Faithbase

Good morning and welcome to this edition of thinking about the Bible. Yesterday we read from Colossians chapter 1 and talked about how Paul prayed for people that he didn't know, that he didn't know personally. Today we're moving on to chapter 1 verse 6 and I want to read and then make some comments on that. This same good news that came to you is going out over all the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives just as it changed your life from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God's wonderful grace. Now dropping down to verse 23 of chapter 1 of Colossians. But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firm in it. Don't drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the good news. The good news has been preached all over the world and I Paul have been appointed as God's servant to proclaim it. Now we might think that's hyperbole on the part of Paul or something, but what we need to realize is that the first century audience, the original audience that received this letter would have understood that to mean that the world that they lived in, that the gospel had gone out across the entire, I guess you could say the Roman Empire, the known world. We do have of course, I guess you say not solid information, but information that Thomas for instance took the gospel further east into the regions of India and so we have that history or that legend you might say or whatever it is, but there's evidence that that did happen, that Thomas was actually over there. But the point is that when people read this, they would read this in a way that we might read something today that another culture would think, well that's hyperbole, that seems overstated, and it wasn't. It was actually true that the gospel had gone out throughout the entire Roman world by the time Paul had written this. He was a big part of that of course. We don't have all the other details of where and when and how the gospel was preached throughout the Roman world and beyond that, but we can take from the Bible that that's actually what happened. Now that has a bearing on our understanding of eschatology because in Mark and Matthew and elsewhere, for instance Jesus in Mark 13 10, first the gospel must be preached to all nations before all these things that he's describing as the end of the age. Matthew 24 14, in this gospel the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, the whole inhabited earth as a testimony to all the nations and then the end will come. And my challenge to you today is to attempt to put yourself in the shoes of the original audience, or the sandals as the case may be, as I think I mentioned before, but Jesus is talking about an end to something. It's not necessarily the end of everything that we are thinking is going to happen anytime, some people do, but it is an end and I think the end that is in mind here, is in view here, is the end of the old covenant age. That's something different than the end of all things. The end of the old covenant age was very significant because it heralded a turning of the page of history. And I've said this before, that the cross is the hinge upon which all history turns. And when Jesus completed his work, the old age came to a conclusion, the new age began. There was this time of overlap that be already but not yet time. And according to what Jesus says, the gospel needed to be preached to all the nations before that old age came to an end. That's how I interpret that. Whether you do or not would require your study and your consideration on that, and your prayerful study I should say. But my challenge to you today, as you think about the Bible, is to think about how the original audience would have understood the text. For instance, what Paul happens to say here about the gospel and the good news being preached over all the world. How would they have understood that? So as you think about the Bible today, allow the Bible to challenge your position on some of your perhaps most cherished positions, cherished beliefs concerning the gospel. And let the Bible speak to you about what it is that it is trying to say, and how the original audience would have understood that. We need to understand in the same fashion. God bless you, I'll see you next time.