JY: Welcome to GearTalk. Today, we’re replaying the second of three missions-focused messages originally delivered by Jason DeRouchie in the fall of 2022 at Midwestern Seminary and Spurgeon College’s Fusion Youth Weekend. The title of today’s message is “How Missions.” All three of these messages grow out of Colossians 1:24-29. In these verses, Paul provides the foundation for his and the church’s global mission. These messages clarify what fuels the work of Hands to the Plow Ministries, and we hope they will help motivate listeners to be goers or senders for the sake of Christ’s name.

JD: God has purposed that his church engage in missions to fulfill his Word by helping people value Christ as their greatest treasure, which is the mark of Christian maturity. God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone into our hearts to give us the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in merely a jar of clay in order to show that the surpassing power comes not from us, but from him. He is passionate to see multitudes magnifying the majesty of the glory of his Son—the glory revealed in Jesus, which is a treasure filled with power that God puts into the lives of fragile missionaries, jars of clay. And in the process of displaying the glory, sometimes God intends that those clay pots get broken.

In this message in Colossians 1, open your Bibles there again, Colossians 1:24-29, same verses we looked at last time. We want to now ask the question: how missions? How missions? That is, how do churches who send and missionaries who go reach this goal of exalting Christ among the nations? So to that end, pray with me.

Unless a grain of wheat, Father, goes into the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit. And you have determined that your Kingdom will advance through suffering and through sharing. Oh Lord, may we treasure you more than anything else, even than life itself, and proclaim what is good and true and lovely and pure—the only hope that can give peace and life and help to a needy world living in darkness. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

How missions? How do we accomplish the missionary task? Paul gives us two answers in Colossians 1:24-29. So have your eyes open to the book. We’re going to begin in verse 24.

How missions? First answer: By joyfully suffering to illustrate Christ’s afflictions and love for those he died to save. Look with me at Colossians 1:24. Now, Paul says, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.”

Suffering and sacrifice are not something that we long for, but they are often necessary for growth and gain. John Piper has said, “We measure the worth of a hidden treasure by what we will gladly sell to buy it. If we will sell all, then we measure the worth as supreme. If we will not, what we have is treasured more.” Jesus said, “The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and he sells all that he has and he buys it.”

Piper adds, “The extent of his sacrifice and the depth of his joy display the worth he puts on the treasure of God. Loss and suffering joyfully accepted for the Kingdom of God show the supremacy of God’s worth more clearly in this world than all worship and prayer.”

In the midst of suffering, many of us pray, “God, get me out of this suffering,” and yet often God wants to display his power less through your deliverance and more through your endurance, so that you might display to the world he is worth trusting in simply because of who he is, and not because of what he gives or takes away.

In Colossians 1:24, Paul declares he is rejoicing in his sufferings. Oh my. In Romans 5:3-5, he says something similar: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who’s been given to us.”

Now what Colossians 1:24 adds is that Paul’s suffering is not just benefiting him, it is for the church. Look at that. It says, “I’m suffering for your sake.” What this implies is that Paul’s suffering is nurturing their endurance, their character, their hope. Because of the benefit his suffering gives, Paul rejoices for their sake.

So what suffering is Paul enduring as a missionary, and how is it that his suffering is benefiting other people? Well, most immediately Paul’s suffering is imprisonment. He’s in prison, likely in Rome. Look with me at the end of the book. Chapter 4, verse 3: “Pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ.” There it is again, that treasure. “Pray that God would open for us a door to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am bound.” There is a cost to Paul’s discipleship, a cost to his missionary task. He’s in prison.

Or look at 4:10, he says, “Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner greets you.” And then 4:18, “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains.”

From the earliest stages of his calling, Paul knew that he was going to suffer very much as a missionary. Jesus in Acts 9 says of Paul regarding his upcoming missionary task to the Gentiles, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” hear that worship? he will suffer for the sake of my name. And suffer he did.

All that Paul endured, as he tells us in Second Corinthians chapter 11:24-28: “Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people”—hear that, danger from my own people. “Wolves will arise from your midst,” Paul told the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. And he had experienced it. “Danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.” Paul suffered.

Jesus says, “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will”—hear that—“they will persecute you” (John 15:20). Similarly, as Paul ministered to his churches, he sought to strengthen the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God. Many tribulations. Acts 14:22. The missionary task is always wrought with trial and with pain, for God purposes his saints’ suffering to be a keen means for proclaiming to the world who Christ is, how Christ loves, and how much Christ is worth.

Consider the second-half of Colossians 1:24. Look with me again: “In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Commentators say this is the most difficult verse in the entire book of Colossians. What does Paul mean when he says he is filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions? Was Christ’s saving work in some way ineffective? Answer: never.

Look with me up at 1:21-22. Paul says, “You who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.” Jesus’s death fully reconciles people to God and empowers our growth in holiness. Jesus died both for our justification and our sanctification, and he was effective in both.

Then look at chapter 2:13-15: “You, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all our trespasses, all of them.” An effective work, effective saving work. Having forgiven all our trespasses, “This by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This God set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Jesus.” Christ’s death has fully reconciled this church to God, and his resurrection has fully overcome every enemy obstacle.

So then, what does Paul mean when he says, “I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”? What he means is this: that the suffering of Christ’s saints illustrates Christ’s afflictions and love for those he died to save. Suffering is not only the result of the missionary task, it is part of the means for fulfilling it.

We find a helpful parallel in the book of Philippians 2:30. The Philippian church had raised some type of support for Paul—could have been financial, could have been some resources like key scrolls of the biblical books, something like that. But anyway, they had collected these and they were sending them to Paul via an instrument. His name was Epaphroditus. But en route, we’re told, Epaphroditus nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me. Hear that phrase? In Greek, that phrase “complete what was lacking in your service to me” is almost identical with “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” from Colossians 1:24.

So we have to say, in what way was Epaphroditus completing what was lacking in the Philippians’ service to Paul? Answer: They may have had the gift, but he had to deliver it in person. And in doing so, he was completing what was lacking in their service. So what does Paul mean when he says he’s filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions? I believe he means this: the Lord Jesus prepared a love offering for his bride, the church, by suffering and dying for sinners. That love offering lacks nothing in its effectiveness to save. But Jesus has chosen to use his saints—people like Paul and maybe people like you—to carry, through personal presentation, his afflictions and his love to the world.

Listen to how Paul talks in Second Corinthians chapter 4:8–12. The missionary Paul says, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.”

On December 5th, 2013, Libyan terrorists murdered Ronnie Smith, a Christian missionary from Texas. He was serving as a school teacher in a Libyan city. Ronnie and his wife and his child had moved to North Africa one and a half years earlier to spread a passion for God’s supremacy in all things for the joy of the Libyans through Jesus. On that Thursday morning, Ronnie went out on his morning jog and he was gunned down for the sake of Christ’s name. That was December 5th, 2013.

On February 1st, 2014, less than two months after Ronnie’s martyrdom, I found myself at Ronnie’s church in Texas, giving an all-day seminar to their leaders in training. Less than two months after Ronnie’s martyrdom. They knew this man. He was a deacon in their church. They loved this man. They had supported him with their prayers and with their finances. He was martyred less than 60 days ago. And now this room is filled with 300 people training for ministry, and the middle third of those people, all of them, over 100 of them, over 100 men and women gathered in this room for training—all of them had already committed to go to some of the hardest places on the planet for the sake of Christ’s name.

Where the Libyan terrorists thought that killing Ronnie would put an end to his gospel witness, God was using his death and his family’s suffering to multiply that witness in the world a hundredfold.

Writing around AD 160 to 225, during a time when Rome was killing Christians left and right, the church father Tertullian said, “The oftener we are mown down by you Romans, the more in number we grow. The blood of Christians is seed.” It may seem counterintuitive, but for centuries, God has motivated new missionaries to go by hearing the stories of missionaries who surrendered and suffered because they counted Jesus a greater treasure than worldly pleasure. Will you be among them?

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25). In his body, Christ suffered before he could enjoy his resurrection. We as his body are called to suffer before we can enjoy our resurrection.

“You will be delivered over even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death,” Jesus says. “You’ll be hated by all for my name’s sake.” Do you hear that? Worship. “But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives. Some of you they will put to death, but not a hair of your head will perish.” Do you hear that living hope? That’s missionary hope (Luke 21:16-19).

God’s plan for saving his world includes raising up men and women, boys and girls, who are ready to walk Calvary’s road for the sake of Christ’s name and for the joy of all peoples. “If anyone would come after me”—are you following him? “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

So look again, recall Colossians 1:27. We’ll read it again. “God desired to make known among the nations what is the wealth of this mysterious glory, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” When missionaries joyfully suffer for Christ’s sake, they illustrate Christ’s afflictions and Christ’s love for those he died to save. Through his saints’ suffering, God displays for the world the marks of Christ (Galatians 6:17), and he displays for the world the love of Christ to save sinners. Terrorists are willing to die to kill others. Christians are willing to die to save others.

How missions? Two: By toiling with God’s power to proclaim Christ through warning and through teaching. Look with me at verses 28 and 29. Look down. Look at your Bibles. See it there. “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

Suffering is a necessary but not sufficient means to see souls saved. Recall Romans 10:14-15: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?”

People get saved only by responding to God’s Word of truth. Through the Word of God, God grants rebirth in Christ, moving people from death to life. First Peter 1:23: “You have been born again through the living and abiding Word of God.” That’s how it happens to everyone. There is no person who has been reborn on this planet for whom it did not happen that they heard the Word. It’s the way the Spirit works.

Visualizing suffering is not enough. Through the Word, God helps saints conquer sin and become more holy. Thus, Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them, Father, with your truth. Your word is truth.” That’s how sanctification happens. Through the word, God moves his people to endure all the way to glory. As Paul says, “I commend you to God, and I commend you to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32).

As a missionary, Paul longed to see healthy churches grow, which necessitated keeping Christ at the center. “We proclaim him.” And he would do it, it says, by warning and by teaching everyone. God takes sin seriously, and so should we. “Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off” (Romans 11:22).

But not only is warning important, teaching is vital. According to Colossians 1:4-5, it was through hearing the word of truth, the gospel, that the Colossians had grown in their faith in Christ, their love for all the saints, and their hope laid up in heaven. At the end of verse 6 in chapter one into verse 7, Paul then adds these words: “You heard the gospel and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant.” Paul hadn’t planted the church in Colossae. In fact, chapter 2, verse 2 suggests he had never even seen most of the people in the church. Epaphras had done it.

If Epaphras had gotten saved and gone to Colossae and planted this church, he taught them. They heard his word and were saved. Both warning and teaching are necessary for the church to grow, and this is why Paul, at the end of his book 3: 16, charges the church: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.”

Yet proclaiming God’s Word through warning and teaching has to be done in the strength that God supplies. God’s power is made perfect in our weakness, says Paul. Do you go to an evangelistic encounter? A first-time experience of gospel-izing. You’re gonna share the gospel with a person. And you’re nervous. And you stumble, it doesn’t come out as good as it could have. And God’s just reminding you, you’re just a clay pot. And I want to use clay pots. In fact, I made you this way so that the surpassing power may be shown to come from me and not you. Just share. Get it out, put it in an email, put it in a text. Write a letter. Call your aunt, your cousin. Talk to your dad. Talk to your friend at school. Just be bold, share the word and see what the power of God might bring through your clay pot sharing.

God’s power is made perfect in weakness. In Colossians 1:29 look there. Paul piles up words related to power. “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” God is the one who causes the growth. Central to the missionary task is trusting in a big God to do what we cannot accomplish on our own. No sinful human can, in our own strength, save a human soul. But with God, Matthew 19:26, all things are possible. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “I worked harder than all of them, but it was not I, but the grace of God that was in me.”

Christ-honoring missionaries are humble and dependent, trusting in the all-sufficient God to work for his glory and the joy of those he came to save. Nurture dependence in your heart. Increase in your prayer life. Those for whom dependence on God matters are those who pray much because we are needy. So needy.

According to Paul in Colossians 1:24-29, missions happens by joyfully suffering to illustrate Christ’s afflictions and love to those he died to save, and missions happens by toiling with God’s power to proclaim Christ through warning and through teaching.

Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” I have been crucified with Christ, carrying his cross and living in the power of Jesus.

At the heart of the Great Commission is a call to bear witness to Jesus with the help of the Spirit. We proclaim Jesus through our suffering, but this is not sufficient to save souls. We must also proclaim Jesus through our words, sharing the good news that the reigning God saves and satisfies sinners who believe through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. The good news is that the reigning God saves and satisfies sinners who believe through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

Be bold. Be strong for the Lord your God is with you. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” Jesus said. And in that context, “Go make disciples” and know this: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” We have the greatest power for the greatest task. Christ’s kingdom expands through sacrifice and through bold proclamation.

So I ask you, is God calling you to surrender to such a task? If you’re feeling that nudge in your heart, I encourage you, don’t leave it in there. Talk to a counselor, talk to a youth pastor, talk to your dad and mom, and ask them to pray with you. And see what God will do.

Father, I thank you for these students and these leaders. Thank you for your word. Father, it’s a weighty thing to recognize that your Kingdom advances through suffering and through sharing. Give us such bold surrender for the glory of your name and the joy of your people. Amen.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Next week, we continue this series on missions with the message titled “Now Missions.”