers and he’s heard what they’re doing. For the hope which was laid up for you in heaven were of ye heard before the word of the truth of the gospel which is come unto you as it is in all the world and bringeth forth fruit as it doth also in you since the day ye heard it and knew the grace of God in truth.
I want you to see Paul’s opening up and he doesn’t open up and immediately attack and bring about all the false teachings. But he reminds them of what it is to be a Christian. And he reminds them of where is the foundation of your faith found.
The foundation of your faith is found in the truth of God’s word. And so he mentions that. He also tells them why they’ve been saved.
And he says that they’ve been saved to bring forth fruit. And that as a true believer, God desires to see fruit in their life. That they would bring forth fruit.
What is the fruit that God tells us about? Well, in the book of Corinthians because the church at Corinth they got things a little mixed up on gifts of the spirit. It isn’t that we all have the same spiritual gifts. And God uses us all in the same way.
The apostle Paul gives an example that often times when we look at and study that particular passage of scripture and there’s a number of younger kids here. They think it’s pretty funny when you read that. Because the apostle Paul says that we’re not all mouths.
And that we’re not all eyes. And he uses the physical body to say that the body is put together for the purpose that it can function. And that it brings forth life.
And that you live. And if your eye was a mouth and your nose was a mouth and your ears were mouth, you couldn’t function very well. You wouldn’t be able to breathe.
You wouldn’t be able to see. You wouldn’t be able to hear. You’d have a good time eating, but that would be about it.
And talking. But the thing is what Paul is saying is that he’s given to us spiritual gifts and those spiritual gifts are to be used and they’re to bring forth fruit. And we’re to be part, God uses the Christians and he’s using the Christians here to bring forth fruit for his benefit.
And that every one of them is significant and every one of them has a specific place and purpose in God’s plan. Now, the false teachings, when we get there a little later, are going to say that no, you have to be all cookie cutters like us. You have to believe exactly what we believe and do exactly what we do and God will not use you in any other way.
That’s not what Paul is saying. Paul is saying the body of Christ is being put together and Peter builds on this as well. He calls us the temple in his letter to the church.
And we are the lively stones that are being formed together into the temple of God and each one of us is significant in bringing about worship to the Lord and honor to his name and being used by him to bring about fruit for his glory. So he tells him, for the hope which is laid up in you in heaven whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel. So what is the truth of the gospel? Well, you want to keep your hand right here and go back with me to Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1. And in Romans chapter 1 verse 16, Paul gives one of the key verses to unlocking the whole book of Romans.
He says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Okay, so what is the gospel of Christ? He’s not ashamed of it. He’s telling in Colossians that they’re to remember it’s by the gospel that they were saved.
So what is the gospel? He tells us, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. In other words, every person that believes in the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ, that our sins are forgiven, we are transformed, and we are redeemed and saved. And that’s the power of God unto the salvation of men.
That is at the heart of the gospel. That is the gospel. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith.
And so he’s saying here, the gospel is based upon faith and trust in the power of God to redeem and save men. But how does God do that? Paul goes on and he tells us in not only the book of Romans, but he’s going to tell us in Colossians. He told us in Philippians.
He told us in Ephesians. It’s evident in his teaching and preaching in the book of Acts. How men are redeemed and saved by the power of God is that Jesus came and he was God that came in the flesh, took on the form of man, and he lived without sin.
He never rebelled against the Father. But he did the will of the Father throughout his whole life. That he who was without sin could become the second Adam and pay the penalty for the sin.
And the first Adam not only had committed, but had foisted upon all his descendants, that’s you and me, and that we became sinners like our forefather Adam when he sinned and rebelled against God. And so what happened is when Jesus went to the cross and died on the cross and paid the penalty with his blood, and by his stripes we are healed, our penalty was paid because God had told Adam way back when there would be no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood. And you need to understand the whole concept of walking in the newness of life in the Spirit and that that can only be done with the forgiveness of sin that is found in Jesus Christ as he pays the penalty that we couldn’t pay.
Because each one of us has violated God’s law and violated God’s character. And so we see that Paul mentions that to them and says, this gospel and the power of this gospel that you heard and it’s in you and it’s transformed you, it’s going to continue to work. And it’s found in the word of the truth of the gospel, which is come unto you as it is in the world and bringeth forth fruit as it doth also in you.
So the gospel has gone out into the world and they have seen the fruit of the gospel in their own lives. Now remember I said Colossae was located in what was Mesopotamia region of the world and it’s in what was Turkey today, it’s east of Ephesus. It would have the same pagan beliefs as the cities around it and yet when the gospel came these people were changed and in their lives they saw the fruit of the gospel.
The fruit of the gospel was the transformation of their character and how the things that they used to hate they now loved and what they used to love they now hated. In that they hated the world today after they became Christians and now they love God whom they hated before. And so we see the fruit of the gospel manifest or revealed in their own lives and in the formation of this group of believers in Colossae.
But it’s not only going to stop, it’s not going to just stop there but Paul tells them you need to be used of God to go forth and bear more fruit. And one of the things that you see is that the gospel even under tremendous pressure from those that hate God and hate Jesus still went forth. And it was just a matter of a few hundred years and the gospel had literally spread all over what was we would call Asia Minor or the Middle East and it spread into Europe, into Spain and England and then you find out that it spread even further than that and it didn’t take long.
And the fruit of God’s other truth was bore out in the lives and the transformation of people’s lives. As you also learn from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant who is for you a faithful minister of Christ. And I want you to see he emphasizes here a faithful minister.
He emphasized the fact that he, Paul, was appointed by God to be an apostle and he’s pointing out there is a difference between the one who comes truly in the name of Christ with the true gospel and you need to not get the true gospel confused with false gospels. For the true gospel, as he said, is found in the truth of God’s word and in the revelation of Jesus Christ paying the penalty for our sin that we could have eternal life and be forgiven. Who are also declared unto us your love in the spirit.
And so Epaphras had talked to Paul and declared unto him the depth of the love that these people had for Jesus. Now, I just want to get into the beginning where he lays down some specific things that they are to possess. First of all, he says, for this cause, what is the cause? The cause of the gospel.
The cause of bearing fruit. The cause of the truth of God’s word. For this cause, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that ye might be filled with the following.
And I want you to see what his desire is. Number one, the knowledge of his will in all wisdom. God wants you to know his will.
What is God’s will for your life? Have you ever stopped to think about that? You know that God’s will is laid out for you here. Now, I don’t necessarily say God will hit you with a bolt of lightning and say, okay, now I want you to move to such and such a city and do such and such a job. But he’s got a will for your life, and the will is, his will for each one of us here is, number one, that we bear fruit for him.
Number two, that we grow in his wisdom and knowledge. And number three, that we become more Christlike.
God wants you to know his will. What is God’s will for your life? Have you ever stopped to think about that? You know that God’s will is laid out for you here. Now, I don’t necessarily say God will hit you with a bolt of lightning and say, okay, now I want you to move to such and such a city and do such and such a job.
But he’s got a will for your life, and his will for each one of us here is, number one, that we bear fruit for him. Number two, that we grow in his wisdom and knowledge. And number three, that we become more Christ-like in our character.
And as we do those three things, God will open up doors of opportunity and ministry for us where he can use us to bear fruit, where he can use us to share our knowledge of the truth of his word, where he can use us to proclaim the gospel. And it may not be where you think you will want to go, but God will open up doors for you to go there. And it’s for us to walk through them.
So, Paul is telling them that they pray that they’ll have this knowledge of his will, and in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. How do you know the will of God? Two things, wisdom and spiritual understanding. You can’t grow if you have no understanding of the word of God.
One of the things that we were studying this morning was the dullness of hearing in Hebrews. And the Hebrew Christians, which the author of Hebrews is writing the book to the Hebrew Christians, they had a beginning that the pagans didn’t have, because they had what we refer to as the Old Testament, but they had the writings of the law, they had the writings of the prophets, they had the writings of the history of Israel, they had the writings of the Psalms and the Psalmist, the poetry books of the Old Testament, they had what we refer to as the Old Testament. They had that, they’d grown up with it.
But had they applied the truth of that, and had they grown in the knowledge of what that was saying about who Jesus was, and what the New Testament would mean in this new covenant that had come through Christ. And what the author of Hebrews is saying is, you have become dull of hearing. You’re not really desiring to grow and know the deeper things of God in the sense of the truth of God’s word, not the Gnostic sense of deeper things, but the deeper things of God’s word by knowing God’s word.
One of the things that men often do, we just got done with Christmas, and if you have children or grandchildren, there probably were toys given or games given, and one thing that I know that at least I oftentimes do, I can’t speak for every man, but we think that somehow we don’t need instructions. We can put this thing together without reading the instructions. We can play the game without knowing how it’s supposed to be played.
And so we get out all the parts and pieces, and we start putting things together, and all of a sudden, things don’t fit. Or all of a sudden, it doesn’t work right. Or all of a sudden, we think we got it together, and I got all these parts left over.
Where are they supposed to go? This book is the instruction book for our life. And we’re not supposed to go about like me on Christmas Day, trying to put things together without reading the instructions. This gives us the direction that God has for our lives.
He gives us the purpose. He gives us the meaning. He gives us everything about what it is to be a Christian and how to live a Christian life.
But if we totally ignore it and say, Well, I’ve got Jesus. I accepted the gospel. I accepted Christ as my Savior.
He said He’s going to give me His Spirit, so I don’t need to do anything more. No, the Apostle says you need to grow in wisdom and knowledge of God’s Word. What is the difference between wisdom and knowledge? I’ve heard it explained this way.
Wisdom is the foundation of all the things that you gain and know about who God is and how He interacts with His creation and what He did and how He desires to work in His people. Wisdom is knowing that God is greater than His creation. Knowledge is the application of wisdom.
And that I take what God has revealed to me and I make application of it to my life and to those around me. And so Paul is telling them here that they pray that they will have knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. Not making it worldly understanding, but spiritual understanding.
How it applies to our lives in our spiritual walk with the Lord. That you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in all knowledge of God. So three things will come out of growing in knowledge and wisdom and the spiritual understanding.
The first is you’re going to walk worthy. You’re going to know how to live your life. You’re going to know how to act in the face of situations of life.
And you’re going to respond in a way that will bring glory to God and that people can see the work of Jesus Christ in your life. So walking worthy is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment concept of an application of the knowledge to the wisdom that God has revealed to us. And that each one of us is to be doing this.
And then he goes on and he says, Not only walking worthy unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work. Now he’s not just saying this to some of the people that he’s writing this letter to. But it’s to all the Christians at Colossae.
They’re all to bear fruit in their lives. They’re all to be used by God to touch other people. To proclaim the reality of his existence.
To stand for his truth in the face of the evil and lies of this world. And to reveal the very character of Jesus Christ through their life. So they’re to be fruitful in every good work, increasing again in the knowledge of God.
So we’re to daily desire to know more of who God is. And you know the amazing thing is the word tells us that he desires to reveal himself to us. Sometimes God reveals himself in ways that are amazing.
And you think of people that have been placed in situations that are extremely difficult. And they are suffering persecution. But yet all of a sudden God reveals himself in the midst of trial and tribulation.
I should have a different example but this one is so poignant. Because Betsy Ten Boom was Corrie Ten Boom’s sister. And Betsy Ten Boom really understood bearing fruit.
Not because I’ve got the best things and greatest ability and I’ve got a big megaphone. But bearing fruit where God places me. And understanding and growing in the wisdom and knowledge of God.
And how God does things that we don’t completely understand. Corrie and Betsy Ten Boom were taken into captivity by the Nazis during World War II. And placed in a concentration camp.
In this concentration camp were many Jewish women who had never heard the gospel. God through a miracle allowed Corrie to get her Bible into the dorm where the women were living. Because you weren’t supposed to have any possessions from your previous life when you lived in the world.
None of that was to come. They stripped you naked, gave you ugly clothes and took all your possessions. But God had miraculously allowed her to keep her Bible.
These women would have Bible studies with Corrie and Betsy Ten Boom. Many of these women would not leave that camp alive. But God had brought the gospel to them and many of them were saved.
One day Corrie was complaining because their dorm was filled with lice. And if you can imagine having lice in your bed and lice in your clothes and lice in your hair. And she was complaining to her sister Betsy.
And Betsy said, Oh Corrie, don’t you see it’s the hand of God. We can have Bible studies because the guards won’t come in here because of the lice. So we can teach these women about Jesus because of the lice.
I don’t know if I could have that vision but that’s the type of thing that Paul’s talking about. Being able to understand the situation and we know so much about who God is. That he does things for his glory and our good even though sometimes we can’t see it.
But he does. What are the lice in your life that you complain about instead of seeing how God uses them. And that’s what Paul is talking to these people.
They wanted, what they had done is they had opened themselves up to these false teachers. Because they came and said we can give you something that nobody else has got. And you will have something that nobody else will understand.
But you will. And Paul was saying no. You are to bear fruit with the gospel of Jesus Christ laid down by the truth of God’s word.
And it’s for everyone. And he’s going to use you in marvelous ways. Ways you don’t even expect or see.
And all you have to do is grow in his knowledge of who he is and how he works. Some of the times you read the history of the Jewish people. And you look at the life of Joseph.
And again, the same concept. God had to deal with eleven hard-hearted brothers who were jealous of Joseph. Who hated Joseph.
Why? Because Joseph was daddy’s favorite. Why? Because Joseph obeyed their dad. And he didn’t try to pull things over on their dad.
And the other brothers, you read some of the accounts. And they weren’t exactly the upstanding young men they were supposed to be. Having been raised in the house of Jacob.
So if you’re God, how do you deal with these people? He takes these men and their families. And puts them in a situation they can’t control. A famine.
And they hear how there’s plenty of food in Egypt. And their dad sends them to get the food in Egypt. But the brother they hated, God had sent before.
And this brother that now sits in a position of power and authority. Because he’s the right hand to Pharaoh. He holds more authority than any other person in Egypt except Pharaoh.
And they have to go and stand before him and ask for food. And they don’t know he’s their brother. They know all the things they did to Joseph.
They think Joseph’s dead. They sold him into slavery. Their whole plot was to kill him.
But thanks to Judah, they didn’t. They sold him into slavery instead of killing him. But that was God’s plan too.
And he sits there before these brothers. They’ve got one brother that’s not with them. The youngest brother.
The brother that is the full brother of Joseph. And that’s Benjamin. Had the same mom, same dad.
And he tells them, bring your other brother here and then I’ll think about doing something. They said, well, we can’t do that. Because our father’s lost one of our brothers already.
And if we bring him and something should happen to him that would kill our father, Joseph says, bring him. Bring him or I won’t give you anything. So they bargain with him and they say, how about if one of us stays here? And we become the price.
And if our brother doesn’t come, you can do with us what you will. Do you see what God’s doing to their hearts? And they end up bringing Benjamin to another series of events. Joseph has it so that it appears that Benjamin has stole something from him.
Because he wants to see the response of the brothers. But it’s another way God is preparing for the great event that’s about to happen. All the brothers end up coming before Joseph to plead that he will not punish Benjamin.
Can you imagine? All they’re doing the thing they hated and didn’t want to do for Joseph. But they’re doing it for Benjamin. And as they’re there, the scriptures tell us that Joseph tells everybody to leave except his brothers.
And he weeps. And all of a sudden they see it’s Joseph. They hadn’t seen it until then.
And they’re terrified. This is the one we tried to kill. This is the one that we were always harassing.
This is the one that… And Joseph looks at them and says these words. You meant it for evil. God meant it for good.
And you are standing here today that the lives of all of you and your families and my father could be preserved. Because I am here and can do that. God meant it for good.
Do you think that those young men had a different perspective of God after that day? Corrie Tenbrough, when she spoke, because Betsy died at the concentration camp, Corrie was released miraculously on the day that she was to be executed, as a matter of fact. She was released. And whenever she’d speak and tell of that account, what she, Corrie, had thought God meant for evil was really God meant for good.
I want to tell you, some of the most ungodly people have lost everything they have in California. You need to pray that God would open their eyes to what’s really important. Not mansions, not bank accounts, not political power, but a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And we need to pray that God would give us wisdom and knowledge. Let’s just close in prayer. Lord, I pray that you would just help us to understand this.
Help us not to be dull of hearing. Help us to have your wisdom and spiritual insight and knowledge. This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.