Christ & Creation-Colossians 1:15-20

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Take your Bibles, please, and open them to the book of Colossians. Keep your finger there because I actually want to provide some very important context that I hope will be helpful to you.
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In the few moments that we have together, and literally it is just a few moments, I honestly believe that the subject that I have been blessed to be able to speak to you about contains within it the answer that most of us are seeking right now as we face a changed world.
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I think about the last time that we gathered at G3, how much has changed, how much we have changed.
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So many of the issues and topics that we now spend so much of our time on, were they even a part of our thinking when we gathered the last time?
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And what about the next time? What will have changed? How will we have changed? Will anything that is preached from this pulpit be changed by what happens between now and then?
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I honestly believe that in the core of the discussion of Christ as Creator, we have the most foundational answer to many of the questions we are asking right now.
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So we're going to look at Colossians 1, it's a tremendous text. But before we get to that,
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I want to provide what seems like an odd foundation because when
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Paul is addressing the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 8, he's not talking about what he's talking about when he addresses the
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Colossians. So why would I link the two together? Well, I think if you look carefully with me, you'll see why we do link them together and why it's important to consider this.
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So look at 1 Corinthians 8, remember what it's about. Paul is dealing with an internal issue within the church in Corinth and it's causing problems because of the fact that in the culture of that day, there's a great deal of idolatry.
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Corinth was known for having many pagan temples and pretty much everyone there knew that if you wanted to eat meat, that meat had been sacrificed to one of those idols.
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And so it would be sacrificed, it would be presented, snuck out the back door and end up in the meat market. There is a real issue involved with the church.
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There is division taking place because some people feel they have the freedom to eat this meat and other people are scandalized by this.
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And so what does Paul do? And this is so often the case. He's making one point and in the process, he will make reference to a belief that all
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Christians share together. And for us, at a later point in time, we're looking at this as some of the most important material in all the
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New Testament, but for Paul, it's the common possession of all believers. He makes reference to something here in 1
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Corinthians 8. So notice in verse 5, he says, for even if there are so -called gods in heaven and upon earth, as indeed there are gods many and lords many, but to us, and I don't know what your
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English translation does, but verse 6 is set aside as poetry in my
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Greek text. Why? Because a lot of scholars believe that what we have here is a fragment from a creed, maybe something that was repeated in the worship service there in Corinth, or maybe a part of a hymn possibly.
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In any case, most scholars believe that this represents at a very, very early period in time what
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Christians together confessed as their common core of belief. And so, in contrast to the many gods, the so -called gods in heaven and earth, but to us, there is one
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God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we unto him, or for him, and one
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Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.
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Now, I would imagine that when this epistle arrived in Corinth, and it was read on a
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Lord's Day morning, when the reader got to this point, the
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Jewish Christians in the audience may have gasped.
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They may have been somewhat surprised. Why? Because of what
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Paul has done here. What identified all Jewish believers in the first century?
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What would every single one of the apostles as a young boy, what would he have repeated in the mornings?
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What would he have repeated when he went into the synagogue? What would Jesus himself have repeated? In the
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Hebrew tongue, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad.
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Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. But outside of Israel, that probably would have been repeated in Greek.
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And when you look at the Greek, you can look back at Numbers and Deuteronomy, there's various versions of the
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Shema that are found back in the law. When you look back at the Greek translation of those words, the key terms, one,
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God, Yahweh, the Greek translation, every one of those words is found in verse 6.
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When it says there is one God, same word, God, same word. And when the divine name of God, the covenant name of God, Yahweh, we slaughter it in English as Jehovah.
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When that covenant name was translated into Greek, it wasn't really translated, it was sort of covered over in a sense.
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And the term that was used in the Greek Scriptures was kurios, Lord. And so, notice it says, there is one kurios, one
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Lord Jesus Christ. What has Paul done here? How could he believe that he had the right to take the very identifying statement of the people of Israel, their identification of the one covenant
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God, and alter it? Well, he had to. He had to.
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I've often said to people, where's the doctrine of the Trinity revealed? And I'll open up my
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Bible and I'll show them the gutter between Malachi and Matthew. And I'll say, there it is, see?
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There's where the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed. What do you mean? Well, the primary revelation of the doctrine of the
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Trinity is the incarnation, life, ministry, death, burial, resurrection, ascension of the
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Son, and then the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Well, when did that take place?
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Right there between Malachi and Matthew. Every single word of the
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New Testament was written after the revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity. These people were experiential
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Trinitarians, like Peter. Peter had walked with the Son. He heard the Father speaking in the Mount of Transfiguration.
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He was now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And so, that's why the New Testament doesn't have a chapter called
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Explanation of the Trinity, because it is the common possession of the people to whom
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Paul is writing. And so, here, what he's done is he's taken the Shema, but you see, you can't just keep repeating the
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Shema in light of what God has done in history. There's been something amazing that has happened.
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That's why Paul, over and over again, identifies Jesus as Yahweh. John identifies Jesus as Yahweh.
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Peter identifies Jesus as Yahweh. And so, in light of this, it was natural for Paul to take the
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Shema and say, this is what we know, and what we know is there's one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for or unto him, and one
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Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things, and we through him. Now, notice the prepositions, the prepositions that are used.
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For Jesus, for the Son, for the Lord, it is through whom are all things, and we through him.
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For the Father, it is from whom are all things, and we unto or for him.
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Now, keeping that in mind, let's go over to Colossians chapter 1.
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And here, again, within the context of Paul's expression of his desire, that church, a church that he did not found.
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So, he doesn't know these individuals by face. He had found the church in Ephesus, and from Ephesus, the gospel goes out up the
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Lycus River Valley, and there's Colossians. So, a church has been founded there, and this is exactly what
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Paul intended it, how he intended it to work. So, he is not the one that founded it, but he is now writing to them, and he is speaking about his desire that God would ground them in a true knowledge of who he is and fill them up through the presence of the
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Holy Spirit with a great confidence in the gospel.
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And having said that, he then lays out, and again, in my text, beginning in verse 15, this is in poetic form.
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Could it be an early confession? Could it be an early fragment of a hymn? Something along those lines?
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We can't know until someone digs up the hymnal from the First Baptist Church of Colossae to tell us one way or the other.
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But it is clearly meant to be something that maybe Paul himself didn't originally write.
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Maybe it was something that was already in circulation, and he's repeating it similar to Philippians chapter 2.
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But it is placed within the context of Paul's giving thanks to God the
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Father for the work that he's done amongst the
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Colossians. And then in describing God's actions, beginning in verse 13, who rescued us, delivered us from the authority of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved
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Son, in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
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And having described Jesus as the one who, by his work, we have access to his kingdom, the kingdom of his
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Son, the beloved Son, that is Jesus, because of what he has done, because of his redemptive work, we have this peace with God.
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But who is this one who gave himself? Who is this one in whose name they now stand?
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And there you have the description beginning in verse 15. Who is the image, the icon, literally, the image of the invisible
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God, the firstborn of all creation, because in him, follow all the prepositions, because in him is the literal translation, but that particular preposition can be in as in location or in as means by which something takes place.
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So, in him or by him were all things created.
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Now, Paul uses a phrase here that draws a central line.
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It's all things, so it is expansive, but it doesn't just squish everything together so it loses its definition.
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It's talking about the created order. The entire created order is created by him or in him, and he wants us to make sure that he's not just talking about a small portion, because notice what he does.
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The things are in heaven and upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether they're thrones or lordships or authorities or powers, all things by him.
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So, that's the same preposition that's used over in 1 Corinthians chapter 8. All things by him and for him were created.
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Now, that's the preposition that was used of the father. Everything is for him. Here, it's in reference to the son.
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All things were created by him and for him, and he himself is before all things, and in him, all things...
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And the word literally means to hold together. All things have consistency.
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All things hold together. And he himself is the head of the body, the church, which is the beginning.
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He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, in order that he might come to have first place in all things.
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And it continues on from there, and if we go on from there, we'll get into all sorts of subjects that we don't have near enough time to actually be able to address.
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But I want us to make sure that we hear what is said here. Now, I played with the idea of trying, even in the brief amount of time
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I have, to bring us all up to speed in regards to what most people believe is at least somewhat of the background of why
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Paul is emphasizing the things that he emphasizes here. Because I would be remiss if I do not point out to you that much of the language that Paul uses in Colossians chapters 1 and 2 is the very language that will define the greatest theological threat to the early church in the first 200 to 300 years of her existence.
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And that was Gnosticism. Now, you've heard the term before, you've heard people use it before.
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There aren't that many people though that honestly could lay out for you the entire Gnostic myth.
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And there were lots of different versions of it, that's one of the reasons for that. It was such a danger to the early church.
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And you have Paul warning here in Colossians, and John warning in 1 John, and there are elements of the
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Gospel of John that seem to have the same type of concern. And we don't know exactly when
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Gnosticism began to rear its ugly head and develop its full mythology.
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Was Paul aware of an early form of it that had come into Colossae? He talks about worshiping of angels and things like that, intermediate beings.
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That's very much what the Gnostic myth was about. But we don't really have evidence that it had fully developed into what it would develop later on.
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But there's no question about the fact that if you listen to what Paul says, his teaching about who
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Jesus is, is a direct refutation of what Gnosticism would eventually be saying, and either was saying in Colossae, or when
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I look at especially Valentinian Gnosticism, I have to wonder if he was not given prophetic utterance.
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And it's like, some people are like, but this is the New Testament, we can't have prophetic utterance in the
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New Testament. Well, if we had it in the Old Testament, I certainly don't have any problem with the idea that God would want to protect his church from one of the greatest enemies that would be coming against it.
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He knows what's coming. And so, maybe it's simply the fact that when
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Paul presents Jesus in this way, he does so with such language that just cuts straight through what the
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Gnostics would eventually actually be presenting about Jesus. Whichever way you come down on that, the point is that the language he uses is a direct refutation.
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He talks about the fullness dwelling in him. He talks about the eons. And the main thing he's emphasizing here is
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Jesus, the one into whose kingdom we have been transferred, made all things.
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And certainly, within the Gnostic mythology, the physical realm was evil.
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The physical realm came from what's called a demi -urge, a semi -god.
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And so, they would identify the God of the Old Testament as an ignorant being that had divine power, but he was ignorant.
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And hence, the created order is an evil thing that we need to be delivered out of.
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And no matter how else you put it, one thing is very, very certain. The apostle wants everyone to understand this
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Jesus whom he proclaims is not merely a prophet, he is not merely a moral teacher.
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He says that by him, all things were created. And then, he gives us a description, a cosmology in verse 16 that's exhaustive, visible, invisible, thrones, lordships, rulerships, authorities, all things are made by him and for him.
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And he is before all things. So, he can't be a part of that creation, and in him, all things hold together.
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Now, I would again be remiss, I will be very brief, but there are two extremely important apologetic points
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I just have to mention for you, or someone's going to come up to me and ask me why I didn't do it. And that is, in verse 15, the term prototokos, firstborn, does not mean first created.
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It does not mean first made. And in fact, to understand it in that way, as Jehovah's Witnesses do, and as they will turn to Colossians 1 .15,
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they'll interpret it that way in their own Bible, and they'll present that to you when they're talking to you. To interpret it in that way turns the entire point of this text on its head.
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If you insert Jesus into the created order here, if you say that the son is one of the things that have been made, you destroy the whole point that Paul is presenting.
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And so, they will use that. Prototokos means the one who has preeminence in something.
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Look at its use in the Old Testament, especially in the Greek Septuagint, and you will see that that is the case. And so, they will utilize this and they will say, you have to look at what that means and try to get around.
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And that's why in their translation of the Bible, and they changed this just a couple of years ago, when they first put out the
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New World Translation, it used to say that he created all other things, and it just simply said all other things.
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And Christian scholars raised such a protest that they put it into brackets.
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They put the word other into brackets. You know what they did a couple of years ago? They took the brackets out.
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I guess they figured Christian scholars probably don't care anymore. Well, we do, but that's the situation.
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And so, now if you read their translation, it will say, for in him, all other things were created because they want to make
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Jesus a part of the created order. So, be aware that that is the situation.
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Now, so what do we have here? What is it that the Christian faith shared as a common belief?
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Something that you and I must admit sounds absolutely insane to the secular mind, doesn't it?
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What is this saying? What are we saying to the world? We are literally saying to the world that the one who created all things, that holds all things together, 100 billion stars in our own galaxy, 100 billion galaxies, the one in whom all things hold together, entered into his own creation on a little pale blue dot around a standard star, and he wasn't even born in a important place, sort of the outback of the
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Roman Empire, and that he lived a life where he didn't even write a book.
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And he chose 12 disciples, and one of them betrayed him. And then he was crucified by the military power of the day.
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And then we say he rose again, and we actually proclaim that this is our creator and our maker, and the university professor and the college professor looks at you and says, you really believe that?
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And our university students go into those classes, and the whole class turns and looks at that believer.
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You believe that? Let's agree on one thing, shall we?
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That's crazy from the world's perspective, and it always will be. And we destroy our own message when we try to change that and make it less offensive to the natural man.
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As Paul said, the preaching of the cross is to them that are perishing foolishness.
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And when we try to make it wisdom, we don't understand that it is the power of the gospel that crushes our wisdom and introduces us to God's wisdom.
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Now, I want to make sure we all understand when I'm talking about Christ as creator of all things,
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I am not for a second denying the fact that the Word became flesh.
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I am not for a second saying that Jesus took on a true human nature.
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That's the whole point of Philippians chapter 2. The one who had eternally existed in the very form of God did not consider that equality he had with God something to be grasped or held on to, but he humbled himself.
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How did he humble himself? By taking on a human nature, by taking on the form of a servant.
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And he did that to himself voluntarily. So, we must allow all of Scripture to speak.
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We have to make sure we continue to affirm and understand the true humanity of Christ.
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But what we confess is that he was the God -man and there has never been anyone like him.
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There is no analogy that I can make. Any analogy is obviously going to fall far short of the truth of who
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Jesus really was. But what was necessary for the church at Colossae was that they understand that their
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Savior, the one by whose name they were called, was not some lesser emanation from God.
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That's what the Gnostics are going to teach, that Jesus is one of the eons. He is an emanation from the one
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God. And even when I say one God, it's a different concept within the
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Gnostic system. It's completely different than Christianity or Judaism. It comes from a completely different worldview.
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He is an emanation, one of many emanations. And what
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Paul is making sure they understand is a Jesus who is merely an emanation is not the one who is to have first place in all things.
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He is not the one in whom we are hidden in Colossians 3 .3.
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For your life has been hidden with Christ in God. If you've got the wrong Christ, then your life can't be hidden with God.
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This is about the gospel. And so, they must understand that there is no, and you look at the words that are used here, there is no thrones.
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That's the first word. There are no lordships. There are no sources of authority, sources of power.
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There is nothing in the created universe. In the spiritual realm or the physical realm that did not come by his hand.
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Sadly, there are a lot of Christian dominations today that no longer believe this, and no longer believe this.
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I will never forget going to a debate in Scottsdale, Arizona, partly because I wasn't debating and that was a really unusual situation for me.
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But Dr. Robert Gagnon was debating Dr. Daniel Kirk, who at the time was an adjunct with Fuller Theological Seminary, and they're both
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Presbyterians at the time, they're both Presbyterians. And it was a debate about homosexuality and whether the
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Presbyterians should become affirming or non -affirming. And Dr. Kirk was presenting the idea that, yes, we should become affirming.
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And a part of his argument was, look, we've already learned to think past Paul, a first -century
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Jew. And we also need to learn to recognize that Jesus was a first -century
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Jew as well. And so we should not be limited by the categories in which he thought either.
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That, to open up the door for the Holy Spirit to lead the church, to recognize that there are certain things in Scripture that we no longer need to be concerned about.
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And when I spoke to Dr. Kirk during the break in the debate, I said, so you don't believe in the
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Nicene Orthodox understanding of Jesus as being God? And he just scoffed and said, you don't think the apostles thought
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Jesus was God, do you? I didn't handle that real well. I think he was a little surprised at the force of my response, you know.
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But I let him know very, very firmly, yes, I do believe that the apostles believe that Jesus was
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God because they taught it over and over and over again. But that's where so many denominations are.
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And if you've ever been confused listening to these people going, how did they come to that conclusion?
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It's because they don't believe that this is the Word of God, it is all the
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Word of God, and it is consistent with itself. And once you abandon that, once you abandon that, it's over.
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Now, I said at the beginning of my comments that I truly believe that what we have in texts such as this is foundational to having the proper answer to the things that are challenging us in the church today, especially as we face a secular and aggressively anti -Christian society.
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Why? Some of you may remember I had the opportunity,
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I think it was about five, six years ago, to be on the Dr. Drew Show. Anybody remember the
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Dr. Drew Show? Okay, a few of you. I at first was on via Skype, that was a mistake, and it was on the subject of transgenderism.
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And so, after the first program aired, and I was only on for a few minutes, I didn't really get to say a whole lot, they called back and they wanted me to come on again.
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And I said, well, I would like to be in studio this time. Well, we don't have the money to do that, I'll fly over. Well, we don't have any money to put you up, we'll take care of it.
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Well, okay, if you want to be in studio and you can do all that, then great.
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And so, I flew over. And one of the arguments that I made in those series of programs on the subject of transgenderism was that Jesus, in Matthew chapter 19, interpreting
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His own revelation in the law of God, in the Pentateuch, had said that, from the beginning,
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God made them male and female. There is creation language there.
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And he's quoting from Moses, and he's saying, this is what it's saying, from the beginning,
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God made them male and female. And I don't care even if you're a fairly well -known allegedly evangelical scholar, if you think
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Adam actually was sort of an involved orangutan or something like that, you're still wrong, just in case you don't know who
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I'm talking about there. But you see, Jesus taught that, from the beginning,
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God made them male and female. And one of the people on the program said, well, okay, that's just one religious text, why should that be given privilege over anything else?
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And I said, well, I'll tell you what, when you prophesy your own death, and then when you die, and you raise from the dead, and you give evidence of that, we'll listen to what you have to say.
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But until then, He has the authority. So, fellow believers, here's what
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I'm saying to you. We have to decide whether we actually believe what this is saying.
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Because you see, it's no longer a time for us to be having debates with Jehovah's witnesses on our doorstep, and it's all just simply something to where you get to, you know, have a nice argument and score some theological points, or something along those lines.
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But it's all out there someplace. What is offensive to the secular mind, and therefore to the secular regimes, is when we not only assert, but then live our lives in light of the claim that the one that we follow, who has authority in our life that determines for us what is good and evil, is
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King of all kings, Lord of all lords.
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He rose from the dead, and after He rose from the dead,
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He had the audacity to say to His disciples, and therefore to us, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
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Big brother wants that authority. Secularists find that to be not only wildly offensive and simply insane, but it angers them that you would dare to submit to Him rather than to them.
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Because they don't have a creator. They don't have a creator.
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And we've always, we've been arguing, we have certainly been people who have, for a long time, been taking a stand and saying, we must recognize that we have a creator who made all things, but I think it's time for us to recognize, we actually believe that creator entered into our own existence.
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He walked amongst us, and He left behind an empty tomb. And the light from that empty tomb has illuminated the development of Western culture and has been central to the development of an understanding of law that recognizes that we, as human beings, were made by Him.
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He came to redeem human beings. Therefore, human beings have a definition and a transcendent value that must be honored by all nations, by all people.
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That's the foundation of everything we've ever argued. That's why Christians ran around and did crazy things like, oh,
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I don't know, building hospitals, because human life is valuable. And why do we know that?
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Jesus proved it. You want proof? I've said many times, you become depressed as a
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Christian. You're feeling abandoned by God. You want the greatest evidence of God's love for you.
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You always look to the same place, the empty cross and the empty tomb.
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There's the proof of your worth and God's love for you. But you see, we've always sort of pietistically made that nice, warm feelings that we have.
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There are ramifications to the empty tomb and they continue to this day.
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So when Caesar comes along and Caesar wants to be seen as the ultimate authority in all things, when
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Caesar says to you, you are to offer that pinch of incense, when
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Caesar says to you, look, you can do your religious stuff, but you have to leave the religious stuff between here and here.
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You can't bring it out into the world. You can't communicate it to others. They're getting to the point where you can't communicate it to your children.
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When Caesar starts doing that, the believer has absolutely no choice.
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You have to look Caesar in the face like Paul did and say,
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Jesus is Lord. And Jesus is the one that the
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Father has chosen to be the judge of all men and women on the last day.
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I was absolutely struck just a few months ago when
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I came to realize that when Paul finished his sermon on Mars Hill in Acts chapter 17, when he talked about God has chosen this man to be judge and he has given evidence to all by raising him from the dead, as an apologist,
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I'm always thinking, oh, okay, this has to do with the resurrection. We need evidence of the resurrection. But that's not what he said.
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He said the resurrection was evidence of something else. I had never thought of the resurrection as evidence of something else.
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I guess I thought of it as resurrection of the grandeur of the person of Christ or something like that.
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You know what Paul said to those people in Athens? The resurrection is evidence that God has given to everyone that there will be a day of judgment and the judge has been raised from the dead.
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Perfect judge, isn't he? The God -man, the one exalted at the right hand of the
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Father. And there's going to be a day of judgment. And the one who's going to do the judgment,
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Paul says, made us all. That's amazing. And it makes sense when you start thinking about what did
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Paul say in Ephesians chapter 1? The summing up of all things in Christ. In all of Christian theology, whenever you start diving into something, where do you end up again?
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Jesus, Christ. And so, here you have the teaching of the
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Scriptures that all this creation... And one of the things I love about this, I was a department fellow
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Anatomy and Physiology. I majored in Biology in college. And man, the created realm is amazing.
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We know things today that obviously Darwin didn't know or he wouldn't have come up with this crazy theory, but we know things today that are absolutely...
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They take your breath away when you see the complexity, and the beauty, and the designed nature of the world around us.
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And I am so thankful that I can look at that creation and give thanks to the creator of that creation.
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Now, there's always been men's religions that recognized, well, this place, this had to come from someplace. But it's only
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Christianity that says not only is there just one God who created all of this purposefully to reveal his glory, but our amazing assertion is that he then entered into that which he himself had made.
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Do you realize how astonishing that is? The condescension that was his to have eternally been in perfect bliss and yet to purposefully take on the limitations of these physical bodies, to walk on dusty roads, to eat food that wasn't always all that good -tasting, to have enemies following you around, and lying about you, and attacking you, and wanting to kill you.
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What condescension. But we truly believe that it was the creator of all things, in whom all things hold together, he was the one who entered into his own creation.
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That means there is purpose. That means there is meaning. That means there is order.
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And that means when we look to the future, instead of the secular world that looks to the future and sees nothing but chaos, darkness, randomness, death, we cannot look to the future like that.
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Because the one who made it has promised that he is going to accomplish his purposes in having created it to his honor and glory.
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I don't know about you. I need that foundation. We need that foundation.
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And when we say Jesus is Lord, we are not simply putting a bumper sticker on our lapel.
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We are literally saying that the one who made all things and holds all things together, entered into his creation, gave his life, died, has risen again, is enthroned in heaven, and he has sent us with a message of hope.
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But when he sent us to evangelize all the nations, he based it on what he said first.
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He said, therefore, go. What did he say before he said that? All authority is given to me in heaven and earth.
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We have a basis for defining true authority.
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The secular world does not. Right now, the secular world is tearing itself apart because it's chosen to rebel against the
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God -ordained authority that is found in Jesus Christ. So, when we confess that Jesus is our maker and our creator, we as believers rejoice in it, but that also gives us the foundation for the message that we can present to the world, that our children can present to the world, that our grandchildren can present to the world, that we don't have to keep remaking because it's man -made.
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It's divine, it's true, and it will remain true because the creator made his creation in that way.
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Let's pray together. Our gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for your word that brings us together this day.
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And as we have read these ancient words, they have testified to us of the truth that we here today confess that there is an empty tomb, a risen savior and Lord, and we desire to serve him.
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We desire to be a people that brings honor and glory to his name. Father, we don't know what the future holds, but we know you do, and you've called us to this time.
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May we be a people who fully understand the cost of proclaiming to the world,
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Jesus is Lord. By your spirit, may we be a people who live in light of that truth.