The Preeminence of Christ--Colossians 1:15-18 (December 10, 2023)

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FBC Travelers Rest sermon from December 10, 2023 by Pastor Rhett Burns

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Amen, well you can turn in your Bibles to Colossians 1 again so we put our series going through the book of Acts on pause until after the first of the year and our
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Advent series is on knowing Christ. So I mentioned last week that I am using this book by Mark Jones by that same title,
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Knowing Christ, as something of a topical guide. Again I'm not preaching this book or regurgitating what's in these chapters at all, but I am using it as one of the resources that I'm drawing from, especially the
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Table of Contents. And so I do have a copy this week, I would love to give this away to somebody, so what
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I'm going to do at the end of the service is I'm going to place it right down here on the communion table. It's available first come first serve basis if you want to pick this up.
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The only requirement is that you promise to read it if you take it. Don't take it if you're not going to read it, just going to put it on the shelf, don't take it.
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But if you'll read it, you can pick it up and you can have it for free, and even better if you read it and then pass it along to a church member, but the only requirement is that you promise to read it, but I would love for you to take that.
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Now with all that said, this morning we are going to consider the preeminence of Jesus Christ, the first placeness of Jesus Christ over all of creation.
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And so I want us to see that in Colossians chapter 1 verses 15 through 18, and we're going to read that passage together now.
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And God's word says this, speaking of Jesus, he is the image of the invisible
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God, the firstborn over all creation for by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him.
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And he is before all things and in him, all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead that in all things he may have the preeminence, amen.
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And this is the word of God to us this morning. What I want us to do is here in just a moment, we're going to go line by line through this passage to see the first placeness of Jesus, to see the preeminence of Jesus.
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But before we do that, I want to read what the church across many centuries, across the continents, across the cultures have confessed about Jesus Christ.
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And so I'm going to read a portion of the Nicene Creed. And the reason I want to do that is because we're going to pick up on some of the statements that are in the
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Nicene Creed. We're going to see that they come from, or at least in part come from this passage in Colossians.
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And so just very quickly, just one quick side note about creeds. What we think about creeds is this, they're just summaries of what the
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Bible says. Creeds are simply summaries of the Bible's teaching and that means they are under the authority of the
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Bible. God's word is our ultimate authority, not creeds, but creeds do carry significant weight so much as they faithfully summarize the
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Bible and they carry significant weight because Christians have confessed these truths together and held them to be true for a long time.
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So in this case with the Nicene Creed, I'm going to read from here in just a moment, Christians nearly universally on different continents, across the different centuries and millennia and different languages and cultures have confessed this about Jesus Christ for 1 ,642 years.
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Here's what we believe about Jesus. We believe in the one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten
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Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very
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God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the
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Father by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the
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Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
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He suffered and was buried and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of the
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Father. He shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.
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And so with that confession in mind, let's work our way through Colossians 1, 15 through 18.
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And the first phrase that we see there is that he is the image of the invisible God.
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Now, the first thing you might think about, we might think about when we hear image of God, we might be taken back to Genesis chapter one, where in the beginning
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God made the heavens and the earth and he made man and he made man how? In his own image.
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Adam is said to be made in the image of God and Jesus is the second Adam. Jesus is the true and better Adam.
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Jesus is the perfect man. But that's, I think part of what Paul is saying here, but that's not all of what
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Paul is saying here in this passage. You see, because where man, where Adam was made in God's image, where man is made in God's image,
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Paul says here that Jesus is the image of God. He is the image of the invisible
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God. In other words, Jesus has got himself in him. Colossians 2, 9 tells us all the fullness of the
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Godhead dwells bodily and in him. Colossians 2, 3 tells us are hidden.
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All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the brightness of God's glory and the express image, the exact imprint of God's person.
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Or like the Nicene Creed puts it that we just read, Jesus is very God of very
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God, being of one substance with the Father and then he was made man, he took on human flesh.
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Christ taking on human flesh, Christ becoming a man, Christ dwelling among us makes it so man can see that which is invisible.
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He's making where we can comprehend, where we can see, where we can see the King eternal, immortal, immortal, invisible,
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God who alone is wise, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.
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That's how the New Testament describes God. But Christ is the image of that invisible
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God. He makes us, makes God known to us. And so in Christ who is
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God, we know God. He is the image of the invisible God. Not only that, he is the firstborn of all creation.
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Verse 15 goes on to say he's the firstborn of all creation. What does that mean? Now does that mean that Jesus is created?
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That's a question that comes up, right? What does it mean that he's the firstborn of all creation?
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This is especially a live question in Colossae where Paul is writing. Now we just saw in the first clause of that same sentence that Jesus is very
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God of very God, that God is eternal, God is uncreated, therefore Jesus is eternal and uncreated.
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Further we just confess with all true Christians down through the ages, everywhere and anywhere for the last 1600 years that Jesus Christ is begotten, not made, being of one substance with the
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Father who came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man.
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Therefore putting all those things together we see that Jesus cannot be created.
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Rather as one commentator Hendrickson said it, Christ is prior to, distinct from and highly exalted above every creature.
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He is prior to, distinct from and highly exalted above every creature.
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So then what does it mean, if it doesn't mean that Jesus is created because he's not because he's God, what does it mean for him to be the firstborn of creation?
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What it means is that in relation to all other creatures Jesus has the right and the dignity of the firstborn.
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Jesus has the right and the dignity of the firstborn. It means he has the honor of the firstborn.
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It means that he inherits the world, it's all his. Being firstborn over all creation speaks to Jesus' position.
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He is preeminent to the entire world, over the entire world. He is first, he's in first place over the entire creation.
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That's what it means to be firstborn of all creation. Verse 16 then says, for by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible.
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Whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him.
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And so in verse 15 we saw that Jesus is firstborn, first place.
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Here in verse 16 we see that Jesus is the agent of creation and the goal of creation.
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He's the point of reference for all of creation. Now it's not the case that Jesus is creator of the world to the exclusion of the
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Father and the Spirit. No, all three persons of the Godhead are at work in the work of creation.
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We see that in Genesis 1. All three are there, we see their work in Genesis 1. The point Paul here is making is that Jesus himself is
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God and therefore Jesus is creator. Paul is countering some very specific opponents of Christianity and Colossae at the time, false teachers who taught all sorts of errors including these errors, that the immaterial or the spiritual realm is the only thing that matters.
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That was one teaching that was going on that he was countering. And that there are varying levels of deity. That's another error that he was countering and he's saying that Jesus is the fullness of God.
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He is all God. Very God. Very God. And every realm is subject to him because as God he is creator.
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Jesus, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, is the agent of creation. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made.
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That's John chapter 1. He made it all. Everything besides God is made and Jesus, John tells us,
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Paul tells us in Colossians, Jesus is the creator of it. Jesus made everything, both the material and the spiritual, the physical and the spiritual.
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Everything in heaven and on earth, spiritual realm, physical realm, everything you see, all that exists that you don't see.
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Earthly powers and spiritual powers, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, all created by Jesus and therefore he is above them all because the creator is greater than the creation, right?
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And Jesus is creator, therefore he is greater than every created thing, everything both in heaven and on earth.
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Jesus is the agent of creation, therefore, again as Henderson points out, the
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Colossians, they were not to seek help from angels or trust in angels or worship angels because the angels are mere creatures.
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And so you have this temptation that is going on that Paul is writing against and saying don't trust in created beings.
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Even if they're glorious like the angels, don't trust in them. The good angels, the unfallen angels, they cannot add anything to the fullness of the riches that are found in Jesus Christ.
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And the bad angels, the fallen ones, cannot separate the believer from the love of God in Christ. And so as glorious as the angels may be, they too are created and they're created by Jesus.
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Further, they were created for Jesus and they're subject to Jesus. Therefore people are not to mess around with spirit worship, but to worship the one who made the angels and everything else and stands above the angels and everything else.
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And that one is Christ. Not only is Jesus the agent of creation,
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Jesus is the goal of creation. It says it right there in verse, the end of verse 16, all things were created through him.
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And then those last three words and for him, all things were created for him.
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One thing you hear around Christmas time is that Jesus is the reason for the season.
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And that is true. But you know what else is also true, that Jesus is the reason for every season.
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Jesus is the reason for everything. Jesus is the reason for the world. Jesus is the reason for the cosmos.
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Jesus is the reason for the mountains and the plains and the rivers and the oceans.
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He's the reason for the elephant and the giraffe and the frill neck lizard and whatever other, you know, weird named animal you can find.
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Jesus is the reason for that too. Jesus is the reason for the stars and the rings around Saturn and for the galaxies that are yet to be discovered.
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Jesus is the reason for the dirt that gets underneath your fingernail when you work out in the yard and the stalks of corn that grow taller than your head.
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And Jesus is the reason for everything that your two eyes can see or perceive. Jesus is the reason for that because Jesus is the reason for everything that he created.
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He is the goal of creation. And that means Jesus is the reason for you.
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You were created for Christ. One thing Mark Jones points out in this book is that Jesus didn't come in into the world for you so much as you came into the world for Jesus.
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All things were created for him. Jesus becoming incarnate was not some sort of plan
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B because things didn't work out without him. No, this was the plan all along.
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For the foundation of the earth. The foundational plan of God, including you, were created for the
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Lord Jesus Christ. He is the goal of creation. He is the
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Lord of all on him was bestowed glory and though he was made a little bit lower than the angels for a little while, he was crowned with glory and honor and made much superior to the angels and all things were subjected to him and all things were created for him.
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And again, Jesus is preeminent. First place. We're 17 and he is before all things and in him all things consist.
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He is before all things again. We see the preeminence of Jesus right here. He is the forerunner.
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He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is eternal.
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He is first. He is before all things. As the Nicene Creed says, Jesus is begotten of the father before all worlds.
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He is before all things. And so that was the church council's answer to the question of was there ever a time when the son of God was not, that was one of the questions they're wrestling with back in the late three hundreds when the council of Nicaea was formed.
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Was there ever a time when the son of God was not? Some people were saying, yes, Jesus was created, but the answers of a faithful Christians everywhere has been no, there was never a time when the son was not because the son is very
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God, a very God of one substance with the father Christ is, was, and always will be. He is eternal.
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He is before all things, Colossians 1 tells us. Therefore he has majesty in relation to all other creatures.
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Christ is majestic. And at this point, I just want to pause and interrupt
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Colossians 1 for just a second to see the majesty of Christ in Psalm 8.
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You see, Psalm 8 goes on about the majesty of the man, the perfect man here.
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Hebrews interprets Psalm 8 messianically about Jesus. And so I think we can read Psalm 8 about ultimately about Christ.
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And so what I want to do right now is just read Psalm 8 because it speaks to the majesty of Christ in relation to all other creatures.
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So let me read it. Psalm 8 says, Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth.
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Some translations have that. How majestic is your name in all the earth who have set your glory above the heavens out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants.
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You have ordained strength because of your enemies that you may silence the enemy and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you visit him.
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For you have made him a little lower than the angels and you have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the work of your hands.
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You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas.
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Oh Lord, our Lord, how excellent or how majestic is your name in all the earth.
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Christ is before all things. He is above all things. All things are in subjection to him.
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He's the creator of all things and he is crowned with glory and honor. Christ is majestic and in him, verse 17 says, and in him, this majestic one who is high and before and above all things in him, all things consist or all things in him hold together.
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The world is held together in Christ. Everything continues because of Jesus. Everything in the entire creation coheres in Jesus Christ.
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He holds it all together. He's the glue of creation. He holds it all together. As the writer of Hebrews says it,
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Christ upholds the universe by the word of his power, Hebrews 1 .3. In other words, if Jesus stopped existing, which is impossible, but let's just go with the thought experiment for just a minute.
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If Jesus stopped existing, so would everything else. It all fall apart and disintegrate.
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Because Jesus is the cornerstone of everything. Everything that exists, exists in relation to Jesus.
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Everything is connected at the connecting point, which is Christ. He is the organizing principle of the cosmos.
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And so as Henderson points out, because of Jesus and in Jesus, there is unity, order and purpose to nature in history.
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And so I want you to think about this. Think about every complex natural phenomenon you ever learned about in school.
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Think about the migration patterns of birds or think about the food chain and all of its complexities as you think about that in an ecosystem or think about how water evaporates from the seas up into the clouds and then wind carries it somewhere else until that cloud finally gets heavy enough that it dumps out the water as rain.
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We're getting a lot of that today, this weekend. That rain incidentally waters crops that we eat, fuels us to live and work and produce and cultivate the earth.
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That excess rain water then makes its way into rivers and lakes.
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Some of it is used for drinking water. Some of it is used to produce hydroelectric power. Some of it evaporates back up into the clouds where the wind takes it somewhere else so that the rain can follow the just and the unjust alike in the kindness of God.
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Think about all of those systems and everything that goes into it and that has to go just right. Both the natural systems like the rain and those systems requiring human ingenuity like the production of hydroelectric electricity, all of those are held together by Jesus.
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In him, all things consist. You take Christ out, it all falls apart and nothing works.
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Paul is saying that if you remove Christ, every bit of that falls apart and goes away. Because in him all things consist.
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That's nature. Think about history. Think of every providential event in the history of the world.
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Every chain of event that led to the formation of an empire or its destruction. Think about the small variables that lost wars or won wars, that subjugated peoples or set them free.
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Think about the chain of events that had to take place even for your own birth and how if just one detail were different, you might not exist.
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And then think of that scenario times eight billion people on earth. And then take that times all the people that have ever lived and all the events that have ever happened.
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They all depend on and are held together by Jesus who is the Lord of history. He holds it all together.
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As one commentator put it, Jesus is the reason we have a cosmos and not chaos. He's the reason we have a cosmos and not chaos.
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And this is why in any given society, the choice is always Christ or chaos.
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When the kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord's anointed and they try to set asunder the ties between them and Christ, the result is always chaos.
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You know what it looks like when people deny the Lordship of Jesus? We can answer that question a lot of different ways, but it looks like the chaos, you know, maybe of a runaway economic system of men dressing up like women or violence in the streets.
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You could say it kind of looks like the evening news. The choice is always Christ or chaos because Christ holds all things together.
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But the fact that our society, even in the ways that we have rejected Christ, the fact that we have not disintegrated totally is because of Christ in whom all things consist.
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He is still holding us together in his mercy. He is still upholding the universe by the word of his power, including us.
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So the glue of a society is not chance or fate or the brute laws of nature or the social engineering done by some elite class.
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The glue of society has always been and always will be Christ in whom all things consist, in whom all things are held together.
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Verse 18, and he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence and go really quickly on this verse.
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Just want to point out that Jesus is the head of the church. He's the head of the church globally. He's the head of this church locally. He has authority.
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He leads. Where the head goes, the body follows, and as a church, we follow Christ. We must follow
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Christ. He's the firstborn from the dead. He's the firstfruits. That means he's the first of many resurrections because Christ rose from the dead.
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We too will rise from the dead. All who trusted him will rise from the dead victorious over Satan, sin, and death.
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His resurrection is a down payment saying there's more resurrection to come. He's the firstborn from the dead, and because of this, he has preeminence.
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He is first place in all things, so I want to take all of this that we've seen in these verses 15 through 18 and put them together, and then in light of that, in light of Jesus who is the firstborn, in light of Jesus who is the agent of creation, in light of Jesus who is the goal of creation, in light of Jesus who is the point of reference for all of creation, in light of Jesus who is the forerunner, the sustainer of all things, the governor of all things, in light of Jesus who is the head of the church and the firstborn from the dead, the one who is first place preeminent, in light of all this,
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I want to exhort you to do three things. I want to exhort you to live in light of this in three different ways.
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The first thing is this, look to Christ. Especially if you feel like the ground is shaking beneath your feet, look to Christ.
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Maybe it's the instability of the world and the culture that we live in. Maybe it's an unexpected change at your workplace.
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Maybe it's someone close to you that has betrayed you or let you down in some way, or maybe you've received a hard medical diagnosis, or maybe it's just life in a fallen world is hard.
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Look to Christ. Don't look anywhere else. You're not going to find in anyone else the one who upholds the world by the word of his power and him who in all things consists, who is before all things and over all things.
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Look to Christ. He is rock. He is the refuge. He is the fortress.
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He holds all things together. He rules the world. Nothing exists without Christ because he is the organizing principle of the cosmos.
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He orders the world. He orders nature. He orders history. And you know what that means? He orders your life too.
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So look to Christ. When you feel like things are shaky, look to Christ who is rock solid and in control.
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He is a friend that sits closer than a brother. He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
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He is the king who secures the good for his people. And so look, look, look to Christ.
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He is before all things. Therefore he is not subject to the whims of men in nature and he's over all things.
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Therefore he is not powerless to act. He has authority to secure your good no matter what.
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Look to Christ. That's the first thing. Second thing is love Christ. Love Christ.
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One of the great themes of the New Testament is the Father's love for the Son. We see it in John chapter 3. The Father loves the
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Son and has given all things into his hand. We see it in John chapter 5 where the Father loves the
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Son and shows him all things that he himself does. You know in Christ, Mark Jones remarks that the incarnate
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Son is the primary object of the Father's love. He says that the Father loves all things according to their degree of loveliness and Christ far surpasses every created thing in his loveliness.
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So he's the primary object of the Father's love. Therefore, being the primary object of the
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Father's love, the Father delights in his Son. He voices this from the heavens at Jesus' baptism.
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He voices this from the heavens on the Mount of Transfiguration. This is my Son with whom
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I am well pleased. The Father loves the Son and we are to imitate
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God the Father in delighting in and loving Jesus. In fact, Jones points out that we are never more like God the
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Father than when we are loving the Son. You want to be like God? Love Jesus.
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We're never more like God than when we're loving his Son. And so love Christ. Love him with all your heart.
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Love him with all your mind. Love him with all your soul and love him with all your strength.
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First Corinthians 16 .22 says, If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed.
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Love Christ. And then finally, live for Christ.
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Look to Christ, love Christ, and live for Christ. All things were created for him. And that means you were created for him.
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And so live for him. Have you ever tried to use one tool in place of another?
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Maybe you don't have it around. I thought about times where I've been trying to fix something and didn't have a hammer close by I didn't really want to have to stop what
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I was doing to go get one So I took turn the screwdriver around and tried to use the screwdriver as a hammer and it it kind of works, but not really
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Because it wasn't designed to do that What designed to be a hammer is designed to be screwdriver. You're trying to drive a screw in it works great
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No problems because that's its purpose. That's what's designed for your purpose What you're designed for is to glorify
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Christ. You're made for him. All things were made for him And so live in such a way to make much of Jesus Live in such a way to point to Jesus live in such a way to to glorify and honor
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Jesus So go out into the world in whatever domain of human existence that you have responsibility in Go out into that this week and win glory for King Jesus be zealous For good works in the world for the glory of King Jesus live for him
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Look to Christ Love Christ and live for Christ For he is preeminent.
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He is first place in everything He's before all
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He is above all Let's pray together our Father in heaven. I Pray that you would give us the grace
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And the help and the strength to make much of Jesus In all of our lives
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Because Jesus is before us all Jesus is the maker of us
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Jesus is over us In authority And so maybe we glorify and honor