A Place for Faith: The Ends of the Earth

I have enjoyed our time in the Letter of Colossians. We wrap it up this morning with another look at the introductory comments of Paul, particularly verses 6 and 10. 

The Gospel Goes Where You Go:

“The gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world” - Colossians 1:6

Paul gets around. 

God used the communication and mobility afforded by the Roman Empire to spread the gospel. Rome conquered most of the known world two thousand years ago, and the gospel traveled those Roman roads, written and spoken in Koine Greek. In Colossians Paul is writing to a city in Greece from the capital of the Roman Empire. We try to figure out where he is when he writes each letter because he could be in so many different countries or cities. 

The printing press was invented by Gutenberg around 1440. This new method of mass communication spread rapidly before Martin Luther initiated his reform in 1517. Thus we had the gospel movement called the Reformation. 

• What Gutenberg wouldn’t have given for a press like those that printed the Times-Picayune in that state-of-the-art newspaper building beside I-10 with its needle tower. Those printing presses were recently sold as scrap to a salvage company. Workmen came into that building and cut the presses into pieces so they could move them out. 

Digital technology is now replacing the printing press in all venues. And the gospel is now riding this new wave. 

• I bought a book while I was traveling 70 mph on I-10 yesterday, and Janet read it to me as I drove. 

• Nathan McQuary, our black-bearded media director, created a poster on Facebook two weeks ago that has now been shared 500 times and reached more than 62,000 people. 

It is vitally important that you elevate the gospel in your life. You are a bearer both of the image of God, as all people are, but also of the gospel of God, as followers of Jesus are. We received and understood the good news through the faithfulness of those who came before us and shared with us. 

We must see our own role in the world in connection with the gospel. Your potential destinations are innumerable both geographically and digitally. Our members travel the earth for reasons related to government, business, military, and leisure. Many of you could say that you have been “all over the world,” using Paul’s phrase. You may have observed that the gospel is growing “all over the world.” 

The world has changed. But we who are stewards of the Word of God ride the waves of change as others did before us. 

The Gospel Grows Where You Grow:

"bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God." - Colossians 1:10. 

Verse 6 is explained in part by verse 10. If you want to know what the gospel was doing all over the world all you had to do was look at the Colossians. 

• It bears fruit in every good work. This is the external fruit of the gospel that anyone can see. People around you ought to be seeing it in your life: the Care Effect. 

• It grows people in their knowledge of God. This is the internal activity of the gospel in you. 

God designed the gospel for the whole world. In Acts 13:47 Paul quotes Isaiah: “‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth (eschatou teis geis).’” Eschaton means “last”. 

• Paul was being made a light by God. 

• Paul was headed to the “ends.” Jesus used this very phrase: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (eschatou teis geis)." (Acts 1:8). 

• The KJV “uttermost” helps me understand this phrase. It’s about the extremities of life. It includes the wherever, whenever, and whatever of my life. 

We all grow at the edges. We do not grow in the ruts. We grow on the roads. We do not grow in comfort. We grow in challenge.

• I received a prayer request from a missionary couple who are living in an extremely dangerous place. They have grown in their faith unbelievably as they have walked the edges of life for the sake of the gospel. 

• Jesus was perfected in his extremity. He left his heavenly home to enter this world. He spent his adulthood waiting for the “hour” when he would be “delivered into the hands of sinners” (Matthew 26:45). That’s edgy. 

• Paul moved to the edge, living as a nomad in his world. He gave up comfort, family for the sake of the gospel.

• The Pilgrims sailed to the edges across the Atlantic Ocean. They suffered hardship and sorrow. They felt loneliness and isolation in their earthly habitation.

• You touch the edges, dislocated. You feel like a stranger. You have left the familiar haunts of your childhood, or those haunts have left you—changed so much that you scarcely recognize them. 

• Peter wrote to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia (1 Peter 1:1). Some were physically dislocated, but all followers of Jesus are spiritual dislocated. 

Jim Reeves was born in tiny Galloway, Texas. He traveled the world singing and penned and sung these words: 

This world is not my home,

I’m just a-traveling through. 

My treasures are laid up,

somewhere beyond the blue. 

The angels beckon me

from heaven’s open door, 

And I can’t feel at home

in this world anymore. 

The Gospel Works In Your World:

"From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I."  - Psalms 61:2

Lottie Moon lived on the edge as a female missionary. The gospel itself is cutting edge. “I am with you always, even to the consummation of the age” (Matthew. 28:20). Human history finds its proper fulfillment, completion, in Christ. 

Some people have misinterpreted the gospel as some throwback to a previous era of history. That is simply not true. While we are custodians of truths that never change, the gospel adapts to new conditions and fosters creativity and innovation in the human family. 

The good news is rooted in two central truths: 

• The amazing goodness of God guarantees God’s presence in our journeys and assures us that the purposes of God are faithfully worked out in our lives. 

• Our amazing capacity as humans made in God’s image means we can live in the light of God’s love and respond faithfully in love to all that God has done for us and in us. This emphasis on the individual standing alone before God has elevated the importance of the individual everywhere in the world. It stands in conflict with all totalitarianism whether communist or fascist. It protects human life in all cultures. 

Isaiah 24:16: From the ends of the earth we hear singing: “Glory to the Righteous One.”

The gospel so much transcend place as invade place, taking root in every place. 

Janet and I flew 15,000 air miles to Papua New Guinea. I was in a remote village. A group of men came to the back door and laid down some fossils that they used for currency and asked if I would like to buy them. I saw their bare backs and bare feet, the bracelets of grass. I was amazed at the strangeness of the world. 

Then with a rush the intolerable craving 

Shivered through me like a trumpet call. 

Oh, to save these! To perish in their saving! 

To die for their life, Be offered for them all!  - Poem, St. Paul