Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: In this passage that we're going to look at in Colossians 1:12-14, God makes certain truth statements about the person who's found life in Jesus Christ.

Greg Monk: Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled "All About Jesus." Let's listen in as JP gives us part one of "The Truest Thing About You."

JP Jones: If you have your Bibles, would you open to Colossians chapter one? We're continuing our study in the book of Colossians that we're entitling "All About Jesus" because in this book, the Apostle Paul brings everything back to Jesus Christ. He says ultimately that all of our theological questions and religious questions, philosophical questions, our life questions find their answer in Jesus.

And that's not only true for Paul at the time that he wrote this book, it's true for us today. We find our fulfillment and center and purpose for life in Jesus Christ. And we find the real answer to questions that we face in Jesus Christ. And so studying this book helps us understand the plan that God has for us and how we can be set free in our lives today.

Every one of us, whatever our background is, we came to church today believing something. We believe something about God. We believe something about salvation. We believe something about reality. We believe something about ourselves. Every person has a set of beliefs. Some of us think about what we believe, and we know what we believe, and we know why we believe what we believe. Others of us don't really think that much about what we believe, and we really don't even know why we believe what we believe, but everybody believes something.

And life flows out of belief. The choices that we make, the emotions that we will experience, the habits that we develop will be based upon our source of understanding, our sense of reality, what we believe. Jesus said this: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." So if you're believing the truth, you are experiencing freedom. Conversely, if you're believing something other than the truth, you're experiencing bondage.

The truth sets us free, and there's no truth like God's truth. Ultimately, on any issue, whatever God says is true is true. And that's especially the case with respect to how we see ourselves and what's true about ourselves. The truest thing about us is what God says is true.

The truest thing about us is what God says is true, and in the book of Colossians, in this passage that we're going to look at in Colossians 1:12-14, God makes certain truth statements about the person who's found life in Jesus Christ. So if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're a Christian, this is what's true about you. If you're here as a seeker, if you're here in pursuit of a relationship with God, here's the good news: when you call out to the Lord and you put your faith in Jesus Christ, when you cross the line as we describe it around here, this is what becomes true for you. The things that are mentioned in this passage will become true for you the very moment you do business with God and come into relationship with his son Jesus Christ.

The truest thing about you is what God says is true. Ultimately, the issue is not how we feel or what we think. It's what is actually true. In the first Gulf War, a squad of Marines was in combat and they were pinned down by some of the Iraqi Republican Guard. In fact, they were firing mortars at this squad of Marines. If you've ever been in combat or if you have seen the reality of war, what takes place is a mortar platoon zeroes in on its target and they march the mortars towards their ultimate target, and then once they find it, they just fire with impunity on that target.

This squad of Marines was pinned down and the mortars were being marched toward them. They knew that they had their number and they were going to fire mortars on them. So the young lieutenant of the Marine group called in with the field telephone for fire support. He asked for some helicopter gunships to come in and take out the mortar pit. Only he gave coordinates that weren't accurate, but he thought they were true.

One of the privates in the squad grabbed the field telephone from the lieutenant and said, "Belay that order. Cancel that order. Those are the wrong coordinates. These are the coordinates that you need to fire on." An argument took place between the lieutenant and the private. But the role that the private had in that platoon was to carry the map and to know at all times exactly their position on the map.

In the ensuing argument, the private prevailed, gave the coordinates to the helicopter gunships, and they came and they took out the mortar pit because the coordinates that the lieutenant gave them were the precise location of where the Marine squad was found. Had they followed that, they would have been wiped out. For his actions in that service, that Marine was combat promoted, and then when the war was over and they came back, he led the color guard for the whole Marine Corps for coming back from the war. And that Marine is our own executive pastor, Greg Monk.

I share that story because in the midst of combat, in the midst of the fight, two men had a take on what was true. Both believed they were right. In the midst of doing life, we can have a perception about reality and really think that our perception is accurate, but we can be dead wrong. What really matters isn't how sincere we are or even how strongly we feel what we feel. The issue is what is true.

The truest thing about you is what God says is true. It's truer than anything you feel. It's truer than anything people say. It's truer than what Satan tells you. The truest thing is what God says is true. So as people who want to be followers of Jesus and live in the freedom of Jesus, we need to know what God's word says is true.

And in Colossians 1:12-14, this is what God says is true about every follower of Jesus Christ: "Giving thanks to the Father who's qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." In this passage, these short verses, there are five things that God says are true about every believer. It's the truest thing about you if you're a follower of Christ. When you become a follower of Christ, if you're here as a seeker or as a guest or someone who's in a process of searching, these are the things that will become true of you when you put your faith in Jesus.

When we read in the Bible and we find commands, the appropriate response is to obey them. When we find promises, the appropriate response is to claim them. And when we find truth statements, the appropriate response is to believe them. This is what we are to believe is true because it is true. And in believing it, God sets us free.

Here's the first thing: God has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. God has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. The Apostle Paul says here that God has qualified us for something that we didn't have the qualifications for in ourselves. This word "to qualify" is the Greek verb *hikanoō*, and it means to make sufficient or to render fit or to make adequate or to equip with what is needed for a task or experience.

In 2 Corinthians chapter three, it says this: "Not that we're adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves because our adequacy is from God. He is the one who has made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life." In that passage, we were inadequate in ourselves to be authentic followers of Jesus. We're inadequate in ourselves to be God's servants. We're inadequate to be ministers of God's Spirit. But God made us adequate. Our adequacy is from God.

Here in this passage in Colossians chapter one, we don't have what it takes to be part of God's kingdom of light. We don't have what it takes to have a secure inheritance, to have the certainty of a relationship with God. But what we didn't have in ourselves, God gave to us. That's the truest thing about us. God qualified us. God made us adequate. God gave us what we needed in order to have this inheritance.

Like some of you, our family, we're fans of *American Idol*. We like to watch *American Idol*, and we especially like to watch it when it gets down to the top 10 and it works its way down to who the American Idol is going to be. Last summer, for my wife's birthday, I surprised her. I got tickets to go see the concert of the top 10 American Idol finalists. They tour the country and put on a concert. So we had these tickets. She didn't know that I got them for her.

And we have in our church someone who's pretty well connected in the music industry. I gave him a call and said, "I got these tickets to take my wife to see the American Idol tour. I know we're going to have a great time, but is there any way that you could get us backstage passes to actually meet the idols?" So he made a couple of phone calls and he got us backstage passes. This was all a surprise to my wife. So the day of her birthday, I'm taking her out for dinner and then I say, "This is what we're going to do." She was thrilled to go see American Idol.

We drive to see them and we show up and then we go to get our tickets at will-call. I said, "What's this?" And then they hand us these passes and we wore these badges that gave us backstage access. We had a great time. The concert was great. After it was over, everybody left, and then there were just about 40 of us. Because we had these backstage passes, these badges, we were able to go in for about an hour and hang out with the various idols. Me and Adam Lambert were like that. We're tight.

The point is this: I could get tickets first to go see the concert, but I had nothing and no connection and no means on my own to be able to get the backstage passes. They were given to me. They were provided for me. That gave me the access. Do you know the Bible says in and of ourselves we don't have what it takes to be in a relationship with God? We're dead in trespasses and sins. That's what the Bible says. We are inadequate.

But God has qualified us. God has made us adequate. God has given to us what we needed to share, it says in this passage, in the inheritance in the kingdom of the saints of light. We now have as believers in Jesus Christ a spiritual inheritance. We have everything that God has to give to his children. It's ours. It's been given to us through faith in Jesus Christ. We didn't earn it. We don't qualify for it on our own. God qualified us. God made us adequate. God gave it to us. And what we now have as our present spiritual possession is an inheritance. It's ours. It's the truest thing about us because God says it's true.

Here's a second observation from the text. Not only have we been qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints of the kingdom in light, but God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness. We've actually been rescued from the dominion of darkness because Paul here is making a contrast between light and darkness. We now have come into the light, but where we were is that we were in darkness.

The Bible says we come into this world uniquely valuable, with unique worth, created in the image of God, but we come into this world dead in trespasses and sins. We come into this world in spiritual darkness and we have to be rescued out of darkness to be brought into the light. And to be rescued, we need a rescuer.

In 1970, the US was involved in the Vietnam War and there were about 400 at that time, about 400 POWs that were being held captive in North Vietnam with no hope. A daring operation was put together to try to rescue some POWs because from reconnaissance missions, it was discovered that there was a POW camp in Son Tay, North Vietnam. Colonel Bull Simons was tasked, he was a Special Forces commander, he was tasked to put together a group of Raiders who would go in and try to rescue the POWs.

They showed up back in the states at Fort Bragg, which is the home of Army Special Forces, and they put out the opportunity to get 100 volunteers. They got 500 volunteers. They screened them. They picked the best of the best, and 100 men were chosen to be trained to go in undercover to North Vietnam to rescue POWs. They trained for several months, but while they were training, the weather conditions changed and the river that was near the base in North Vietnam at the Son Tay base, it was starting to overflow and flood. So the timing of the mission was sped up.

Flying out of Thailand, 46 of the 100 Raiders were picked who flew in helicopters underneath radar, crashed one helicopter into the Son Tay camp, landed the others. But to their disappointment, the week before, all 70 of the POWs had been moved about 15 miles away to another POW camp. Now, on that raid, they terminated 200 enemy combatants. Not one of the American soldiers was injured. They gained valuable intelligence, and even though they didn't rescue any POWs, in response, the North Vietnamese took all the POWs that were at these outlying camps, moved them back into camps near Hanoi.

For the first time, many of them, because they'd been in isolation for years, now at least had contact with fellow American prisoners. And the hope that they were not forgotten and that there were rescuers out there was made available to them. At the end of the war, Colonel Simons retired from Special Forces, became a consultant to various paramilitary organizations. At the end of the '70s, Iran took hostage a bunch of Americans, American diplomats working in the embassy.

And they took hostage some American businessmen who were working in Iran working for a company called EDS that was headed by a man named Ross Perot. And what the American government wasn't able to do, Ross Perot did by hiring Colonel Bull Simons, who got together some retired Special Forces operators and flew into Turkey, marched into Iran, rescued the two EDS employees that were being held hostage by the Iranians, went back through Iran and back through Turkey and got them back safe and alive. You see, they were rescued because there was a rescuer.

The Bible says we have to be rescued. We're in darkness. And there is one who has rescued us: Jesus Christ. He's rescued us from the domain of darkness. We're no longer in darkness as followers of Jesus. We're in the light. God's qualified us to become inheritors of the kingdom of light. But we were in darkness, and we've been rescued.

The truest thing about you is what God says is true. What God says about you as a follower of Jesus Christ is that you're no longer in darkness. You're in the light because God has qualified you to be in the light and God has rescued you from the darkness. That's what's true. And the true opportunity of the Gospel for anyone here this morning who is screaming for rescue is there is a rescuer. It's Jesus. And the Bible says whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

The truest thing about us is what God's word says is true. And God says that he's rescued us from the dominion of darkness. Now, the powerful reality of this fact is this word "dominion of darkness," it means something even more than we think it means. We understand the reality of darkness as opposed to light. We understand the metaphor of spiritual darkness, psychological darkness, relational darkness, moral darkness. But the word is the Greek word *exousia*, which actually means authority.

We've been rescued from the authority of darkness. And in the book of Colossians and the book of Ephesians, which is a parallel letter to Colossians, the Apostle Paul uses this term, this Greek word *exousia*, to mean something more than just a kingdom or a domain or a dominion. In fact, it's used in a list of terms to describe a hierarchy.

Colossians 1:16 says this: "For by him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers, rulers or *exousia*, authorities." They've all been created by him. Colossians 2:10 says we've been given fullness in Jesus Christ. He's the head over every power and authority. Colossians 2:15: "Christ disarmed the rulers, the authorities, the powers through his resurrection." Ephesians 1:21: "Jesus Christ was raised above all rule and authority, power and dominion, every name that's named."

Colossians 6:12, and maybe now it'll come to light in an even clearer way: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." The Apostle Paul in Colossians and Ephesians uses this term *exousia*, translated in the New International Version as dominion, translated most often as authority, not just as a realm of authority, but a person of authority, spiritual authority. It's in a list of terms that are used to describe an angelic hierarchy: rulers, authorities, powers, forces.

There's an unseen world, the Bible says. There's an unseen spiritual angelic world. And there is a ruler of the darkness. His name is Satan. And this term actually is used in Ephesians 2:1 and 2 where it says, "You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the authority of the air, who is now at work in the sons of disobedience."

Here's what I think this verse is saying. This is the truest thing about you if you're a believer in Jesus Christ because God's word says it's true. God has rescued you from the dominion of darkness, not just rescued you from the sphere of living in the darkness, he's rescued you from the ruler of darkness. We've been set free as followers of Jesus Christ. We are no longer under slavery to Satan. We are no longer under a curse of just living in the darkness. We've been set free.

Greg Monk: What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP Jones provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just five dollars. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250.

For your gift of 25 dollars or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, *Facing Goliath*. Please join us every Sunday at 9 or 11 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a minute, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. We're in this study from Colossians on the fact that it's all about Jesus. Jesus Christ is the answer to every question that we have. He's the answer to everything. He's the answer to every theological question, every psychological question, every question of life purpose and fulfillment. It's all found in Jesus Christ. And so Paul tells us in this book that we've been made complete in Christ. We have been made united with Christ.

Every believer in Jesus Christ is a new person in Christ, and the truest thing about you is what God says is true. Everyone believes something. Everyone believes something about God, something about reality, something about themselves. Even as you're listening to this, you have a set of beliefs. You may have thought them through, you may have studied them, you may have analyzed them, or maybe you've just kind of received them. They're kind of just ideas that somewhere from the culture or your family background you've just come to understand life in a certain way.

Being a follower of Jesus Christ means that we believe what's true about Jesus and we believe what's true about what Jesus has done for us. The Bible says that Jesus is the God-man who died on the cross for our sins, rose again from the dead, and that salvation is in no one else, it's only in Christ. And when we come to believe in Jesus Christ, we are saved by Jesus Christ. God makes us brand new people, and the truest thing about us is what God says is true.

There are some followers of Christ who truly understand their identity and there's other followers of Christ who don't understand their identity. And Jesus said something very profound about truth in John chapter eight. He said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." You see, the truth has a power to set us free. When we know what's true about us in Christ, we can experience true freedom. But if we don't know what's true about us, then what we are believing is a lie.

And if we're believing a lie, we're being held in bondage. And so the only way to true freedom is to know what's true about you in Jesus Christ. When you become a believer in Jesus Christ, God rescues you from darkness and transfers you into his light. If that has happened for you and you believe it, it's setting you free. If it hasn't happened for you, you're not free. If it's happened for you but you don't believe it, you're not free.

The only way to experience freedom is to be transferred from darkness to light through faith in Jesus Christ and to understand and believe that because the truth sets you free. Today, I would like to challenge you to believe what's true about you in Christ, to trust Jesus Christ for your salvation, to believe that he saved you, and to understand how the power of the truth sets you free.

Lord Jesus, thank you that you set us free in Christ. You make us new people. You take us from darkness into the light. And when we know that and believe that, the truth sets us free. Thank you for the truth of Jesus. And we pray in your name. Amen.

Greg Monk: We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.