Good morning. My name's Sally. If I haven't met you, lovely to be with you on this crisp Melbourne winter's morning. Now we are working our way through Colossians, and last week Andrew gave us a brilliant sermon. If you haven't seen it, go back. It's a wonderful thing about the modern age. You can look at any sermon from any era almost and catch up. It was magnificent to look at the poetry, and that's what it was. I wasn't quite ready for that, but all right. Used without permission. But no, leave it there, leave it there. That's good. No, that's good. Um, it was the poetry of Paul as he talks about the magnificence of Jesus, as he talks about the kingship of Jesus. And if you haven't read these first few verses in Colossians, go back and take a look. We hear about Jesus being before all things, about holding all things together, being supreme over creation, and Jesus reconciling all things to himself through the cross. Wonderful, wonderful poetry from Paul. And it is it is something we need to keep coming back to again and again. And interesting, isn't it, that we love to think about the glory and the power of Jesus and kind of put ourselves with him in that. We know theologically one day we will reign in glory with him. That's a that's going to be a wonderful day. But for so many of us, we we want to reign now. We want to be on the throne now, and I apologize, this has been up for a long time. Andrew's looking very embarrassed. We want to be on the throne. We want a piece of that glory. And if I was writing Colossians, you can be thankful that I didn't. If I was writing to the church at Colossae, I would stay in this mode, this majestic mode. Sir, I see your AI image with the creepy fingers, and I raise you one. Because we all want to be on the throne. And uh, Nathan, that can come down now. Thank you very much. The power of being on stage, the power of being king and queen of our own life. It's real. Andrew last week took us back to the Garden of Eden and said, this is where it all started, wanting to be in control. Now, a sense of agency, we know psychologically, we need that. But this is a step further. This is, I want a piece of this glory and this power and this control now. And so I would have stuck to that theme. That would have been me. But here's the interesting thing: we go from this majestic poetry straight into suffering. I find that intriguing to say the least. So we're going to read Colossians chapter 1, starting at verse 24. Grab your Bible, or you can look at it on the screen. Just after Jesus is declared King and Lord over all creation, we read this. Now, says Paul, now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the Word of God in all its fullness, the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord's people, the Jewish people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the rest of us the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end, I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me. I want you to know how hard I'm contending for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not met me personally. My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, that is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I tell you this so that no one will deceive you by fine sounding arguments. For though I'm absent with you in the body, I am present with you in spirit, and I delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. This is the portion of the letter that we'll be reading and looking at today. Praise be to God. So I find it really interesting. Paul makes it very clear. Jesus reigns, he dwells in that space of majestic language, and he says, but this life for you and for me is not about power and authority, it's not about ruling, not yet. We're not reigning with him yet. Instead, because Jesus is king, we train ourselves to remain faithful to him. Because Jesus is king, we train ourselves to remain faithful to him. Come what may. And Paul is pretty clear in saying, come what may includes wrestling, suffering, contending. And one thing I want to address straight up, and it's it's I don't know whether you caught it, that first verse we read, verse 24. Now I rejoice, says Paul, in what I'm suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, the church. In first reading it, you might say, Well, what's lacking in what Jesus did for us? What's lacking in his afflictions? Surely nothing. Absolutely, nothing is missing in this discussion of Christ's afflictions, in what he did on the cross. And we know that instinctively. We read that through the rest of Scripture. So what does he mean? Well, it's corporate Christology. It's this idea that the body of Christ is no longer just the physical body of Christ, it's us. It's the church at Colossae, it's every church that has been and will come. Because a part of being on this planet together as people who are following Jesus, we follow where he leads. We follow right into the crux of suffering, we follow the crucified Christ. It's the reality of being a follower of Christ. Paul isn't saying that Jesus' death was insufficient, Christ's work on the cross is complete, but Paul is saying that until Jesus returns, the church continues to experience the cost of following him. And what's really interesting in this sense is that Paul is standing right out in the front, on the front lines of that suffering and saying, I'll take on as much of that as I can for your sake. That's extraordinary that someone would say, Oh, I'll take more so you can take less. It's not really a part of our thinking in this current day, is that we think that when someone comes to faith in Jesus, somehow their life will become easier, will become better. And in certain ways, absolutely it will become better. We're with the king in glory. But on the other hand, if we in Australia in 2026 expect that following Jesus will make your life easier, you need to understand Paul expected the opposite. He expected suffering, he expected a high cost for following his Lord and Savior. When we hitch our wagons to Jesus, the King, we know that it costs. And we know that we will be given so much more than it costs, but nonetheless, it'll cost. So Paul's desire in these verses to the Colossian church and to us by association is that we would be brought to maturity in Christ, so that not if suffering comes, but when suffering comes, we'll stand firm. That's his desire. Because Jesus is King, we train ourselves to remain faithful to him. It's not about trying harder, it's about training deeper. Maturity doesn't happen accidentally. We don't become mature in Christ by accident or just by the passage of time. It doesn't work that way. We know that maturity, we know that any kind of growth in our lives takes effort and it takes energy. Paul strenuously contends, verse 29 tells us. And that word strenuously contending, it's the word agonizomai. And yes, you can hear agony in there because it's contending, it's wrestling, it's striving, it's giving everything you've got to becoming more and more mature, coming, becoming more faithful to Jesus, coming closer to Jesus. And Paul gives it so much emphasis here. He wants everyone, everywhere to contend in the same way that he is. He wants them to be mature, to be sold out, to make every effort to grow and to be found in Christ in the darkest of days. As is often the case, Paul draws a comparison to athletic training, and this word, agonizomai, has that sense of competing and training, of trying and striving to be who you're called to be to win the prize. We see this in a lot of Paul's writing, and we see it here too. A lot of the Bible is filled actually with a lot of agricultural references, isn't it? The growth of this, the seed of that. There's all kinds of wonderful images. And for a group of people who most likely go down to the supermarket and buy vegetables, yes, we can relate to all those agricultural references, but the sporting references, Melbourne, come on, this is us, right? This is something we can fully lean into and understand. Even if your interest in sport is on the couch, even if you just love to see Brisbane go down, even if that's what it's about. We are a passionate people when it comes to sport. And so we can see what Paul's talking about here. Train to win the prize, train and be disciplined so that you can be mature. We see it in the com games at the moment. It looks like we're doing so well just by accident because we're so much further ahead, but we know in reality this is years of training to be the best. No one accidentally runs a marathon. Not in Paul's time, not in our time. It takes time and discipline and practice. Similarly, we can say this about other parts of our life. No one accidentally becomes fluent in another language. No one accidentally becomes a brilliant violinist. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, you saw that in action, Karen with her beautiful playing that's taken years of practice. Nobody accidentally has a strong marriage or is accidentally content in being single. No one accidentally becomes spiritually mature. No one accidentally forgives an enemy, has a deeper prayer life, knows scripture, trusts God in suffering. No one accidentally stays faithful for 50 years. No one accidentally strives and wins Commonwealth gold. We see the glory moments, we see the best performances, we see some of the people in this congregation who have faithfully walked the walk and talked the talk, and we can go, I want to be like that. Well, yes, so do I. Let's train, let's show spiritual discipline that we might be there too. And just like those Commonwealth Games people who put in the training, have the injuries, do the 5 a.m. starts, the gym sessions. That's what it takes. It's not an accident. We had a very small taste of this athletic world in our family some years ago. We had two kids who were gifted in other things, and then suddenly we ended up with one who was sporty, and we went, oh, okay, what do we do with that? So we found ourselves in the world that many of you find yourselves in, running a kid to this practice and that practice and all those things. For some of you, it's you yourselves who are doing so well in whatever sporting field. But here are some of the glory moments from our family. Here's the hundred meter, two hundred meter long jump champion that we managed to raise in our family. It was a wonderful era. We would go to all these events and see winning, we would see uh all sorts of personal bests being broken again and again. It was so good, these moments, they were wonderful. The medals that adorned the walls, it was fun. It was so good to win the prize. And often we felt like we'd won the prize. We drove him there, we flew him there, we showed up to training, but no, all right, they were his. But all these medals, they didn't come by accident. They weren't, they weren't just show up and compete and do well. What most people didn't see was the 30 minutes of warming up before you even start practice to try and stop injury. The multiple training sessions each week, the time with the coach who would work on just the most seemingly insignificant moment in the jump or in the run. Just that small thing that makes a small difference, but it adds and makes lots of difference. The training in the middle of Melbourne winter. So then in the middle of summer, you might add half a second to a hundred-meter run. No, you would be taking half a second off. I'm out of practice. We even had a brief vegan stage. Watched a Netflix thing, went, oh yeah, that's gonna do it. So Bay and I both went vegan for six months. Oh my Lord, never take me back there again. It was so hard. And while he made great progress in all sorts of areas, I ate lots of carbs and put on weight. So eventually we said, no, no, no, no, no. That's that's not gonna work for us. That's certainly not gonna work for me. So no athlete trains and diets and stretches and strategizers because it's just all fun. You train to win the prize. You train to stand on that podium and say, I did it. I don't know whether you've uh been following Nikola Oslagers. She's uh she's one of the world's best high jumpers, Aussie girl, person of faith. And on Tuesday night this week, she won silver. She normally wins gold, but she won silver in Glasgow. And when she was interviewed, she said this competition is a great pressure that reveals your foundation. Competition is a great pressure that reveals your foundation, and not just in high jump, right? She said, For me, the reason I'm in sport is that God's given me a gift, and it's my gift to give back to him. So when I have all the pressure, the rain, the crowd, the wind and cold, I look to him and I say, This is a passion you've given me, and I'm giving it all back to you. It kind of gives me this fire that no rain can ever drown out. And she said, speaking of training and discipline, she said, What's happened this week? It's really revealed that the training's going well. Because at 10 o'clock at night, in the pouring rain, she won silver. There was no accident there. There was this struggle, the strain, the agony to reach the goal, and that is all of our journeys. To be mature. Paul says to Timothy, physical training is of some benefit, but I can tell you, all those medals, they're all packed in the box. For those who've had the glory moments in whatever field of sport, it was great, wasn't it? But it's kind of over. Not for everyone. But the reality is spiritual training, this idea that we might be able to train ourselves to godliness that Paul talks about, that is the real deal. In our spiritual lives, much more than in our physical. We need to train, we need to find rhythms to our spiritual lives. We discipline ourselves so that when trouble comes, when and not if, we can stand firm. Because Jesus is on the throne, because he rules and reigns, and because one day we'll be with him, we train ourselves to remain faithful to him. And I would love to say and to believe and to preach that when you discipline yourself enough, suffering is sort of eliminated. The struggle is kind of over because it's all in the training, and we can breeze through life's difficult stuff. Wouldn't that be nice? But it's not the reality, and I've seen far too many people give up because they just don't think it's worth it. The reality of not perfection, but discipline that says, when I fall down, I will get up again. I will stand with Jesus. That's what we're aiming for. And I'd love to say that when I uh was 18 years old and was encouraged to read my Bible cover to cover, and then I read it again, and I was faithful to attending church year after year after decade after decade, and when I uh prayed and when I did my best to obey, I would love to say that I sailed through the hard years, but I actually nearly lost my footing. I'm so glad I trained for it. I didn't even know I was training for it. 2013 to 2016 were what some of the toughest years of my life for reasons you don't Need to know, and they were multiple. I struggled, and tough thing after tough thing after tough thing just kind of flew at me. And God was very clear through that time. This is what I want you to do, this is how I want you to obey. And I said, Okay, I can do that. And I stood firm and I did what I could and I kept the disciplines up. And this happened year after year. And eventually, towards the end of that time, I thought to myself, I don't know that I can do this anymore. Is it worth it? I don't know how many of you in this room are in that dark season of the soul, but chances are there are some. And you might be asking the same question, is this really worth it? This is so difficult. I'm sick of showing up for training. I'm sick of the disciplines. I'm sick of contending. I'm sick of the agony of these now years of struggle. I was exhausted. And then I was having coffee with my best friend, and she said to me, I've been praying for you, and I want to share a picture with you. Now I think I have shared this picture with you again before. I unapologetically share it again because it aligns so well with what Paul is talking about here in Colossians. She knew my struggles, she knew all of it, as only best friends can. And she said, as I was praying for you, Sally, I had this picture. And in it, you're standing face to face with Jesus. And there aren't words spoken, but I can tell you are exhausted. You're sort of at the end of yourself. You're not sure you want to go on. You're not sure you want to keep a bane, running the race. The race is just, you've had it. Maybe giving up, maybe walking away somehow would make things easier. And as I'm standing face to face with Jesus, instead of using words to explain that, I put out my hands to Jesus. I said, look at my wounds. Look at what life's doing to me. Look at what people are doing to me. And I show him my wounds, and he looks at me with compassion. And instead of using words back, he just puts his hands out, shows me his wounds, the nail marks, the pain and the anguish and the suffering, far beyond what I was experiencing. And in that moment, as she explained that picture to me, I thought to myself, of course I can do it. Of course I can keep going. Of course I can obey. Of course I can keep training. Of course I will keep running the race. It's absolutely worth it. There's one who goes before us who suffered more than any of us will ever know. And he leads us and holds us and guides us. So if you're battle weary this morning, if you're wondering if it's worth pushing through, if you've got doubts, if you're numb, if you're not sure you can hold to the steps of obedience that God is asking you to hold to. Yes, you can. Yes, you will. Yes, it's worth it. Because Jesus is King, we continue to train ourselves to remain faithful to Him. And we do it not on our own. We're not just striving in our own strength. If we were, none of us would be here. But as Paul reminds us, he says, I struggle with all of his energy that works so powerfully in me. Even the discipline we show, we don't do on our own. He is there with us, before us, in us, and in glory. We respond to the strength that Christ already works within us. And remember, for Jesus, this wasn't only about the cross, although the cross is everything. But Hebrews reminds us that though he was God's Son, Jesus learned trusting obedience by what he suffered, just as we do. Then having arrived at the full stature of his maturity and having been announced by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who believingly obey him. So what does faithfulness, what does discipline look like for you this morning, for us this morning? It's about reading our Bible when we don't feel like it. It's the simple day-to-day practices. Praying even when heaven feels silent. Forgiving when holding hate is so much easier. Choosing integrity when compromise would cost far less. It's showing up when you'd rather walk away. Jesus, you reign and not me. Every moment we train, we're saying that. And each step of obedience takes us away from the throne and reinstates Jesus where he naturally is. So I wonder, what is Jesus whispering to you about this morning? What is it that he's asking you, nudging you about? Is there a step of obedience that you haven't taken or need to retake? Is it a call to stay in a hard situation? Please hear me. I don't mean stay in an abusive situation. But is there a hard situation that he's called you to and that he's saying, stand firm. I'm with you. Is there a reminder to get back to the basics? Reading your Bible, praying, obeying? The spiritual disciplines do not earn us God's love. But they train us to recognize it, to trust it, and to remain in it. And if this is news to you, if you're like, I've never heard about thrones, I've never heard about Jesus reigning, I've never heard about spiritual disciplines, but I'm intrigued enough to ask some more questions. Would you do that this morning? Would you ask someone at the next steps desk or down here after the service or ask a friend you came with? This is the best news the world has to offer us. That we can follow the creator God, the Savior of the universe who rules and reigns. And because Jesus is King, we continue to train ourselves to remain faithful to that God, to that Jesus. And because Jesus is king, we remain faithful when life is easy and when suffering comes. And because Jesus is king, we step off the throne and we come to his table. We come to share in communion this morning, knowing that remembering and giving thanks is one of the simplest and most profound ways that we can acknowledge again that Jesus is on the throne. We can give thanks for his death and his resurrection and his ascension. And we're going to partake in that now. To come to Jesus, who wore a crown of thorns before he wore a crown of glory. That's what we're going to do now is give thanks for all that he did. To give thanks that his scars remind us that suffering is never wasted. So in a moment, we're going to make our way to one of the communion spots around the room. There's a couple at the back, there's a few at the front. And if you would, if you would like to, please take a piece of cracker, which is a reminder of Jesus' body broken on the cross for you and me. And then if you'd like to pick up a cup of juice, which is a simple reminder of Jesus' blood shed on the cross to bring us, to reconcile us into right relationship with God. We're going to give thanks in that way. And there is also at each spot a bowl with some tiny, tiny crosses in it. They looked bigger online, I swear. But these little tiny crosses, if something has struck you this morning, if Jesus has been whispering and nudging, if there's something in your life you go, I think I need to tweak or change or start or stop. If God's been speaking to you this morning and you'd love a little reminder, something to stick on your bathroom mirror, the dash on your car, your computer, keyboard, just as a reminder that God has graciously asked you to step into faithfulness and discipline and obedience. Take one of those as well. So in a moment, the cracker, the juice, and if you would like, the tiniest cross in the world to remind you of what God's asking you to do. Let's pray together. Jesus, we are so thankful that before you wore a crown of glory, you wore a crown of thorns. We thank you as we come and take communion that your body was broken, your blood was poured out, and your love has never failed us. We bring ourselves together in this communion meal, giving thanks and praise and honor and glory and surrender to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Amen.