Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Taming the Tiger

by Dave Wilkinson

Colossians 1:9

June 8, 2003

If I weren’t a 49er fan - if I were an ordinary mortal, an objective observer - or if I were a fan of the mere Dallas Cowboys or Seattle Seahawks - I wouldn’t like 49er wide receiver Terrell Owens one bit. When he scored against Dallas, he ran back to the center of the field and struck a pose on the Cowboy’s lone-star emblem. When he scored a game-winning touchdown against Seattle last October he pulled a pen out of his sock and autographed the ball. Owens takes arrogance and showboating to an extreme - even for professional athletes -- or he would if he weren’t a 49er. But since he is a 49er, I just say that he’s intense and colorful.

He’s also very good at what he does. He’s a tiger. So, even people who dislike him would be delighted if he was on their team. Even coaches who feel disdain for his antics would be glad to have him on their side.

Because tigers win games. And, as one coach observed about choosing players, “I’d rather tame a tiger than try to paint stripes on a house cat.”

In the same way, as a pastor, I would much rather try to add some discipline to a believer with strength, drive and fire than attempt to motivate a snail to race.

I read somewhere that great sinners and great saints are made out of the same stuff. In other words, a person who is a lazy sinner will often prove to be a half-hearted disciple after conversion. But a person who goes at life intensely — even if she’s headed in the wrong direction - will be on fire for her faith if she comes to Christ.

The Apostle Paul is a great example of this. Before Jesus won him on the Damascus road, Paul was an energetic persecutor of the young church. After Paul met Jesus, he proved to be at least as equally energetic at spreading the good news. Jesus didn’t pull Paul’s fangs and claws and turn him into a house pet. He kept Paul a tiger. Jesus needs a tigers. He just sent him in a new direction.

I suspect that Paul’s knowledge of himself is why he’s so excited by what he hears from Epaphras about the Colossian Christians. This is a very young church. It may be only a few months old. But it has every sign of being a tiger.

Now, as we will see as we continue in this letter, this church has been born into a rough neighborhood. It faces a lot of challenges.

So Paul writes to this young tiger of a church and says, “You need to add some discipline and focus to your fire and drive. You’re going to need this if you’re going to survive in this league over the long haul.”

In other words, it’s time for the Colossians to grow up.

In all honesty, we who are parents and grandparents know that babies are not always pleasant to be around. It is said that “a baby is a digestive apparatus with a loud noise at one end and no responsibility at the other!” Babies are notoriously selfish and self-centered.

And the Scriptures liken new Christians to babies. That’s not an insult. It is the appropriate place to begin.

But there’s a problem if people stay babies. God has more for us than spiritual infancy. Peter says, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow thereby.”

Growth is expected.

But unfortunately, there are Christians who never get past the baby stage. They may have been believers for years. But they suffer from arrested development. They become Christians because they realize their need of a Savior. But then, they sit back on that beginning and don’t go anywhere with it. They don’t know what to do next after coming to Christ. And they don’t bother to find out. They file the event away as a victory, and then continue with the day’s normal activities.

Now if that describes you -- if you are still in the same place in your faith as you were five years ago, I want you to know that growing up is important! It is important because it is a tough world out there. And not only do you hurt yourself if you don’t grow. You hurt the whole church.

We are called to mature toward Christlikeness. In fact, in his Letter to the Ephesians Paul tells us that maturity in Christ is God’s goal for us. He also tells us that maturity through the church is God’s method and maturity in relationships is God’s expression. If we don’t move toward that goal, we stay immature and petty, only concerned with about our needs. Nobody wants to be around that. No one is attracted to that.

Now the Apostle Paul has recognized and celebrated the true Christian life of these young Colossian believers. He has shared his excitement with what has happened to them.

For as we saw when we looked at verses 4 and 5, the Colossians have already shown the unmistakable marks of Christ at work in their lives. There is a new hope in their lives which is a far cry from the hopelessness of their former lost condition. That hope comes from the fact that in the gospel they have learned that Jesus Himself is available to them personally to help in the struggles of life. From that hope comes faith. They believe the hope and have begun to count on Jesus’ presence with them and to draw strength from Him. And out of their faith, then, has come compassion and concern for others, especially their brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Faith, hope, and love are the marks of a Christian. And these are all evident in the young church in Colossae.

But it’s not enough. Paul is concerned that they continue to grow. So Paul writes, “Since I heard of your life in the Spirit,” - there’s the fire - “we have not ceased to pray for you, that God may give you the rest of what you need.”

He identifies a number of things that the Colossians need to grow to what he later calls in verse 28 “completeness” or “maturity” in Christ. He starts with knowledge, wisdom and understanding.

Why these three?

Well a seething lava flow of false teaching has begun to engulf the Colossian’s church. This threatens to destroy the simplicity of the faith that has already produced beauty and liberty in their lives.

Knowledge, wisdom and understanding are what the Colossians need to fight back. They need these three because of the particular enemy they face.

Some of these false teachers are part of a movement called Gnosticism, Gnosticism comes from the Greek word for knowledge which is gnosis. So when Paul tells the Colossians that he prays for God’s gifts of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, he deliberately uses the very three words that were the special favorites of the Gnostic false teachers. He attacks the Gnostics on their own ground.

For the Gnostics claim to have a superior supply of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding beyond that of ordinary people. They claim to be the ultimate in-crowd with the ultimate insight into reality. So Paul counters by saying that knowledge, wisdom, and understanding aren’t a private preserve of a self-appointed elite. Instead, they are available as a gift from God given to Christians.

The Greek word for knowledge Paul uses here in verse 9 is epignosis. Gnosis is the word for knowledge and epi is the prefix of intensity, like the epicenter of a quake. So epignosis means a deeper, broader, and more complete knowledge. For the Gnostic, this epignosis was the result of his effort to understand mysteries. But Paul says that the true knowledge of God is only the result of God’s self-revelation in Jesus.

In other words, we are the true ultimate in-crowd. The only thing is that we aren’t allowed to act like in-crowds usually act. For our greater knowledge is always to result in greater love.

I like how Warren Wiersbe puts it. He writes: “In my pastoral ministry, I have met people who have become intoxicated with studying the deeper truths of the Bible.” Usually they have been given a book or introduced to some teacher’s tapes. Before long, they get so smart they become dumb! The “deeper truths” they discover only detour them from practical Christian living. Instead of getting burning hearts of devotion to Christ, they get big heads and start creating problems in their homes and churches.”

Knowledge can be a great thing!

But unfortunately, some believers in Jesus Christ become specialists in trivia. We can become great storehouses of information, but it can be worthless.

Have you ever met a person who is a specialist in sports trivia? He can monopolize your evening, telling you who led the American League in stolen bases in 1923 and what pitcher held the record for consecutive walks in 1946. Be aware that there is knowledge which is useless and there is knowledge which is fruitful.

Growing in the knowledge of God is a good thing. But knowledge to the Christian is never an end in itself.

Increasing in our knowledge of God was never intended to make us sound clever. It was never intended to help us win arguments. It was intended to help us win hearts.

The next thing that Paul prays for after knowledge is wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to apply what you know to what you do. That’s essential.

Some years ago, an Air Force Staff Sgt. named Charles Johnson was on a training mission in a B-52 bomber. He became convinced that the other five men were no longer in the plane because he could not contact them from his position in the gunner’s seat. Believing he was headed straight down into a crash, he ejected, only to discover that he was at 29,000 feet. He was found later wandering a rural road in Arkansas, while his colleagues had landed safely at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

The wrong knowledge rightly applied can bring disaster. But so can the right knowledge wrongly applied. We need wisdom.

Everyone today talks about vison. Every business worth its letterhead has a statement of vision. But remember that vision without execution is only hallucination.

So Paul doesn’t just pray for any wisdom for the Colossians. He prays for “Spiritual Wisdom”, -- wisdom that comes from the Spirit, not from the natural mind of people. In 1 Corinthians, Paul contrasts the two, saying, “our ministry is not according to the wisdom of man, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power.” The natural person knows nothing of this no matter how well educated he or she may be.

I will never forget reading of a prominent psychiatrist a number of years ago telling about his life before he became a Christian -- of his honors and his wealth and how sought-after his advice was by industrial leaders all over the country. But as his external life increased, his inner life began to break down and he felt more and more hollow and empty. At last, when he took his six-year-old son, dead, out of the swimming pool, he began to read the Bible. As he read, there came a moment when he sat with his head in his hands saying, “My God, what an ass I’ve been.”

That’s sometimes where wisdom begins. This man’s knowledge had led him to nothing worthwhile. Then he began to learn what God says about life.

That is what Christians need to discover -- what God thinks about life. That is reality. If you want to be realistic, then read and study your Bible to discover how God looks at things. Everything else is fantasy. It is like Coors Light advertisements on television; outrageous, out-of-this world fantasies. That is the way the world thinks. But if you want to live realistically, learn spiritual wisdom. Learn the wisdom of God.

Paul then prays that the Colossians can claim the implication of knowledge and wisdom in the gift of understanding. This word is sunesis. This is the very wonderful gift of insight which can discriminate between what is true and false.

Sunesis is the application of the wisdom you are learning to the specific circumstance you are going through. As someone has well put it, sunesis is “a clear vision of what needs to be done.”

What Paul is talking about by using this word is how we can come to know the will of God. Some of you are struggling with problems and you don’t know what to do.

The first thing you need is to understand how God sees your problem and what he says about it, in His Word. Often you will find all you need to know right here.

Other time, the issue is more complex. The promise of this sunesis word is that as you pray and seek God’s face -- as you seek the counsel of Godly people -- you get a clear vision of what needs to be done. What steps to take or not to take. That is how to discover the will of God -- and you can trust God not to allow you to make a crucial mistake.

This all comes from the Spirit. That’s why this passage is so important for Pentecost. These are not natural abilities. They are given by the Spirit, and therefore available to all believers. The only requirement is that we be headed toward maturity in Christ. They are not gifts that can be given to a baby.

That’s why growth is so important. It is sad when it doesn’t take place. It is sad for the individual and it is sad for the congregation as a whole.

Leroy Eims writes in The Lost Art of Disciple Making: One spring our family was driving from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa, Florida. As far as the eye could see, orange trees were loaded with fruit. When we stopped for breakfast, I ordered orange juice with my eggs. “I’m sorry,” the waitress said. “I can’t bring you orange juice. Our machine is broken.”

At first I was dumbfounded. We were surrounded by millions of oranges, and I know they had oranges in the kitchen - orange slices garnished our plates. What was the problem? No juice? Hardly. We were surrounded by thousands of gallons of juice. The problem was that they had become dependent on a machine to get it.

Eims writes, “Christians are sometimes like that. They may be surrounded by Bibles in their homes, but if something should happen to the Sunday morning preaching service, they would have no nourishment for their souls. The problem is not lack of spiritual food but that many Christians haven’t grown enough to know how to get it for themselves.”

If this describes you, please talk to me of Janet or of small group coordinator Karen Bryan. Let’s not spiritually starve ourselves in the midst of plenty — not when knowledge, wisdom and insight are all ours for the growing. Let’s not limit ourselves. Let’s continue to grow.