Colossians chapter 4, verses 16 through 18. Again, it's page 750 in your Pew Bible. Again, this is God's holy word. Take heed how you hear it. Now when this epistle is read among you, see that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans. Do you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea? And say to Archippus, take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you may fulfill it. This salutation by my own hand, Paul. Remember my chains. Grace be with you. Amen. One of the special memories I have, one of the special aspects of my relationship with my father is that my father would have the habit Whenever I left, I believe it started around college, left home to go back to college in New York, or maybe after college when I was an officer in the Army, I would, from leave, I'd go back from home, back to my station, or even deploy, and he would say this during seminary, coming home, and whenever I would leave, the last thing he would say to me, very, very, almost without exception, as I'm pulling out and waving by, he would say to me, give them what for? He'd say to me, give him what for? And it's actually a quote from a movie that I'm not going to go into. Did I distract the story here? What do you mean? What do you meant by that? There's a lot that he meant by that. And he basically was saying this, Sam, as my son, I've taught you about the Lord Jesus Christ. You are a servant of Christ. You're working in whatever capacity for him and God wants you. Son, remember. Labor for Christ. Do all that you can for him. Give him what for. Give the devil a run for it. Try hard, press on. This was his way of summarizing all that he really taught me and what he wanted me, and this is really the point, this is what he wanted me to remember, to focus on was the last thing that he would tell me. of all the things that we could remember as Christians. I think there's several ways in which you could answer this. What is a primary and central, what's a central idea that you wanna keep in your mind always? And there's several things we could say to that. Paul chooses to emphasize the importance of Scripture. The importance of Scripture. Just keeping the Scripture itself. Going back to it, hearing the preaching of it, reading it, meditating upon it, and all the things that we could have going through our head. The words of other men, lies even. Words that are, you know, fine in themselves. The words of God. or the things that we need to keep going back to. It's a primary issue. It's a primary thing, if you will, for Christians in the life of the church. What about your life? Is the word of God central in your life? Do you go to it? Do you listen to God? Do you read scripture? is worship and preaching have its proper place in your life? This is what God would have you to do. And again we could maybe answer that question in many different ways, but what's the most central primary thing for us as God's people? This morning I want you to think about the primacy of Scripture. The primacy of Scripture. We come to the end of this epistle and And in some sense, the context is not as important in this message as maybe in other messages. This is a concluding exhortation here in this passage. And Paul has been writing to the Colossians this whole pistol, and I'm going to do something different. Contrary to my normal way of preaching, I'm essentially going to speak to you on verses 16 and 17 and preach a message on the primacy of Scripture. But because we're at the end of this epistle, because it seems wise to me to not give verse 18 its own sermon, I'll expound upon it and then give you a sight of the whole epistle. It's important for us to see the whole. whether it be preaching or other things. So that's what I'm going to do this morning. So the first thing is this, my lesson to you is this, the word of God is to have a primary place in the life of a church. That's the lesson we have from verses 16 and 17. The Word of God is to have a primary place in the life of the church. And I want to bring again that lesson to you under two points, and then again I'll have a third summary point for the whole epistle. So first look with me at verse 16. The primacy of the Word of God in worship. primacy of the Word of God in worship. Verse 16 says, Now when this epistle is read among you, see that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans, that you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. One of the things we need to keep in mind as we look at this verse and and just kind of back up and remember that this time in history in Colossae as well as other places what was common in the churches we know this from the book of Acts and I'll get into that in a moment was the public reading of scripture the public reading of scripture just as I have read from Nehemiah 8 and you listen to me that was very common very common in Paul's day. We see that in Acts 13. We see it all through the book of Acts. In Acts 13, verse 15, it says this, and after the reading of the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue you could perhaps understand them to be the ruling elders. The rulers of the synagogue sent to them saying, men and brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say on. Notice that there was a reading of the scripture there. That later as Paul speaks, he says in verse 27, for those who dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not know him, nor even the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath. Which are read every Sabbath. 1 Thessalonians 5.27, I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read to all the holy brethren. In case we had any question, Paul says here in this verse itself, it's a specific reference to the public reading of scripture. He says, now when this epistle is read among you, among the congregation in Colossae, see that it is read also in the church, in the assembly of the Laodiceans. This is significant for a couple of reasons. There's several what we call inferences to gather from this that I want you to stop and think about. It's helpful sometimes to know why it is that we do certain things that we don't really question, but they've been questioned. and to review some of this. First, I want you to know that we should understand Colossians, as well as the other epistles and the other books of the New Testament, to be the word of God. We need to understand that. What's Paul saying here? Listen, you're used to reading the scriptures, the Old Testament in the synagogue, and guess what? You're gonna read mine too. What's he saying? He knows he's an apostle, doesn't he? He knows he's writing infallible words that are going to be authoritative. He's equating himself with that practice, with Moses, if you will. And we know this also to be the case, Peter commending the church to Paul's letters in 2 Peter 3.16, as also in all his epistles, speaking of them of things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction. Okay, so Peter's writing about Paul's epistles. And he says this, as they do also the rest of the scriptures. See, Paul is writing to us, conscious of the fact that he's writing God's Word. This is why we consider the epistles to be God's Word equal with Moses in the Old Testament. Now think about it for a moment. This is a very helpful verse that sheds a lot of light on things that we probably don't really question. There was a time in history where the church said that you and that you should not have access to the scriptures in your own language. Only me. Only the clergy. You can't handle it. You'll abuse it. Now, is that the mind of Paul? Paul wants them. He wants the congregation, not just the clergy, he wants the congregation to have access to the word of God. And not just the word of God in some unknown tongue that's not useful to them, but in their own language. And we need to understand that. The intention is that they're gonna hear it read in Greek and they're gonna understand it. It would make a lot of sense for us to translate the scriptures into English. And some of you are saying, well, we're not questioning that. And I don't think you really are questioning that. But we need to realize that's biblical. It's biblical. Now, there's some discussion There's some discussion on this phrase here. See that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans. Another basic point that I want you to think about is, I was speaking to a man, not in our church, it happened a few months ago, and I was talking to him about a particular aspect of scripture and truth, and he said, oh well, that's for the Hebrews. Because that's what was mentioned in that epistle, and it's not for us. But notice something. This epistle, even though it's written to Colossae, it's written for the Laodiceans too, wasn't it? And it's written for you. It's written for me. In fact, Paul says regarding the Old Testament, here's a verse from 1 Corinthians 10 11. He's speaking to the Corinthians. It says, now all these things happened to them as examples, referring to the Old Testament, and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. There's a sense in which the Old Testament was written for you. It was written for you. It's not just for Moses. Now that may be a basic point, but it's very edifying and helpful. It kind of invites you to read the Bible, doesn't it? God intends you to understand that this book is a letter to you. It's a letter to you. He wants you to read it. If the President of the United States or some other popular or famous person was to write a letter to a group of people, or in the case of the President, maybe the whole nation. That'd be one thing. But if he wrote a letter to you, that'd be another thing, wouldn't it? You probably wouldn't want to take heed to it, wouldn't you? Well, I want you to understand, brethren, that this Bible was written to you from God. And it is God's Word. And it's something that's important for you to take heed to and to marinate on and to appreciate. Of all the words that you can hear, of all the lives especially of the world, I'm not condemning TV and music entirely. There's a lot of junk. Are you paying attention? Are you taking heed to this? Do you realize what's going on here? Notice what he says here. See that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans, that you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. Now there's been a lot of ink spilled on what letter this is. It says again, that you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. And there's basically two positions. Before we get into that, we need to realize that it wouldn't be a letter written from them to Paul, because it would be very inappropriate to put inspired letters, inspired man writing, and an uninspired letter from a congregation on the same par. That's obviously not what it means here. It's either a reference to a letter to the Ephesians, Ephesus, or a letter to the Laodiceans that we don't have, that God in his providence did not preserve, perhaps because it was more particular to them. But we need to realize that that's not a problem. There are other epistles that were written by Paul that were not inspired, nor were they intended to be inspired. 1 Corinthians 5, 9, the very first letter he wrote to Corinth, he said, I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. And that's an epistle we don't have. It wasn't inspired. Paul was writing a lot. So it really doesn't matter, because either way, God's word is to have a prominent place in the life of the church. I've spoken to you about perhaps your personal life, and I want you to think about that. I want you, it's such a blessing to really realize that God has written you a letter. Actually 66 letters. And you should understand it to be for you. He invites you to read it and to love it. The other thing that's helpful for us to realize is In the worship, there's a great warrant to read the scriptures. We are cognizant of what we do in worship. We do it according to God's command. He commands us to read the scriptures. There's a great use to it. During the Reformation, because it was the habit of the Catholic Church to read in Latin, there was great ignorance of the Bible among the people. And it was a custom, certainly not a requirement by law, by God's law, it was a custom to read a whole chapter from the Old Testament and a whole chapter from the New Testament in the worship service apart from the sermon text. Just because that's how important it is to know Scripture. I want you to think about for a moment both in the context of private worship and public worship, whether you appreciate the reality that God has condescended to you to speak to you. You know, I know of a story. I went to Greenville Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina, and one of the customs, if you will, not in every class, but in most classes, especially the pastoral classes and the theology classes, the professor would read a passage of scripture and pray at the very beginning. I'm sure it's something that happens in other seminaries as well. There was this one time where a student, he had the habit of coming in about one or two minutes late. week after week and he didn't really have a sense of what the professor was doing when he was reading the scripture so he would come in and he'd make it a common practice to just come in and he would put his books out and he'd get his pencil ready and he'd kind of get situated and he'd be ruffling paperwork and everything and it was distracting. It wasn't really appropriate. He didn't really understand that this was something different. The professor's not just speaking, God is speaking. There was one time, and I hope you understand I'm not necessarily talking about rebuke here, I'm just talking about the importance of scripture and the reverence we should have. The student comes in two minutes late, the professor's reading scripture and he starts ruffling the paperwork. The professor said to him, young man, show some respect This is God's Word. This is God's Word. It's different. It's special. It deserves your attention. It deserves your reverence. Is that your understanding? There's a sense in which even though we believe that the primary means of grace is the preaching of the word. There's a sense in which I can say that God speaks to you most directly in the reading of scripture. And you ought to love it. What a gracious God who condescends to sinners like you and me with a special letter of salvation and of hope. Primary, primary in worship, and private and public worship. I want you to see also the primacy of Scripture in verse 17. Now it may not be obvious to you, but I'm going to try to make you see how this is the best way of understanding. There is, I will say, in regard to the exegesis or the explanation of verse 17, some level of uncertainty. But I want you to see, secondly, the primacy of Scripture in the ministry. What I mean is this, is Archippus is the pastor. Archippus is the pastor. He's the one who's been set aside to the ministry of the Word. And that's what we have going on here. Let me say at the very outset that This has enormous application, not just for ministers of the world, like myself, and some of the others that may be in the room, and elders, but all of God's people, because all of God's people have a ministry. Well, let's see here, who is Archippus? Is Archippus the pastor? There's a couple things to consider. Verse 17 says, and say to Archippus, take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you may fulfill it. Now the ministry, the word ministry here, if you'd like, turn to Acts 6. You can see this for yourself. The word ministry has a broad meaning. It's diakonia if you will. The ministry of tables. The ministry of ordained ministry. Paul uses it to refer to his apostleship. It also is a reference to the word and that's one of the reasons why teaching elders are often called ministers. Because they minister the word primarily. Acts 6 verse 1 Now, in those days when the number of the disciples were multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were neglected in the daily ministry. Okay, distribution in the New King James. Verse 2, then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, it is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and minister tables. Same idea. But notice in verse 4, and this is my point. I want you just to see that this is consistent with the ministry of the word. Verse 4, the apostle says this, we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word. Now at this point, of course, I haven't really made my case because it could be anything. He could be a deacon. He could just be a member of the church. But there's other things to consider. Archippus is called a fellow soldier in Philemon verse 2. A title. that no doubt applies to all of God's people yet again, but Timothy's called. Timothy, an evangelist, he's called a soldier. You, Paul says to Timothy, you must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Yes, another thing to consider. Another thing to consider, and I'm gonna wrap this all up and show you something about the Word. The other thing to consider is that this ministry is received in the Lord. Take heed to the ministry which you have received in the Lord." This is an important reference. One of the things we hold dear as Presbyterians and other congregations as well is that a congregation has the right and the obligation in some sense to recognize their officers and to call them to service. Seminary students Unfortunately, oftentimes they don't have a call from a church. They don't have a church that's grooming them and saying, hey, we really think you should be a minister. They just kind of take it upon themselves. It's important for us to realize that part of a call to ordination, whether it be a pastor, elder, or deacon, is the congregation. But there's another side to it as well. Christ gives gifts to men. He gives gifts to officers to function in their office. We see this in Ephesians chapter four. Verse 11, and he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. And there's another sense in which pastors, elders, deacons, they have a ministry from Christ. And so he says here, that you have received in the Lord, or by the Lord. You are serving God's people, but you're also serving the Lord. And one thing, and I want you to think about this, especially if you're ordained, especially if you're a pastor here. It's very encouraging to note that Christ has equipped us. It's very encouraging to know that he's enabled us. Acts 20, Paul is speaking to the presbytery. I would commend that reading to you. He's certainly speaking to elders. In Acts 20, he says, verse 28, "...therefore take heed to yourselves, to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers." Not just the people, the Holy Spirit, Christ. He's made you. He's put you in this office. He's equipped you. One thing to think about as we look at this being the pastor, it's an encouragement to you, isn't it? That Christ has given you and your office if I may say, special spiritual blessings to equip you to fulfill it. Now my last point to think about why this is the pastor and I'm gonna come back around. It's not terribly important to understand this to be the pastor by the way. I say it to you openly. I do believe it to be the pastor. I think it's the best understanding of it and here's why. He's talking about the Word in verse 16 isn't he? He's talking about the reading of Scripture. And contextually, it would make a lot of sense to address the man who's most responsible for the preaching of it. If you notice in Nehemiah 8, the priests who were a very much part of the teaching ministry of the church, they read it and then they expounded upon it. That's the main reason why I think you should understand this to be a focus on the word. And that is the ministry here. God's people need to hear from Christ. And that's the goal of a pastor in the pulpit. You don't need to hear my words. You need to hear from Christ. That's why I preach, and it's very common in Reformed churches, to preach expository sermons. Not that you couldn't do a topical sermon. Because we just need to hear from God's Word. That's what I'm serving. That's what I'm ministering. He says, that you may fulfill it. that you may fulfill it. Take heed to the ministry which you have received of the Lord that you may fulfill it." I want to speak to the elders and even especially the teaching elders. In God's providence we have some teaching elders in our midst. I want to speak a word to you men and also to the whole congregation. As a pastor, as elders, God wants you to be faithful. He wants you to fulfill it. He wants you to fulfill your ministry. I think we're tempted, and we can be tempted, perhaps you are tempted to think that, well, I need to be successful as the world defines, and to make money. I mean, aren't these traps that pastors and elders can fall into? God wants you, elders and pastors especially, to be faithful and to fulfill your ministry to Him. Think of Jeremiah. Would you say Jeremiah was successful? in his ministry. He wasn't, from one perspective, was he? God's people just went away, continued in sin, and they were exiled. But he was faithful, and he was successful, and that he fulfilled his ministry. And that's what God wants pastors to do. He wants them to fulfill their ministry. Especially when it's difficult, colossi, As my congregation has seen for the past several weeks, they've got problems. There's heresies. False teaching. People talking about this. Archippus, take heed to your ministry. That you may fulfill it. I want to speak to all of you here. Whether you're a pastor, whether you're a deacon or not. Especially if you're not. All of you. Perhaps you have not been ordained to this or through this ministry, but all of you in God's providence, God has placed you in a particular place. There are people here who can minister to other people here better than I can because of your station, because of your age, maybe because of your gender, maybe because of your special skills and experience. And you have a ministry in that sense. And God wants you and your ministry to endure, to take heed to it, to be faithful in it. A few weeks ago, I went to the Pregnancy Care Center here in town, and I got a tour of it with some other pastors, and there was a lady, I forgot her name, she was the director. And I remember at one point, just overwhelmed by the, just encouraged by the ministry, I said to this lady, you have a wonderful ministry. You have a ministry. And you may be facing difficulties in it, maybe some discouragement. Maybe you don't think you're important. Well, that doesn't really matter in a certain sense. God wants you to fulfill your ministry. He wants you to fulfill your ministry. Now, in this passage of scripture, I wanted you to see that the word of God has a primary place in the life of the church, in the life of individual Christians. Now, I want to take a few minutes to expound on verse 18, and to give some concluding thoughts to you on this epistle. You can go to Yosemite Valley. You can go to this gorgeous place about an hour and a half or so away, and you can get real close to these trees and these rivers, and be like, oh, isn't this a pretty tree and a pretty river? And not step back and see the beauty. the beauty around you. And that's what I want to do here in just a moment. Verse 18 is the, properly speaking, is the conclusion of the epistle. And it kind of reminds us of the whole epistle, doesn't it? This salutation by my own hand Paul. Paul had a, he dictated his letters. We know that from other places as well in the New Testament. But here he takes up the pen and he writes probably the whole verse And that was to authenticate his epistle. There are and there were false epistles. The devil is always wanting people to get sidetracked. So he does this as a practical way of securing the authenticity of this epistle. He says, remember my chains. There could be a sermon there. Remember my chains. Paul is requesting prayer and comfort. He's requesting prayer and comfort. He wants them to remember, and we also ought to remember those who are chained for the gospel. Early Rain is the name of a church in China. We should remember them. The gospel's worth going to prison for. Think about that as well. This is as a side comment. God doesn't require us to just dive into persecution, but there may be time for that, and the gospel's worth it. The gospel is worth it. It's true. It's true. Paul knows it's true, and he's willing to die for it. He's willing to go to jail for it. Grace be with you. Grace be with you, amen. Grace be with you as a benediction. It's the custom at the end of the service, I'll give a benediction. In the Old Testament, the priests were commanded at the end of the service to give a blessing. This is the idea here. Grace. What a great way to summarize all of God's blessings. The blessings that you have in Christ Jesus come to you by grace. Your justification and your sanctification. God saves His people. Yes, He calls them to have faith. He gives them their faith, doesn't He? Grace. What a great hope for sinners. That's the blessing of God that you want. And God wants you to cry out to Him and say, God, give me grace. Give me grace because of Christ. This blessing is declared upon the church authoritatively by the minister as part of the priestly office of Christ. Amen. Amen. So let it be. I agree. When you say amen at the end of a prayer, what you're saying is this. I agree with this and I believe it. And God, I'm persuaded that you can do it. Amen. Now, the epistle Okay, the valley that I want you to see for a moment. And I'll just conclude with this. I don't want you, as my congregation, to go through this letter. We've spent some time, you know, one verse, two verses at times. I want you to think about the main thing. I want to speak to you about it in this way. Perhaps you have noticed a theme. A theme. You've seen maybe a sticker on a car. Jesus saves. Maybe you say, Jesus is Lord. Or maybe you've heard about this idea of Christ-centered preaching. Or maybe you've heard people talk about having a Christ-centered life, and there's books written on Christ-centered marriage and things like that. Is that biblical? And I would say to you, yes. And one of the reasons why it's biblical for us to be focused on Christ, because this epistle is all about the Lord Jesus Christ, His sufficiency, His supremacy in all of life. And that's the thing I want you to think about. In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. So He has plenty to give. There's nothing lacking. He is God. He is a full Savior. He has reconciled sinners to Himself. You don't need anything else but Christ to reconcile you, a sinner, to a holy God. You don't need any more guidance. In Him dwell all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Christ invented knowledge, wisdom. It's not the purpose of the Bible to teach you how to be a doctor. But for salvation and for your life, you need Christ's word in your life. Christ is who we preach. Christ is who we testify to. Verse two of chapter four, verse three, talks about speaking the mystery of Christ, the gospel. And I wanna ask you, dear congregation, beloved sisters, beloved brothers in Christ, are you living a Christ-centered life? And more importantly to that, is Christ your focus? Do you go to Him for help? Do you go to Him for protection? Is He central to you? Is He secondary? Is He secondary? Is He your focus? Perhaps you need to reorient your life a bit and focus on Him. Perhaps you need to keep your focus on it. Christ really is all in all for all of his people. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we bless your name. We bless your name for your word, for condescending to us for having holy men inspired by your spirit to write holy words. We praise your name for preserving your word entirely, perfectly for us, that we may read it, that we may hear it preached. We ask that it would be primary in our life, and we pray that Christ would be primary in our life, that we would understand more and more his supremacy and his sufficiency, that we would love him. Father, as anyone here who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ, we ask that they would know him, as their Lord and Savior. We ask that you would work this grace both in them and in us, your people. For we ask in his name. Amen.