St. Luke’s Evangelical Lutheran Church – Watertown, WI
Pastor Mark Gartner
Sermon for July 22^nd and July 25^th, 2004

Dear children of God who have been rescued from eternal darkness.

The latest craze in keeping our bodies in shape is watching our carbs. There are major beer companies spending lots of money so that you the consumer will drink their beer, which has less carbs than the competitors. Fast-food restaurants are all coming out with new items on their menus that are lower in carbs. You go to the grocery store and look at the shelves and various labels on the food and notice very quickly items, which point out that they are lower in carbs than other items. Why this latest diet craze? Like all the others that have come before, this diet is meant to make us lose weight and fell stronger and more healthy. Who of us doesn’t want to have more energy or more strength as we go about our daily routines. But like anything else, we have got to be persistent. We can’t do this diet or any other diet for only a week or two and expect that it is going to really help. Like most things that we start, it is always more difficult to keep things goin! g.

As we live our lives on this earth, we realize that it is difficult at times to keep on living as a Christian. It is rather easy to say that we are a Christian or to spout out the Christian key words and phrases, but it is a lot more difficult to show that our faith is alive. It is all to easy to become lazy or bored or disinterested in living a life dedicated to God who has given us everything. That is why today we want to spend some time listening to the Apostle Paul talk to the Christian’s living in the city of Colosse. Through his words we will once again realize:

The Christians living in the city of Colosse are very similar to Christians living in the year 2004. They had been shown the power of the Gospel of Jesus as they were told about what Jesus had done for them on the cross of Calvary. They were clearly taught that faith in Jesus is the only way to heaven. They were taught that they would not be able to earn their way into heaven in any way, shape or form. But we soon realize that once the devil and his followers stepped into the picture, it became much more difficult to follow through on all these things. That is why Paul wrote this letter of encouragement to them.

With this in mind, we will let Paul tell us what the most important part of a Christians life should be as he writes, "For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. ¹⁰And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way." Paul wants us all to know how important it is that every one of God’s children to be filled with God’s knowledge and wisdom. It should also be the desire of everyone of God’s children to pray that others would grow in their wisdom and understanding of God’s wisdom. With God’s wisdom in our hearts, we will live a life that is worthy of the Lord and will please him in every way. We are looking to strengthen our spiritual lives.

But how does God’s wisdom take root in us? Paul puts it this way, "For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." Spiritual wisdom and understanding took root in our hearts and minds the day that we were led to believe and trust that God had rescued us from the darkness of sin and brought us into his kingdom. God filled us with the strength of the knowledge of his will as he reassured us that "we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." God’s taking root in our hearts has everything to do with what happened that one Friday on a mountain in the city of Jerusalem which is the Gospel message – namely the work of Jesus as he rescued us from the terrible destruction that we deserved. Unless this fact is firmly rooted in our hearts, we will never have the strength that Jesus wants us to have. This is the very m! otivation that we have as we seek to grow in our faith and to serve God and those around us.

2. It bears fruit in our lives

But God is looking for a faith that is growing. But how do you measure growth? As a teacher I might measure growth by the grades that a student receives each quarter. As a parent I might measure the growth of my children by the sizes of clothes or shoes they need or by how much they are eating. As a coach of a sports team, I might measure growth by the different skills that are being mastered. It seems rather easy to measure the growth of earthly things, but how can we measure our spiritual growth? That isn’t quite as easy. There is no chart that you can plug in how many times a person goes to church -- how many times they are in Bible class and attend the Lord’s Supper and out pops a letter grade. . There is no chart that says if you give so much money you are growing. So how do we gauge growth?

If I was looking at things from an earthly perspective, I could surely look at the statistics of St. Luke’s and its numbers and come to some conclusions. It would not be very difficult to figure out the percentage of those who come to Church, Bible Class or Sunday School. It would not take much to look at our Church budget and figure out how far behind we are in meeting that budget. But do those numbers really answer the question about how to measure our growth in the knowledge of God?

The real answer about growth boils down to the relationship between you and your God. The real way to measure growth is not by how you measure up to the person sitting next to you in your pew. God doesn’t want us to think that because we do something better than the person next to me, I’m doing OK. God doesn’t want us to compare ourselves with others. The real measure is to see how you are progressing according to the standards God has set up.. Are you continuing to move forward with God’s help and guidance as you grow or are you willing to stay at the status quo? Are things moving forward or are they moving the opposite direction? How many times have I taken the opportunities that God has placed before me to receive the Lord’s strength either through his Word our in the Lord’s

Paul uses some action phrases to describe what he is talking about, "And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father." Paul first of all points out that we should live a life worthy of the Lord and that we may please him in every way. As we live our lives on this earth, it is very easy to lose sight of what is truly important. We are God’s children. We are thanking God with our lives

Paul first of all tells us to be "bearing fruit in every good work." Earlier we stated the reason why we have strength. It is because the gospel of Jesus is rooted in our hearts. The picture now goes further as he tells us that our hearts that are full of Jesus will now bear fruit. This means that we will take very opportunity to show by our words and by our actions that our faith in Jesus is alive and well. It is full of strength. A Christian that is not showing the love of Christ is a Christians whose faith is dying or dead. It is at a point like this that I could very easily point out how each of us is not always bearing the fruit hat God wants us to bear. We don’t always open our Bibles often enough. We aren’t always excited to grow in our faith. We don’t give as much time as we could to do God’s work. We all too often are selfish with the financial blessings that God has give us, returning only a tiny percentage of the vast riches God has g! ive to us. The list can go on and on.

That is why he reminds us to keep "growing in the knowledge of God." How might a person keep growing in the knowledge of God? How about attending Church and Bible Classes and Sunday School. How about reading a devotion at home with our family or spouse. How about purchasing books from the Northwestern Publishing House, which has many, books available for strengthening our knowledge of God. Just for arguments sake let’s make a list of reasons why you might not attend church or Sunday School or Bible Classes. I’ve already gone three Sundays in a row. It is too hard for me to watch my children in Church – they are not ready for Church yet. I don’t really get anything out of Church anyway. Maybe we don’t come to Bible Class because we already learned most of this anyway. As we think through other reasons in our head, we soon realize that the excuses don’t really hold any water, do they? The deeper we dip into the strength of God’s Word, the more we r! ealize that we are falling short and that it is by God’s grace alone that we still are his redeemed children.

Paul’s final phrase shows us why we will want to look to God often, "being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹²giving thanks to the Father." As we grow in our faith Paul points out that the strength of God fills us with great endurance and patience and it leads us to joyfully give thanks to the Father.

It is in the long haul of life that we soon realize that being a child of Christ is not a fad that comes and goes. Each and every day of our life on this earth is a struggle against our sinful nature and the Devil’s evil forces. That is why we will daily want to look to the strength that he has firmly rooted in our hearts – the pure and simple message of Jesus’ work of redemption that won eternal life or us and all people. Then and only then cane we move forward to grow in our Christian living. Then we will want to bear fruits to thank and praise God for all of the great things he has done for us.