Everlasting Hope

I wonder, have you ever bought anything that came with a lifetime warranty?

You've got to be a confident product manufacturer, don't you, to give a lifetime guarantee.

Can I just ask, anyone, what was it?

Sourspans, yeah.

Anyone else?

Tupperware.

Tupperware?

Reading glasses.

Reading glasses, yeah.

Wow.

It's hard to beat architecture, buildings, for true longevity, I think.

Things that are made from stone tend to last the longest, like, I guess, like the pyramids and like many other structures.

There's a big difference between long-lasting and ever-lasting, isn't there?

Our theme for 2025 is ever-lasting.

Psalm 90 verse 2 says, Before the mountains were born, or you brought forth the whole world from ever-lasting to ever-lasting, you are God.

We worship the ever-lasting God.

Hallelujah.

He is Alpha and Omega.

He is eternal without beginning or end.

And we are mortal.

We are very different.

This is where the idea came from, this difference between us and God.

2025 was heading towards us last year, and I was praying about, what's the theme for the year, Lord?

And I don't know if it's just because I've turned 55 today, and I'm aware of these quarter centuries.

And I got to thinking, you know, 25 years, another 25.

Some of us will live to three lots of a quarter of a century, maybe some getting close to four quarters of a century.

But every 25 years, we are reminded powerfully of the truth of Isaiah 40.

It's a little bit confronting.

All people are like grass.

And all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.

Doesn't that cut?

You think you're faithful?

Like the flowers of the field.

The grass withers and the flowers fall because the breath of the Lord blows on them.

Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.

We are very, very temporal.

And there are different times in life, in different seasons, that you are struck by that.

I mentioned that my mum was pretty low.

She passed away on the 2nd of January, and we're going to have a thanksgiving service for her here on Monday the 13th, if you're interested at all, at 2pm.

But yeah, as I lose my mum at 84 years of age, that's what mum got to, I'm, in this season of life, struck, as we prepare a funeral service, a thanksgiving service, about the truth that life is temporary.

We all go the way of humanity.

Lord willing, throughout 2025, from the pulpit here at NorthernLife, we will explore everlasting reality from the Book of Colossians, everlasting worship from the Psalms, everlasting wisdom from the Proverbs, everlasting impact from the Acts of the Apostles, and much more.

You can get the feeling of that.

We're trying to trace this truth and revelation and wonder of everlasting throughout the Bible.

And I would ask you to pray.

Pray for us as a church that we would get what God wants to give us, amen, under this enormous idea of everlasting.

So this morning, we begin our year in the Book of Colossians.

Colossians 2 verse 17 says, Therefore don't let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day.

These are a shadow of the things that were to come.

The reality, however, is found in Christ.

The reality is found in Christ.

The Christian gospel, the great overarching story of the Bible, is a story with everlasting consequences, isn't it?

God, through the redemption found in His Son, has offered us, for all who would believe, everlasting life.

The good news of the gospel, I think, is preeminently good because it offers life everlasting.

There are lots of ways you can tinker with life to make it a bit better.

Of course, Jesus in our life now is the most full life you could ever find, but I think if it ended, it would be far less, wouldn't it, than a life, a good news of a gospel that says, in Christ we live forever.

The gospel of everlasting life is our gospel, and it is what is real, it's reality.

Colossians 1 tells us about within everlasting reality, our first idea of this series is everlasting hope.

Everlasting hope, Colossians 1.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother to God's holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father.

Paul's writing from Rome, and he's writing to believers in the city of Colossae.

He'd never met them, but they knew him.

They respected him, and Paul sent this man by the name of Epaphras, who he knew from Ephesus, and if you think about Turkey and some of the letters of the New Testament, Turkey is 150 kilometers to the west of this spot, this valley where Colossae is.

And so the plan for Paul is that he writes a letter taken by Epaphras to Colossae, and it is shared amongst the other two cities in that region.

It's a beautiful part of the world, Laodicea.

We read about Laodicea in Revelation, and also Hierapolis.

These are big cities.

Anyone been there?

Yeah, quite a few of us.

I've been there, and it's a beautiful part of the world, but what strikes you when you're there, I visited Colossae, which is sort of just a mound of grass, really, very early beginnings of an archeological dig, but the other two cities, they have amphitheaters that would carry many tens of thousands of people.

So Paul is writing a letter that is to be shared amongst the other cities, but don't think that these are backwater little tiny towns.

These are incredible hives of industry, commerce, and philosophical debate.

And the church at Colossae is a church that is struggling, like many of the early churches, with heretical ideas.

People have already started to add things to Christ.

So Christ is good, but we need a little bit more, and certain others are having these hyper spiritual secret revelations.

And so Paul is writing, and in a nutshell, he's saying, Jesus Christ Messiah is enough.

He is what Christianity is all about.

Stop trying to seek other things other than him.

Our first thought from the text is this idea, the everlasting reality of hope, Colossians 1-3.

Paul writes, we always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we've heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love you have for all God's people, the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven, and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you.

In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace.

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.

So there are a couple of things we identify immediately regarding the early church.

Paul prays for them.

So we should pray, amen?

We're starting a new year.

What do we pick up from the text?

Obviously, Paul is constantly praying for the churches, and we should pray.

He thanks God for their faith in Christ and love for each other.

Two key ideas that we need to embrace and grow in.

Faith and love.

Indispensable, in fact, for our lives.

And what's important to pick up is this faith and love spring from what?

Hope.

The faith and love that spring from hope.

How strong is your hope?

We had many conversations with my mom as she was nearing the end of her life.

And you talk about hope, don't you, when someone is about to find out whether it's real, their faith in Christ.

Hope.

If you have a hope stored in heaven, is your hope safe?

Heaven is pretty much impenetrable.

Heaven is as safe as it gets.

So this faith and love that spring from your hope, which is stored in heaven, is certainly a safe hope.

Jesus says, store up for yourself treasure in heaven, where thieves don't break in and steal.

It's sort of Fort Knox there.

But I would put it to you this morning that the hope we have stored up in heaven is not safe, as it were, because heaven is such a fortress.

It is safe because of the character of our God, amen?

Our hope is safe and sure, stored in heaven, because of the moral certainty we have that God the Father will do what he said he will do.

There's such a thing as mathematical certainty or logical certainty.

If I have two apples and I add three apples to those two apples, I could be quite logically certain, with a strong hope, that I'm going to have five.

But if I said to you, I hope that after 32 years of marriage to Leanne, my marriage will not end in divorce.

What sort of hope is that?

You could say it's a mathematical, logical hope, because I could make an argument based on the 32 years before and extrapolate that out to the future and think, there's every chance that my hope would be sure, but truly my hope in us continuing on to the end together is based on moral certainty or moral uncertainty, because it's about the will exercised in a certain way from two people with moral agency, freedom.

So when we come to God and hope, I would just encourage you to remember, our hope is in the moral certainty that God will do what he said he will do.

The hope of the gospel is that when we put faith in Christ, our sins are forgiven completely.

We enter into the fullest life you could possibly experience, and that life will never end because of the will of the Father.

The hope is built around the exercising of God's will in the gospel.

And God will keep his word.

Amen?

Do you have any reason?

I really want you to get your attention here.

Do you have any reason to doubt God?

Some of you might go, well, I've seen suffering, and I do.

And I want to say, you know what?

That's very human.

That's fair.

But you heard a lot of people say, no, I don't have a reason to doubt God.

And that's also fair.

And if you read the Bible and you reflect on your journey with the Lord, I would encourage you to reflect, and you will find that he is faithful.

Amen.

He is reliable and trustworthy.

Colossians 1 tells us what happened.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour.

But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you wholly in his sight without blemish and free from accusation.

Did you hear that?

That's what our faith produces.

We believe in the bodily death and resurrection of Jesus.

And when we put faith in what he has accomplished, we are presented wholly before God without blemish and free from accusation.

And we are to continue in this faith, established and firm, not moving from the hope held out in the gospel.

We have a strong hope that we will live forever with a resurrected body, in a new earth, joined with heaven, with all the redeemed, and Jesus will be our King.

Can you trust the moral character of God for another year?

Yes.

Yes, we can.

Our hope is sure.

Next, Paul speaks of the everlasting reality of a life that counts, a life that counts.

Paul says the gospel is bearing fruit all over the world.

The gospel says Jesus is Lord, not Caesar is Lord, but Jesus is Lord, and there is a life that is full and rewarding to be lived by the power of the Spirit that came at Pentecost.

Let me read from Colossians 1.

For this reason, since the day we have heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you.

We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way.

Now, I asked Ben this morning, if we were to ask a question, who lives a life worthy of the Lord?

I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand.

I'm just going to ask you what percentage do you reckon of the church would say no.

I'm thinking it would be pretty high.

I'm thinking that most of us who have walked with the Lord in this room, if you're asked, do you live a life worthy of the Lord?

Oh, no, no way.

Not me.

But what does the scripture say as we start a new year?

Paul's praying that the people at Colossae would live lives worthy of the Lord.

Worthy of the Lord.

It's so easy to think as a Christian, I'm nothing but a sinner.

I'm just maybe even the word miserable sinner.

And I just keep coming back confessing each day the same sins over and over again.

But that's why we often have asked the question, can you get any better at being a Christian?

And I think biblically, there is a strong answer to say, yes, you can, because the grace that we had in that memory verse in Titus, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all people.

It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions.

Peter says in his epistle, grow in grace.

His grace is enough, not just to forgive us when we fail, but to empower us to make good and right and godly decisions.

Amen?

Will we fail?

Yes, we will.

But we can get better at living the type of life that Jesus has called us to live.

We can live a life worthy of the Lord.

How would you do that?

I think the answer is in the text.

We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives.

So living a life worthy of the Lord will come from growing in the knowledge of the kingdom of God.

The knowledge of how the Spirit works in our lives, in the church.

Now, this is a knowledge that is not a knowledge that's just in a book, on a shelf.

This is a working knowledge.

This is a dynamic knowledge of learned capacity and competence.

Can you think of something in your life that you have learned over time how to do, and you can reflect and look at how it has become natural?

Anybody?

What was an example, Stuart?

Yes.

Yeah, reading, finance and the stock market.

Anyone else?

You, okay, so that's sort of a thing that you learned how to do.

Yeah, okay, and it became normal.

I started playing saxophone when I was 14.

I was on the clarinet and piano, and I had this squeaky, nothing against any clarinetist in the room, but you've got to try a saxophone if you play a clarinet.

And I loved the saxophone, and so I sort of played it on and off all my life.

But I haven't played it much in the last 10 years.

I got on to an aerophone, which is a digital thing, and then I got Lindsay Mee on to it, and he used to play his own aerophone up here.

But so last year, I thought, I'm going to pull out my tenor saxophone.

I'm going to start playing again.

And I tried, and it was so hard.

My embouchure was so awful, and I just was so lacking ability, I just put it away and said, OK, I will never touch you, my friend, my enemy, again.

That was horrible.

And then I thought, I'm going to give it another go.

So I had another go, and I started to rekindle this love I have of music, and playing it, and improvising, and I've always loved jazz, and so I started discovering that there's so much content about whatever hobby you're into, isn't it?

Online now.

You just go looking, and it's like, wow, this is amazing, and I realised, gee, I need to grow so much.

There's so much interesting growth for me in this.

And so the interesting thing about playing music on a saxophone is its brain reading difficult text, difficult music manuscript, and then translating that to the physical, and it's also, with a wind instrument, it's using your diaphragm, being fit, being able to get that breath working through your ombushes, so your larynx and your lips, there's so much going on.

And then there's also playing to music and playing in tune, which is a cerebral feeling thing, and then if you're playing with anybody else, there's playing in time with them, and it's quite complex.

And so it's interesting when you read about people talking about jazz improvisation, you're also trying to learn the notes that go with the chords that come along.

And so someone might say, do you expect to just be racking your brain constantly, theoretically, trying to play this music?

And I say, no, no, that's not how it is.

It's much more like a foreign language.

You do the hard work, and then you just immerse yourself in an Italian restaurant and do your best.

And you just let it flow.

The artistic stuff, that's the kingdom of God, isn't it?

The kingdom of God can't be, oh, there's a potential sin.

What do I do?

Where's my textbook?

Where's my textbook?

It's just learning, no, I don't go that way.

I'm going to go this way.

And then you practice so that your heart and mind and body and soul and spirit are in sync.

And do you do that in community, like a musician, with others?

Yes, you do it with others.

And I think this is so important when we think about, can I get any better at being a Christian?

Yeah.

You learn how to love, how to turn the other cheek, how to walk an extra mile in serving, volunteer, use your words to bless and build up.

And over time, can I encourage us to just consider, it's possible in 2025 to live a life worthy of the Lord.

Will it be by His grace?

Absolutely.

But failure is not our goal.

Thriving in the ways of the Master to live a life worthy of the Lord is our goal.

And then thirdly, the everlasting reality of the slow work of God, the slow work of God.

Paul writes, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience.

And giving joyful thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light.

For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the sun He loves.

Isn't that just a wonderful memory verse?

In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The everlasting reality of the kingdom of God is it involves a slow work of God.

Amen?

That's why Jesus talks about the kingdom being a seed that's planted.

It takes time.

Let me prove it to you very quickly.

Four hundred years of slavery.

It's a slow work.

Abraham waited how many years for the son of promise?

Twenty-five years.

No wonder he struggled.

Forty years they wandered in the wilderness.

Thirty years Jesus waited to be unleashed in his public ministry.

Two thousand years the church has been waiting for Jesus to return.

But we wait.

The slow work of God is the reality of the kingdom of God.

Paul says he prays for this church at Colossae that they would grow and be fruitful, and that to do so they would have what?

Says it in the text.

Great endurance and patience, flavoured by joyful thanks.

The key to a life that counts, that is worthy of the Lord is patience, endurance, and both are filled with joy along the way.

Which I think is just another way of expressing over time our absolute confidence in the moral certainty of the will of God.

Amen?

Great endurance comes from, I know is good.

I know is good.

I'm going to reframe what I'm looking at, and I'm going to see his hand in it, because he's working all things together for good for those who love him, and are called according to his purpose.

And I see at this new year, this junction of another quarter century, my God is good, and no matter what, I'm going to keep believing in his slow work, he is making me more and more like Jesus, through whatever means he has chosen for me to endure life in and through.

How wonderful if you have faith in Christ this morning.

You have been rescued from the dominion of darkness.

You have been.

You have been transferred over into the kingdom of the Son he loves.

Hallelujah.

If you never ever raise your hands or bodily respond to God in worship, I just encourage you maybe to do it.

I was at a course with Dallas Willard years ago, a two week intensive, and one of the really great things he got us to do was taking some of the Psalms of praise towards the end of the Book of Psalms.

He said, go out somewhere and yell out the Psalm as loud as you can.

As loud as you can.

Has anyone done that?

Can I encourage you 2025?

Sometime, go and do it, and I bet you you'll find it hard.

It's like, oh, wow.

But there's nothing like the physical, visceral expression of shout for joy.

All the earth, come into his presence with thanksgiving, like you're the caller, the herald.

Hear ye, hear ye.

Don't hurt your voice, but.

And I say that in the same way when we raise our hands.

Paul says, I pray that people would lift holy hands in prayer all over the place.

You don't earn any points for doing it, but it's just a way of saying, wow, Lord God, I want you to know with all my heart, my gratitude that you told me that I have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, and I'm thankful, and I want to live in that, in that everlasting peace.

So what's 2025 looking like for you?

Some unknowns, some knowns.

I'm coming up to two years in a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, and so for me and my family, you know, Parkinson's sort of casts a bit of a shadow over tomorrow, and yet, things are going really well.

Part of my playing saxophone is learning to get my brain working with my hand, which has a tremor, and so I do a lot of exercise, and I'm doing the work that I can.

But I trust in tomorrow, I trust my tomorrows into the grace of God, into His goodness.

And guess what?

So do you.

Whether you've got some diagnosis or not, none of us know tomorrow at all.

We just think we do.

And so I want to encourage us as we come into this new quarter of a century, 2025, to ask the question, who and where and in what do I put my hope?

What is reality?

It's been said, the thing that you bump into when you're wrong is the truth.

The truth is what you bump into when you're wrong.

And we will all bump into this reality that God is real and there is an everlasting consequence for how we live our lives, how we determine this exercising of our will.

If we do not bow and acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we ultimately will not receive everlasting life.

It's an eternal consequence, this life we live.

Our God is everlasting, his forgiveness is everlasting, his security for our soul is everlasting.

And he has solved the problem of sin once and for all.

And unleashed, as Colossians tells us, the mystery of the ages, which is Christ in us.

The hope of glory, by grace through faith.

There is an everlasting reality of hope, there is an everlasting reality that our lives can be worthy of the Lord.

And there's an everlasting reality that what we hope for is wrapped up in the slow work of God.

Lord Jesus, thank you that in you we find reality.

In you we find a rock solid hope.

As we come to the communion table, Lord Jesus, we give you all the praise because you are the lamb slain before the creation of the world.

And you lived it out, you lived out the prophetic truth, of your destiny.

We want to acknowledge this day, the 5th of January, the first Sunday, the first Lord's Day in 2025.

We want to acknowledge, Lord Jesus, you were born of the virgin, you lived the perfect life that we could never live, and you died in our place on that Roman cross, and you shed your perfect blood as the one and only way that our sins could be cleansed.

You took the death that we deserved, and you conquered death and rose again victoriously three days later.

And as we come to this table, we give you all the glory and the thanks.

Why don't you take a moment to confess anything you need to to the Lord before we come to this table, and give him your thanks.

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