Review:
Last week we studied about the call to carry out the gospel that God gives to us. Everyone is expected to talk about God with others. It is not an option as some have come to believe.
We sing all of these songs about how the “whole world” will hear the gospel, but how does that take place? Is it only in speaking to multitudes? Can we only accomplish this by taking on the world? No. We carry out the mandate of the great commission one person at a time.
God wants us to pour our lives into people and focus on helping disciple them. We need to take Jesus’ example and really concentrate on reaching people AND making sure they are entering into discipleship.
Will everyone come to Christ? Will everyone be radically changed? No. Even Jesus started with 12 and ended with 11.
Have any of you shared Christ with someone this past week? Tell us your story.
Introduction
*Colossians 1:28-29, “28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”
This is our focal verse for this study. It gets into all of the details of not only why we need to share our faith, but how God doesn’t expect us to do it of our own power.
We covered the issue of commitment in our lesson last week. We need to be committed to proclaiming Christ. We need to be committed to talking about Him to our friends, to be open about what God has been telling us. Proclaiming isn’t something that we can just do on accident or by not thinking about it.
Could you imagine if someone started randomly yelling things that came into their head? You only do something like that if you have a screw loose somewhere. Proclaiming Christ takes commitment and wisdom.
Tonight we will look at the second part of verse 28, “…warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”
Warning!
What jumps out at you in this verse? God wants us to go through life and maybe, if we have time, we might mention Jesus to someone, but it’s not that big of a deal is if we don’t. Wrong! This second thought completely supports the first statement. Him we proclaim warning everyone.
What would be a good reason to warn someone? Ask for examples: “Their house is on fire and they need to get out.”
What is typically found in a warning? Information on avoiding possible harm. Here are warnings on the side of a cigarette box:
· Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined that Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health (1970–1985)
· SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy. (1985–)
· SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health. (1985–)
· SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Weight. (1985–)
· SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide. (1985–)
You can find warning labels on all sorts of different things, but they all point to one thing, how to avoid harm. There is a sense of urgency to warnings aren’t there? What if warnings were mundane? We wouldn’t pay attention to them!
What about things that don’t have warning labels? How are you supposed to know that they could be bad for you?
Take energy drinks for example. I found this article on the New York Times website. Did you know that since energy drinks are labeled as “performance enhancers” so that they do not have to post warnings on them? Check out this section from the New York Times:
The caffeine content of energy drinks varies from 50 milligrams to more than 500 milligrams per serving. A regular 12-ounce cola drink has about 35 milligrams of caffeine, and a 6-ounce cup of brewed coffee has 80 to 150 milligrams of caffeine.
Some energy drinks contain the caffeine equivalent of 14 cans of Coca-Cola, said Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology and one of the study authors. “Yet the caffeine amounts are often unlabeled, and few include warnings about the potential health risks of caffeine intoxication,” he said.
Dr. Griffiths notes that caffeine intoxication is a recognized clinical syndrome included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. It is marked by nervousness, anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, gastrointestinal upset, tremors, rapid heartbeats, restlessness and pacing, and in rare cases, even death.
You may not have known that drinking a Monster could lead to you having these issues. Now you know! I am warning you about it. Be careful when it comes to energy drinks.
Do you see how that worked? I found out about this issue, I had to research the information and then I delivered a warning to you.
That is exactly what Paul is telling us in Colossians. Warn and teach everyone with all wisdom. Warn them, but know what you are talking about. You have to teach what you know to someone else. We have to be wise in the way we do this as well.
Do you remember last week when I used the example of sharing my faith with Tristan? I spit it all out at once and threw a tract at him. While God can use that to impact someone, we are supposed to warn people with wisdom.
Example: As a kid I was pretty much obsessed with snakes. Living in Africa gave me a lot of opportunities to see them and interact with them. I actually had several ball pythons as pets. They would wander into the yard, I would pick them up and keep them for a while, then let them go again!
There were also a LOT of very poisonous snakes. Boomslangs, forest cobras, green mambas, twig snakes, and the list goes on and on… All of which would kill you in a matter of minutes without medical intervention.
Now what did I think would be a good idea? To go out looking for them! Of course, they never seemed to be around when you were expecting them, so fortunately I never did run across any. That was probably God watching over me!
The point is that I didn’t use wisdom. I knew that these snakes were dangerous, but I was fascinated by them. I wanted to check them out and see them. Wisdom says, back off and don’t get yourself killed.
What does it mean to be wise? Basically to be smart about something!
Over and over in scripture we are called to know the Word, to study it and have an answer for those that we are warning.
*2 Timothy 4:2, “Preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”
*1 Peter 3:15, “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,”
What if your warning is mundane? Is anyone going to listen to you? What if you don’t really know what you believe? Is anyone going to believe what you say? There is a reason that God wants us to study up on His Word. So that we can have these answers and so we can be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have!
There is a sense of urgency in a warning. The same thing goes for sharing our faith. The urgency is that we don’t know how much time we have. God doesn’t guarantee us tomorrow.
Have you warned your friends? Have you shown them the urgency of their situation? Have you shown them the hope that you have?
Does Everyone Accept?
Just as we saw with Jesus, not everyone will accept Christ. Not everyone will choose to listen to you. In fact, not all of you will choose to listen to me about the urgency of our message! We are called to speak the gospel to anyone and everyone, but we are not guaranteed results.
Do you know why that is a good thing? What if someone’s eternal destiny was up to you and your sales pitch? That puts a LOT of pressure on us to perform well doesn’t it? But God takes that pressure for us. He says that His Spirit will draw people to Himself. He says that He will give us His energy, His guidance, and His words to talk with people.
Does that mean we have an easy out? Nope. Like Paul said, we toil so that all people would know Christ. Are you toiling?
Example: Old lady in Africa who refused Christ even though she knew the consequences.
My question is this, you know the consequences, a lot of you have accepted Christ, but are you willing to live for eternity with the consequences of not having shared your faith while you could?
