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Guest (Male): Welcome to Key Life and today we'll wrap up our week-long sermon from Steve called "Big Message, Little Place." And this message is brought to you by the Vault Project, an ongoing effort to restore, preserve, and curate classic sermons from Steve. You can help in this work for as little as $5 a month while also getting access to those vintage messages. More info at keylife.org/vault. And now, here's Steve.

Steve Brown: Cecil Sims, a lawyer friend of another lawyer friend of mine, has a great comment. He says, "Never send a client anything double spaced; it gives him too much room to make corrections." God never sent anything that was double spaced ever. God never sent anything that was double spaced ever. He didn't ask our opinion. He said, "This is true. This is the way I created it. Either ignore it, turn from it, or deal with it."

Then thirdly, as we study the book of Colossians, and I'm going a little bit over for those of you who are shaking your watch to see if they have stopped, I want you to notice not only the central themes of the lordship of Christ and the universality of truth, but I want you to note the practicality of faith. Colossians 1:6b: "All over the world this gospel is producing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth."

We'll see when we get into a study of this book that this book, like most of Paul's writings, is very practical. The first two chapters roughly are doctrinal and theoretical—well, not theoretical in the way the world talks about it, but they're doctrinal and metaphysical. And the last two chapters take the doctrinal and apply it in a very practical way.

If you're familiar with the book of Ephesians, you're aware that the first three chapters of Ephesians are doctrinal. The last three chapters roughly are the practical outworking of the doctrinal teaching in Ephesians 1 through 3. If you've ever read the book of Romans, you're aware that Paul lays a doctrinal foundation before he begins to teach its practical outworking in life. In the book of Colossians, we see the practical outworking of the Christian faith in real living.

Frank Barker, a friend of mine at Briarwood Church in Birmingham, has a great story. He talks about a man who was saved; he was an alcoholic and he got saved by the Salvation Army. They gave him a job, and the job was to play the bass drum. He said they were out on the street with this Salvation Army band one time when the head of the Salvation Army said to him, "Would you give your testimony?"

He stood before everybody and he said, "I used to be a swinger. I used to drink a lot and go to a lot of parties." Then he thought for a minute and he said, "Now all I do is stand around and play this dumb drum." A lot of people think that about the Christian faith, but I want you to know that's not true. The Christian faith lends an excitement and a reality and a practicality to living that you can't find any other place.

Recently, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Doug Coe died. His name was Jonathan. I only met Jonathan once, but I was impressed with him the time that I had lunch with him. In his early 20s, he went home to be with the Lord. For eight months he suffered leukemia and the family gathered around his bed. I was not at the funeral, but Skip Ryan told me that the funeral went about three hours. It was at Tenth Presbyterian outside of Washington. People got up and they talked about what Jonathan had meant to them.

His brother got up and he said, "I guess I speak for the whole family when I say this. I want you to know that in the last eight months God has not answered a single one of our prayers, not one. In the last eight months, not even a prayer asking that we would find a vein where the doctor could put a needle was answered, not even once. Now Jonathan is dead."

He said, "But speaking for the whole family, I want you to know that if God never answers another one of our prayers, we will still praise him for what he has done in Christ." Where in the world does somebody get something like that? They get it from understanding the practical outworking of the Christian faith that gives you gasoline that you can't get in any other place.

A woman came to me not too long ago, and for 20 minutes she just sobbed. I have decided after 22 or 23 years of experience that when people are sobbing, shut up and let them sob. So I let her cry because my office is a good place to cry. When she finally got herself together so I felt like I could say something she would hear, and I knew she wasn't a Christian, I said, "Well, why don't you consider becoming a Christian?"

You know what she said? She said, "Because it's just not practical." And I said, "Madam, would you allow me to remind you that you've been the one sobbing for the last 20 minutes in my office? Whatever you've got, it isn't very good. And you're going to have to find something else if you ever get it together." I want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that the Christian faith works practically.

In the earlier part of the sermon, did I tell you about the man who came up to me after a banquet in Augusta and said his two friends had died? I already told you that. Shoot, I wanted to tell that again. I got to stay with these notes because I mess up the order of things. I'm going to be at Geneva College this week. I'm going to speak to the students and the faculty, and then at lunch, I'm going to be speaking to the preachers in the area that are coming for a lunch and they want me to talk about biblical preaching.

I'm going to tell them what I tell my students at seminary and it's this: tell them what it means, tell them how it works, and send them out to do it. Tell them what it means, tell them how it works, and then send them out to do it. The problem with most Christians and most preachers is that we only find out what it means. Theoretical knowledge up here that doesn't fall to your heart and your feet isn't worth anything in real Christianity.

It is practical. When it comes your time to die, you'll die better. When you're living, you'll live better. When you love, you'll love better. When you laugh, you'll laugh louder. And when you cry, you'll know that there is a sunrise after the darkness. And then finally, as we study the book of Colossians, I want you not only to see the central themes of the lordship of Christ, the universality of truth, and the practicality of faith, but I want you to pay particular notice as we go through it to the necessity of love, and in this case particularly within the body of Christ.

Colossians 1:3-4: "We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints." Colossians 1:8: "You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the Spirit."

Sam Mateer, a dear missionary friend of mine in Ecuador, at a prayer thing he was teaching, said as he looks through the scripture he finds very little admonishment for believers to pray for the unsaved. Surprising, isn't it? I mean, we're supposed to have a burden for lost souls. We're supposed to stay awake at night praying for the unsaved. And Sam Mateer says as he looks through scripture there's very little admonishment for us to pray for the unsaved, but a whole lot of admonishment for us to pray for one another.

Why is that? Because if we get to the unsaved, it isn't because we're going to talk so good. It isn't because we're going to have a great theology. It isn't because we prayed for them. It's going to be because we loved each other and they were drawn to the fire of that kind of love. Remember that when the critical spirit starts eating away inside. Remember that when you want to turn away from your brothers and sisters in Christ because they're turkeys. Remember that it is love for one another that makes the difference out there, not how we talk out there.

Rusty Wright, one of our missionaries with Campus Crusade for Christ, has a friend who said that he had found the secret of a happy marriage. He said, "Two nights a week we go out and have a wonderful time with dinner, soft lights, and candles, and nice music. She goes on Tuesday and I go on Thursday." The world says, "Stay apart and you'll get along." And Jesus says, "Come together and you'll draw the world to me."

I want you to know I'm a hard person to love, and I know that, but God told you to do it and I'm glad. And you aren't so wonderful yourself, but God told me to love you and I'm glad that he did. In Williamsburg, when I was speaking for this couple's retreat after I had spoken the first evening, the leader of the retreat stood before everybody and he said, "You know, if you'll look around, everybody's happy except our speaker. He's the loneliest person here."

He said, "He's come to minister to us and we're glad that Steve has come all this way to teach us these things, but he's going to be lonely because he's one and everybody else is two." He said, "I want you to love him this week and I want you to really make him feel welcome. I want you to minister to him as he ministers to us." And those folks did it, and it was really good. I had never met them before and I understood what Paul felt when he thought about the church at Colossae. He'd never been there. He didn't know any of these people, but he'd heard of their love and he even experienced it through the brother who had been sent to him.

Love is important. We're going to be seeing that as we go throughout this book. Joyce Davidson gave me the lyrics to Paul Simon's 1965 song called "I am a Rock." I've heard it a thousand times, but I never really listened to the lyrics. Let me give them to you. "I've built walls, a fortress deep and mighty that no one may penetrate. I have no need for friendship; friendship causes pain. It's laughter and its loving I disdain. I am a rock. I am an island."

"Don't talk of love, I've heard the word before. It's sleeping in my memory; I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died. If I'd never loved, I never would have cried. I am a rock. I am an island. I have my books and my poetry to protect me. I'm shielded in my armor, hiding in the room, safe within my womb. I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock. I am an island. And a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries."

In 1 Corinthians 10:4, the apostle Paul talks of the spiritual rock in the wilderness of the people of God, and then he says, "And Christ is the rock." Paul says either you will be a rock or Jesus will be a rock. If you're a rock, you won't cry and you won't hurt. You'll just sit there and you'll be calloused and cold and you'll die that way.

If Jesus is the rock, then you'll stand on it with a whole lot of other people holding hands. Sometimes you'll laugh and sometimes you'll cry, and sometimes you'll rejoice and sometimes you'll be sad, but you'll work like a son of a gun to love them because it will be hard. But someday, the rock will become the cornerstone for everything that God has ever wanted to create in the world. And in the final time, when we stand before the throne and we hold hands and we really mean it, then we will rejoice in the love of one who gave us the love, the one who loved us so much that he hung on a cross in our place. You think about that. I mean it.

Guest (Male): And that wraps up our classic sermon series, a message from Steve from 1985 called "Big Message, Little Place." Check out that sermon and hundreds of others at keylife.org/vault. That's V-A-U-L-T. And do come back tomorrow for Friday Q&A when Steve and Pete will tackle the challenging spiritual questions you've sent in, like this one: why does God keep blessing bad people? That's actually a really good question, so tune in and let's learn together.

Well, Happy New Year, by the way. Hope yours is off to a great start so far. And in the spirit of new things, I'm excited to let you know about the 2026 Key Life print magazine. This brand-new edition features an article from Steve about what to do when we feel lonely. There's also pieces from Justin Holcomb, Matt Heard, and Barry Smith, plus info on a whole bunch of new and exciting features and products. It's new, it's improved, it's free, and it's yours when you call us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433.

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