PT-2 "The Speech of Proclamation" (Col. 4:3-4)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/5/2017 8:44 PM

My Worship Time                                                      Focus: PT-2 “The Speech of Proclamation”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Colossians 4:3-4

            Message of the verses:  “3  praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; 4  that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak.”

            I believe that I have mentioned what I am about to write in earlier SD’s but it does bear repeating.  In many of Paul’s letters at the beginning of them he will pray for the believers that are in the church he was writing too, and then at the end of the letter he will ask them to pray for certain things that he wants prayed for, and this is the case in this letter to the Colossians, as he prayed for them at the beginning and now is asking for prayer for him at the end of the letter.

            In these verses Paul is asking the Colossian believers to pray that he can proclaim the gospel, and remember that Paul was in prison or perhaps living in his own rented house, but under house arrest in Rome, but he still wants prayer for himself to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Paul wants a door to be opened, which means he wants an opportunity to proclaim the gospel.

            Believers are to pray for open doors to proclaim Christ, understanding that it is God who is the One who opens doors.  This open door could also be called a “divine appointment” an appointment set up by the Lord to witness to someone He has picked out for you to talk to about Christ, or it could be an opportunity to help a fellow believer grow in their faith.

            Paul wanted this door to be opened so that he could “speak forth the mystery of Christ.”  MacArthur writes “As already noted in the discussion of 1:26-27, the term mystery refers to something hidden in the Old Testament but manifest in the New.  In the present context, it refers to the content of the gospel.  Paul asks the Colossians to pray that he would have an open door to speak the full truth of the gospel.”

            We mentioned that Paul was in prison, but it was because of the gospel that he was there.  When Paul finished up his 3^rd missionary trip that Paul went to Jerusalem and he was arrested there, not that he had done anything wrong, but was accused falsely of doing something against the Jewish Law.  He would later go to Rome where he would write what is called the “prison epistles.”  Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon were the four letters he wrote that are recorded in the Bible.  He may and probably did write more letters, but these are the ones that are contained in the New Testament.

            We will try and finish the rest of this section in our next SD.

6/5/2017 9:02 PM