Wisdom and Understanding

At the beginning of his letter, Paul prays for the Colossian believers and gives us a model for our intercessory prayers for others.

“To persevere in an increasingly socialist culture, you’re going to have to decide whether to be a Christ-follower or merely a Christ-admirer. Søren Kierkegaard wrote something similar: “The admirer never makes any sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how he praises Christ, he renounces nothing, will not reconstruct his life, and will not let his life express what he supposedly admires. Not so for the follower. No, no. The follower aspires with all his strength to be what he admires.”
― Dr. David Jeremiah, Where Do We Go from Here?: How Tomorrow’s Prophecies Foreshadow Today’s Problems

Storm the throne of grace and persevere there and mercy will come down.
How many of you have started to pray for someone or something that was out of perspective?
Maybe somebody, you know, had gotten into a sinful relationship or, or somebody who was going through a trial and you pray for a little bit and God doesn’t do anything so you quit.
Isn’t it easy to do that? We, we are so instantaneous. Everything is right now.
You know, we pray and if it doesn’t happen the next day, we figure God must not be listening.
And so we go on to something else, but the Bible says, we should always pray and never stop until God does what we ask him to do.
You say what if He doesn’t? That’s not your problem.
Your problem is to pray and keep asking and keep asking all the time.
There are many voices in today’s world current time. 805 traffic is light.
Welcome to this week’s episode. I hope everyone is voicing their opinion.
It’s so frustrating, but I feel like she’s about everything. I think whatever works out for you.
That that’s what you should be doing. And Jesus is no exception to that.
A lot of people talking about, people disagree on what he was kind of a charitable guy.
People disagree on what he stood for and he could have just been a really nice guy.
He was just about following the rules. So how do we hear the voice of Christ above all?
What if there was a clear voice, the son of the image of the invisible God telling you exactly who Jesus is for in Him.

All things were created things in heaven and on earth, how he lived, he forgave us all our sins and what he means for your life.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. And this description of Christ places him above all.
Coming up on turning point.
Don’t forget to look back and be filled with gospel wakefulness, rejoice in who you are in Christ.
Think about all the things that are true of you that would not be true of you.
If Christ had not changed your life in the Bible, we have one of history’s most famous letters, the book of Colossians as relevant today as when it was first written, its words form a picture of Christ above all others.
The truth of Christ that endures for eternity in Dr Jeremiah’s new book, Christ above all, you’ll encounter a Jesus who is alive, interactive, victorious and supreme through a profound study of Colossians.
Dr Jeremiah brings Jesus into perfect focus providing solid teaching about Christ on which you can build a solid relationship with him.
Request Christ above all, when you give a gift of any amount in support of this program, and if you give $60 or more, Dr Jeremiah will send you the Christ above all set, which contains his new book, his entire teaching series on your Choice of CD or DVD and a correlating study guide request Christ above all book or set from turning point today.
Thank you for watching. Turning point.
Now here is Dr Jeremiah with his message, wisdom and understanding what a wonderful and exalted privilege.
We have to be able to come boldly before the throne of Almighty God with our prayers and our intercession.
Paul gives us a model for our intercessory prayers as he prays for the colosseum believers.
Paul prayed for the strength and growth and development and endurance and all the things we’re going to study.
First of all, we noticed about his prayer that he was very persistent, the persistence of Paul’s prayer.
Verse nine, he says, for this reason, we also, Since the day we heard it do not cease to pray for you and to ask Paul’s prayer for the Colossians believers was tireless.
If I’ve got this figured out, right.
By the time he wrote this letter, he could have been praying for them for nearly 10 years.
He never ceased praying for them just like Jesus taught, you know, Jesus taught us to be tireless in our prayers in numerous places.
For instance, he told a parable once about a neighbor who was asking for bread at midnight, and the unprepared host asks his neighbor for bread repeatedly.
Despite the fact that the man explains that he and his family are already in bed and basically said, go away and leave me alone.
In a later parable. A woman receives justice from an unjust judge only after persistent petitions.
Jesus concludes in his teaching that God will be far more willing to bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night.
God honors persistent prayer. And the Bible says, Jesus told this parable to teach his disciples that they should always pray and not give up John Wesley once put it this way, storm the throne of grace and persevere there and mercy will come down.
How many of you have started to pray for someone or something that was out of perspective?
Maybe somebody you know, had gotten into a sinful relationship or, or somebody who was going through a trial and you pray for a little bit and God doesn’t do anything so you quit.
Isn’t it easy to do that? We, we are so instantaneous.
Everything is right now, you know, we pray and if it doesn’t happen the next day, we figure God must not be listening.
And so we go on to something else.
But the Bible says, we should always pray and never stop until God does what we ask him to do.
You say what if He doesn’t? That’s not your problem.
Your problem is to pray and keep asking and keep asking all the time. Now, notice what his petition was.
What was he praying for? What was he saying to God That he wanted God to do for these Colossians?
Verse nine says it this way.
He says, I pray God that you might fill up these people with your knowledge in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
That’s a mouthful and it is so wonderful.
If we understand it, Paul’s prayer for the Colossians actually goes back to verse three of chapter one where Paul says, we give thanks to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you.
And his prayer continues all the way to verse 14.
In reality, there’s only one petition in this prayer and it’s here in the ninth verse.
What did he pray for? He prayed that the colosseum believers and he prayed for us in the process that we might be filled with knowledge.
And the word for knowledge is the Greek word epic gnosis, which conveys the idea of a full and complete and accurate knowledge.
In other words, knowledge of the truth, and this knowledge that Paul desires for the Colossians has two qualities, listen carefully.
It is to be knowledge that contains wisdom and understanding.
Have you ever noticed that knowledge doesn’t always translate into wisdom and understanding.
I mean, I once heard an intellectual described like this, he has so many degrees, he no longer has a temperature.
Did you ever hear a body like that?
Sometimes really smart people have difficulty navigating the simplicities of everyday life stories abound.
I recently read an article that asked readers to report the dumbest thing that the smartest person they know ever did.
It’s quite a read. One person reported. My brother in law is a pretty clever guy.
But one day he started a bath for his kid and couldn’t get the water to turn off and panic.
He called a plumber asking him to come quickly or the house is going to flood.
And his plumber friend simply said you could just pull the plug.
Another guy wrote my brother has a phd in bioengineering.
We were on a call one day and he was saying, I can’t find my phone.
Probably my kids took it. He didn’t realize where his phone was until I told him he was using it to talk to me.
And that’s just the beginning.
And you know, when we say that we have to admit we’ve all done something stupid.
I was reminded this week and when we first moved here, our family was young and, and we had gone to the fair in Del Mar and at our Children with us and all of a sudden I turned it down.
I said, where’s Jennifer she said, she’s on your shoulders.
So, you know, I’m not making fun of anybody else.
I’m saying sometimes what we know doesn’t always translate in to how we live.
one may have intellectual attainments, one may have a store of learning without being wise.
There are learned fools and there are ignorant fools in the knowledge of God’s will, both wisdom and insight are required.
So Paul is praying for these colossians and he’s saying, I want you to be filled with, with knowledge, but I wanted to be knowledge that works knowledge that makes a difference in your life.
So that’s the petition of His prayer.
Now, in these next few words, Paul is going to motivate the Colossians to be an answer to his prayer.
He’s gonna talk to them about the things that will happen to them.
If they are filled with knowledge and wisdom and understanding, we call this the possibilities of Paul’s prayers.
The argument of the passages concluded with Paul’s lofty presentation of the things that can happen to us when we are filled with the knowledge of God.
These five things follow.
If we are filled with the knowledge of God in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Here’s the first one We can please God continuously notice verse 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord fully pleasing him.
Listen to what Paul is praying.
I am praying for you that you will be filled with knowledge that contains wisdom and understanding that you will abeley walk worthy of the Lord and please Him all the time.
What does it mean to fully please the Lord?
That’s something that we can translate into the everyday language of our life.
Paul says you can live your life in such a way that you know that what you’re doing is fully pleasing to the Lord that he is pleased with your life.
The word they walk is defined by Paul as a walk that pleases God.
When we study the word of God, we develop an understanding of what pleases God.
This knowledge enables us to walk worthy of the Lord by putting it in practice.
Listen to me, here’s the principle, the better we know the Lord, the better we know what pleases the Lord Paul said, I want you to know God with all wisdom and understanding so that you can know how to please him.
So that every day as you get up in the morning, you know what to do and how to live in such a way as to please God, you can’t know how to please God if you don’t know God.
So the first characteristic of that kind of a life is you can please God continuously.
Here’s the second thing Paul tells us, you can produce fruit constantly verse 10.
He says, you can be fruitful in every good work. Now, we’re to bear fruit in every good work.
That means we’re to be productive as Christians were to do what God calls us to do, were to produce, were to be, to be difference makers in our world.
And you know, sometimes people say, well, what does it mean to be fruitful?
There are five New Testament examples of fruit bearing where the word fruit is actually used in the text.
I’m going to give them to you. There’s a little paradigm that I put together that helps me remember them.
First of all, fruit is character. It’s what you are Galatians.
5 22 says the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.
If any of those things are true in your life as a Christian and some of them should be, perhaps all of them should be.
That means you’re being fruitful, you’re being fruitful in your character.
And then if you keep reading in the New Testament, you come to Romans chapter six and verse 22.
And you discover that fruit is not only character, what you are, its conduct, what you do.
But now having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness.
Paul told the Romans that by their holy living and their conduct, they were being fruitful, fruitfulness is what you do.
It’s not just who you are, it’s what you do. And the 3rd 1 is conversation.
This is getting a little closer to where all of us live Fruit is character, what you are, its conduct, what you do and it’s conversation, what you say hebrews 1315 puts it this way.
Therefore, by him, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. Now watch this.
That is the fruit of our lips. Did you know that what you say?
And the words that come from your mouth, that’s being fruitful.
And the words that are used here in Hebrews are in the context of praise and worship.
So that when you come to church as you did today, and you sing praise to God, that’s being fruitful.
That’s an evidence of fruitfulness in your life. When you sing in the choir and you lead others in praise.
That’s a fruitfulness in your life.
And we’re building this little picture here that fruit is character, what you are, it’s conduct, what you do, it’s conversation, what you say.
Here’s one. Every Baptist preacher likes its contributions, what you give. I’m not making this up.
Listen to Philippians chapter four. Paul wrote to the Philippians and he said for even in this Thessaloniki, you sent once and again for my necessities.
Not that I seek the gift Paul wrote, but I seek fruit to abound to your account.
In other words, when Paul was writing to the Philippians, he said, I’m really glad that you sent me a gift to help me in my ministry.
He was a missionary. He didn’t have any.
He worked a little bit on his own, but he needed support of the people.
But then he went on to say, I’m not as glad that I got the gift as I am to.
You know that because you gave it, it put fruit in your account. You are fruitful in your giving.
The picture is growing. It’s what you are, it’s what you do.
It’s what you say, it’s what you give and finally fruit is converts. Who you win.
In other words, if you win people to Jesus Christ, that’s being fruitful.
Proverbs 1130 says, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he who wins souls is wise.
and Romans 1 13 says, Paul Writing, I do not want you to be unaware brethren that I often planned to come to you but was hindered until now.
And then he said that I might have some fruit among you just as among the other gentiles.
Paul said, I want to come and preach here because if I come, some people are gonna hear and they’re gonna get saved, then that will be fruitfulness.
Fruitfulness is if you’re a Christian, you help other people become Christians and you become fruitful.
Here’s the third thing he says, you will progress in knowledge consistently once again, verse 10, increasing in the knowledge of God.
How many of you know that the best way to grow as a Christian is to get the busy serving God, you don’t really start to grow as a Christian until you start to serve.
Because when you serve, you end up with all these questions.
Somebody once told me if you want to learn the Bible, be a teacher, what they meant by that was if you’re a teacher, you may not know very much.
But the first time you go to class and you get all these questions, the next week, you’ll be smarter than you were that week because you’ll go learn.
You grow as a Christian when you serve simply the same principle that you can’t really be healthy if you have no exercise at all.
So when I encourage you to serve, I’m not just saying we need you to come and help us.
We do. But I’m saying that’s one of the keys to your spiritual vitality and your spiritual growth is to serve.
So if you are filled with all knowledge in wisdom and understanding, you can persevere under pressure cheerfully, we’ve all been under pressure.
We’ve all been in a situation where we weren’t sure what was gonna happen next and we still don’t know for sure what’s gonna happen next.
But listen to what Paul says in verse 11, he says, when we live this way with knowledge, filled with wisdom and understanding, we will be strengthened with all might according to his glorious power for all patients and long suffering with joy.
Now, I don’t know about you when I see a verse like that I think.
Oh yeah, man, I need that strength and that power.
I need that might because I’m gonna face some really big deals here.
I’m gonna have to stand up for what I believe against people who don’t believe it or I’m gonna have to face a decision that and so I always think of power might and strength as what you need for the big decision.
But I’ve learned lately that it’s not that way at all. And this verse proves it.
You don’t need power, strengthened, might for the big challenges of life.
You need power, strength and might for the long haul of life.
How many of you know, the Christian life is not 100 yard dash, it’s a marathon and you need the strength and the power of God to stay on message and be the person you are called to be.
Paul uses two words here to describe what he wants us to be.
One of is the word endurance and the other is the word patience, endurance and patients are too great words which often keep company with each other.
You’re in a situation where you have difficult people. Are you gonna be difficult back to them?
Are you gonna be nasty to them?
The Bible says that if you are filled with knowledge and wisdom and understanding, you can live in the midst of these situations and be a redemptive person.
He prays for the endurance which no situation can defeat and patience which no person can destroy.
We do a lot to prove to the world who we are when we go through things, don’t we?
I mean, anybody can be happy and full of joy when life is good and you know, all the bills are paid and nobody’s sick and all the kids are doing pretty good.
Everybody can be filled with joy.
But when we have joy in the midst of the troubles that come to us periodically, we proved the difference.
We show people who Jesus is because only Jesus can do that. We can’t do it in our own strength.
We can’t just, I mean, we can choose joy in the power of the Holy Spirit, but we can’t choose joy in our own strength.
But when we have joy, when everything around us is crumbling, people see that I actually had a person come up to me once and asked me this question, why are you the way that you are?
Those are the kind of questions that ought to be coming to us periodically.
And then finally, we can please God continually. We can produce fruit constantly.
We can progress and knowledge consistently. We can persevere under pressure cheerfully.
And here’s the last one, we can praise God correctly.
Here, it says in verse 12, giving thanks to the father Paul is writing to the Colossians who were under stress and going through some stuff in their church.
And he says, don’t forget in the midst of all that’s happening to you to be thankful.
And then He gives us a thanksgiving list so that we can be thankful as well.
First of all, in verse 12, he says, we need to be thankful because God has remade us who has qualified us to be part takers of the inheritance of the saints in the light kind of a wordy sentence.
But all that means is that we were not capable in our own strength to relate to God.
But God remade us. He gave us a new system when we were born again, we got a new nature.
We didn’t get rid of the old one, but we got a new one and God enables us to that new nature, to approach God and to inherit the things that God wants us to have.
So be thankful that you’ve you’ve been made over, you’ve had the greatest makeover there’s ever been in history.
God has made you over when you became a Christian. Amen.
He’s made, you knew the bible says old things passed away. Behold all things become new.
He remains u Here’s the second thing He not only made you, he rescued you.
Verse 13, he has delivered us from the power of darkness. This deliverance is not an ongoing process.
This is not He is delivering us, although that’s true.
But here in this text, it’s saying there was a day when Almighty God delivered you from darkness when you became a Christian, you were delivered past tense, final, you were delivered from darkness.
Here’s the third one. This is one that kind of surprised me, caught me off guard almost and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love.
He has relocated us. He’s remade us, he’s rescued us and he’s relocated us.
You say, what are you talking about here? Well, he uses the word in this text.
That is the picture of what happened when an Eastern conqueror would come into a place that he had conquered.
Oftentimes, they would take the whole population and remove them to another location.
So they could never settle back into their old ways and they would literally be in charge.
So Paul says, when you were saved, God picked you up and took you out of the kingdom of Satan and he took you over and he plopped you down in the kingdom of the son of his love.
That’s what he calls him. Amen. Hallelujah.
And then finally, he redeemed us In whom we have redemption.
Verse 14 through his blood, the forgiveness of sin, redemption and forgiveness are one and the same redemption means to be bought back.
And forgiveness means to be totally released from whatever it is that you did.
You know, oftentimes we give thanks to God for all the things we have and we should, we should be thankful for the blessings of God.
But Paul wants us to take this a little bit deeper and never forget to be thankful for what God has done for us when he saved us, when he made us new.
We’re here today in this place because something happened in our lives. God changes us in this miraculous way.
And if we’re not careful, we allow that to sink into the backdrop.
Author Jared Wilson has a book out called Gospel Wakefulness for Wilson.
Gospel Wakefulness means that we treasure Christ more greatly and savor his power more sweetly as we know him more deeply.
Here’s how he illustrates this idea in a graphic illustration.
Imagine you were driving down the road and your car stalls at a railroad crossing.
You were understandably nervous as you try to reignite the car’s engine, but you become even more.
So when you see a train, turn the corner in the distance, the train engines horn is blaring and the engineer has thrown on the brakes, but you are too close and he’s coming too fast.
You move from trying to get the car to start from trying to unfasten your seat belt, but fear has made your hands stiff and shake and the train is rushing forward and you know you’re going to be hit and you are suddenly and from behind a man in a truck behind you has decided to ram into your car and push you off the tracks even as he is destroyed by the impact in the very spot you once occupied.
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s what Jesus Christ did for us.
You get out of the car shaken and frightened.
You’re in shock over your rescuer sacrifice and you’re grateful like you’ve never been grateful before.
There’s a gratitude in your heart.
You can’t even, it’s exploded that you’re still alive, even though you’re terrified for what happened to the man who saved you.
You are so glad to be alive, you feel woozy.
So you sit down on the trunk of your car and as you’re trying to retrieve your cell phone from your pocket to call 9 11, you hear a whimper from inside the trunk.
You didn’t know that before you left the house.
As your kids were playing hide and seek, your youngest son decided to hide in the trunk of your car as you open it up frantically and discovered that he is miraculously unharmed.
You suddenly realize the total greatness of the loss.
You almost suffered, your gratitude, your amazement, your new outlook on life takes a giant leap forward.
That is the difference between the gospel wakefulness of conversion and the greater wakefulness that often occurs later in life as we look back and realize what God has really done for us.
When God saves you.
When he brings you into his kingdom, he redeems everything that is true about you. Don’t forget that.
Don’t forget to look back and be filled with gospel wakefulness, rejoice in who you are in Christ think about all the things that are true of you, that would not be true of you.
If Christ had not changed your life and develop a quality of gratitude, Paul was the happiest man who ever walked on this earth because he was so grateful.
He never forgot what happened to him on Damascus Road. He never forgot that one time.
He was a persecutor of Christians and because of God’s grace, he became a preacher to Christians and his life is it just exudes gratitude, friends with all that’s going on around us.
And we have a lot that we can look at and complain about.
We really don’t have anything to complain about. If you’ve got Jesus, you’ve got everything.
If you have salvation, you not only have the past cared for the president cared for, but you know where you’re going and we know that sometimes soon Jesus gonna come back and take us to heaven, what a wonderful way to live with that kind of gratitude in our life.
So my prayer for you today is Paul’s prayer for you today that you might be filled with knowledge and all wisdom and spiritual understanding and that all these things that Paul says will happen to us if that’s true, will happen to you if it’s true in your life.
Thank you for watching.
Turning point. Dr Jeremiah would like to offer you his new book Christ above all his study of the book of Colossians, which brings Jesus into perfect focus solid teaching about Christ on which you can build a solid relationship with him.
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Next time on turning point, my passion is to build you up in the most holy faith and to teach the word of God, even some of the hard passages so that, you know, this is what the Bible says and this is what it means and this is how I appropriate it to my life so that you’re growing in Jesus Christ.
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Next time for his new series Christ above all with a message titled The Fullness of Christ here on Turning Point.