WWUTT 051 Who Is Jesus (Colossians 1:15-20)

Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Everything that we can know about who

God is, we know through the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And how do we know who

Christ is? According to what we read in the Bible, you cannot separate

Christ and his word when we understand the text. Many of the

Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We have been studying through the book of Colossians and our purpose in this study is to be reminded that Jesus is enough.

He is above all things and we need nothing else. We are fully satisfied in our Savior. We want to become better worshippers of God, knowing him as preeminent.

That word preeminent is a word that Paul uses to describe Christ when he writes to the

Colossians and he uses that word nowhere else. In fact, the section that we get to today and we're going to be looking at this paragraph all week is the paragraph that is perhaps the most rich.

It is the richest paragraph when it comes to describing who Jesus is.

Colossians 1, verses 15 through 20. So open up your Bible and join with me there.

Now, as I have said before, as we've been going throughout this study, you can let me read it to you, but I still challenge you at some point in your day to come back to this text and look at it all together in context.

And furthermore, that you at some point during the week read all of this at once, all four chapters of Colossians.

Colossians 1, 2, 3, and 4. At some point in your week, sit down and read it all. Take you about 15 minutes to get through it all so that you keep all of these things fresh in your mind.

You keep it all together. And plus, these things will be illuminated for you all the more from the start of the study till the end.

Before we come to our text today, why don't we come to the Lord in prayer? Our wonderful, wonderful Heavenly Father who has given us the gift of your

Son, Jesus Christ, we thank you again for another opportunity to come to your word and that this time as we devote ourselves to reading the

Scriptures, that we come to a deeper and fuller understanding of who Jesus is.

God, we need your Spirit to understand these things because as Jesus said through the Apostle John, it is the

Spirit that testifies about Christ. So for us to fully understand who Jesus is, we need the

Spirit of God to help us understand those things. So give us your Spirit as we come to your

Scriptures. Show us your truth. Grow us in the knowledge of who you are. And we pray this in the name of Jesus, whom we worship and study today.

Amen. Colossians 1, starting in verse 15. Are you ready?

Fasten your seatbelts. It's a big, heavy chapter. And I am actually struggling to keep this all together in one week because I could definitely go farther.

But I want to stay in one week here as we study Colossians 1, verses 15 through 20. Jesus is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things.

And in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent.

For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.

And that was something that I mentioned to you, I think, in the first day or two that we started studying in Colossians.

Verses 19 and 20 are your 10 -second gospel. In Him, in Christ, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.

So if somebody ever asks you, give me a definition of the gospel, give me your one -sentence definition of the gospel, you have it right there.

Colossians 1, verses 19 and 20. Now, I've heard Paul Washer, among others, say that John 3, 16 is the best one -verse summary of the gospel.

Sure, that's great. But that's not necessarily a definition of the gospel. So what is a definition of the good news of Jesus Christ?

What does that mean to proclaim that good news? And you have it there in Colossians 1, verses 19 and 20.

We're going to talk more about that, I think, as we come up on Thursday. But let's go back to the beginning here, verse 15.

Jesus is, He is the image of the invisible God. How do we know who

God is? We know who God is when we look at Jesus Christ. When you are reading the gospels,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you are hearing the words of Christ, and you are seeing what He did, and you are hearing what

He said to His disciples, and you hear what He says about the Father and the kingdom of God, everything that we can know about God, we know in Christ.

Now, there's got to be another question that follows this, though. How do we know who

Christ is? How do we know who God is? We know who God is through Jesus Christ.

Everything that we can know about God is what we see in Christ. How do we know who Christ is?

By reading the Bible. And we cannot know Him any other way.

Psalm 138, verse 2 says that God has placed above all things

His name and His word. That is so important to think of the name of Christ and the word of Christ as being one and together.

Why is that so important to understand? Because there is a common teaching in our society today, in our world today, that the text is secondary, but who is important is

Jesus. You worship Jesus, the name of Jesus. That's what's important. Just focus on Jesus and worship

Him. But, folks, you cannot separate Christ from His word. Why is the Bible every bit as important as Christ Himself?

Because we have no other way of knowing who Christ is except for what we read in the

Scriptures. That's the only way we can know Christ, which is why it's important to understand.

As God said, I have placed above all things My name and My word.

We know who Jesus is according to the Scriptures. It is not fair to say that the Bible is secondary or it's not what's important.

Jesus is what's important. Well, you can't know who Jesus is without the Bible, without the text. It's not that we worship the

Bible, that we worship it like a book. It's not an idol. It is the words of eternal life.

We know who Jesus is according to this text. And Jesus is described as the word.

We have some beautiful pictures all throughout Scripture that tell us who Jesus is.

Colossians 1, verses 15 -20 is the one -paragraph summary of who Jesus is.

But look all throughout the Scriptures and see how the Bible describes Jesus. Jesus is the promised seed who would crush the head of the snake,

Genesis 3 .15. He is the wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Isaiah 9 .6.

He is the root of Jesse, Isaiah 11 .10. He is our salvation from sin, Matthew 1 .21.

He is the Son of God in whom the Father is well pleased, Matthew 3 .17.

He is the fulfillment of all of the law and the prophets, Matthew 5 .17. He is the

Son of David, Matthew 21 .9. He is a ransom for many, Mark 10 .45. He is the one who baptizes with the

Holy Spirit and with fire, Luke 3 .16. He is the Son of Man who came to seek and save the lost,

Luke 19 .10. He is God, John 1 .18. He is the Lamb of God, John 1 .29.

He is the light of the world, John 8 .12. He is the resurrection and the life,

John 11 .25. He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to the

Father except through Him, John 14 .6. He is the vine, and apart from Him we can do nothing,

John 15 .5. Jesus is the cornerstone by whose name we are saved,

Acts 4 .11 and 12. He is our righteousness, Romans 3 .22. He is the firstborn among many brothers,

Romans 8 .29. He is our victory, 1 Corinthians 15 .57. He is our reconciliation with God, 2

Corinthians 5 .19. He is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its

Savior, Ephesians 5 .23. And you can also draw from that same passage that He is the groom of the bride of Christ, which is the church.

Jesus is our ultimate example, Philippians 2 .5 -11. He is the one mediator between God and men, 1

Timothy 2 .5. He is the heir of all things through whom all things were created, Hebrews 1 .2.

He is the founder and perfecter of our faith, Hebrews 12 .2.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, Hebrews 13 .8.

He is the Holy Lord, 1 Peter 3 .15. He is our righteous advocate, 1

John 2 .1. He is the propitiation for our sins, 1 John 4 .10. He is love, 1

John 4 .8. He is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth,

Revelation 1 .5. He is faithful and true, who judges and makes war in righteousness,

Revelation 19 .11. He is the Word of God, Revelation 19 .13. He is

King of kings and Lord of lords, Revelation 19 .16. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,

Revelation 22 .13. The ways that Christ is described all throughout the

Scriptures in the Old Testament and the New. In fact, most of those passages that I mentioned to you were from the

New Testament, but many of them were repeating things that were said of Him in the Old Testament, showing how

He fulfilled the Scriptures. So as I had quoted to you before, Matthew 5 .17,

Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the law and the prophets. All of the Bible points to Christ, Old Testament and New.

It's all pointing to Christ Jesus. The Bible is the story of redemption and how

God is reconciling all things to Himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross,

Corinthians 1 .19 -20. These are the ways that Christ is described to us throughout the

Scriptures. And here in Colossians, we have this beautiful paragraph describing

Jesus. Now again, I come back to that statement that I made before that you cannot separate

Christ and His Word. The ways that we understand Christ is by what is given to us in the

Scriptures. In our culture today, it's common to try to separate the

Bible from Jesus. And what ends up happening when we do that is Jesus can become whoever we want

Him to be. Well, Jesus is a great prophet. Jesus was a great moral man.

Jesus is a guy who I can frolic through the daisies with and feather His hair, and I can sit and rest in Him when the cares of this world get to be too much.

But if we don't know Him as Savior and Lord, if we do not know Him as God, then everything that we've come up with is just our flights of fancy.

It's whatever we want Jesus to be. The only way we can know Jesus as He truly is, is according to what we read in the

Scriptures. And here again in Colossians 1, we have that beautiful one -paragraph summary of who

Jesus is, starting out by telling us He is the image of the invisible

God. And indeed, He is invisible. We have that spoken about in Scripture.

In 1 Timothy 1 .17, To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be glory and honor forever and ever.

Amen. I think that we tend to think of God as supposed to be visible, and it usually comes from a misunderstanding of Romans 1 .21,

where it says, For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.

And some have a tendency to take that verse and say, God is not invisible. He is visible. He can be seen in all things that are in creation.

No, the Scriptures describe Him as invisible. But what Romans 1 .20 is telling us is that His invisible attributes, namely

His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived. So there's no reason for us to say that, well,

I didn't know because He was invisible. No, His invisible attributes have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

We cannot see God, but we know that He is there. We know there is an ultimate creator that has created all things because we look at everything around us, and we know there's a creator behind it all.

We know that. Everybody knows that there is a creator that created all things.

Even the most hard -hearted of atheists cannot fully deny that because he is denying something that is fundamental about himself.

He did not come from nothing. He did not poof out of nowhere. There is an origin story for Him, and there is an origin for everything.

And so God, the creator, Christ, who created all things, because as we read here in Colossians 1, all things were created through Him, and in Him all things hold together.

So Jesus specifically is the one who created all things. Now, He became visible.

He came in the flesh so that we might know through Christ the invisible God. But God is indeed that immortal, invisible

God, as Paul described Him in 1 Timothy 1. I think of the hymn,

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise. This is one of my all -time favorite hymns, by the way. I love this. Immortal, invisible,

God only wise, in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes, most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days, almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.

Some beautiful verses that follow with that. By the way, four altogether, and a very short hymn, so an easy one to memorize and learn and rejoice in God with when you are alone singing

His praises. It is through Christ that we know the invisible God.

He became visible. He came in the flesh so that we might know God through Jesus Christ and no one gets to the

Father except through Him. I remember a story that David Platt told. David Platt shares this story in his book,

Radical. I had the chance to hear David Platt in person about a month ago. And even when I was listening to him in person, he shared this story even before the congregation that he was speaking to.

But he said that he was attending a Bible study one time and he's sitting among that Bible study and they're all talking about who they think

Jesus is. And they have their own opinions of Jesus. Well, I think He's this and I think He's that.

Okay, and none of it comes to Scripture. And then there are people that are talking about how we get to God and the ways that they were describing, many roads to get to God and all of this different kind of thing.

And at one point, when Platt felt like that he could speak into the conversation, he said, if I'm hearing you right, you're kind of picturing

God as being at the top of a mountain. And so there's a lot of different ways and roads that you can get up to the top of the mountain.

And so there are many paths by which you can get to God. And everybody's kind of listening to Platt explain this.

And they're like, yeah, yeah, that's about right. That's a pretty good summary of what we're talking about here. And Platt said, well, what if I told you that God actually came down from the mountain to where we were and it is by Him that we are able to get to the top of the mountain?

And they were like, wow, that sounds even better. And so then that opened the door for Platt to be able to say, well,

Jesus is our way to God, and He is the only way that we can get to God. In fact, it's not possible for us to get to the top of the mountain.

It's harder than Everest. But God came down from the mountain in Christ to where we were, and it is through Him that we get to God.

And so then David Platt able to open up the scriptures and take them through the scriptures and show them truly who

Jesus is, not who just they thought he was or who they wanted him to be. So, see, we cannot know

Jesus by any other way except according to the word. Now, there are things that we can know about God by what we experience in the world.

For example, we are personable people. We were made for relationship, right?

Now, of course, there are some people out there who claim to be loners and hermits and whatnot, and they don't want anybody to bother them.

They're just extremely selfish and they're in denial. But for the most part, we are interpersonal people.

You can observe people and see that we were built for community. We commute with one another in cities, in small towns, out in countrysides and rural areas, but we're still community.

We're made for family, for one another. So by the fact that we see that we are relational people, we can know that we were made by a relational

God. Therefore, we know simply by what we observe among people in the world that our

God is not a deistic God. In other words, he's not a God that created everything and set it in motion and took his hands off of it and no longer interacts with his creation.

Because we know that we are interpersonal and we were created for personal relationships, we can know that God is interpersonal and desires a relationship with us.

We can know that simply by what we observe in the world that God is that way. However, we cannot know how

God has personal relationship with us. We can know that he is a personal

God that desires a relationship with us, but we cannot know how except by what we read in the

Bible. And what we read in the Bible is that God's relationship with us is through Jesus Christ.

He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one gets to the Father except through Jesus, the image of the invisible

God. And we're going to continue to explore more about who Jesus is according to what we see written in this passage.

Coming to this passage, Colossians 1, 15 -20 as our root text, and continuing to unfold this all week long so that we might know more and more, more fully about who

Jesus is. Our great and sovereign Lord, we thank you for this text. We thank you for showing us who you are according to your word.

Through the identity of Christ Jesus. And I pray that we submit ourselves to the authority of your scriptures, not trying to figure out in our own minds who we want

Jesus to be. We're thinking that Jesus is some sort of abstract thought, and he's this to this person and that to that person.

We want to know who you really are. And we know this according to what is said in your word.

So draw us to your scriptures, God, and feed us according to these things. Grow us in our hearts and minds in the knowledge and understanding of Christ.

And we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Perhaps you've heard it said that God helps those who help themselves, which is arguably the most quoted verse not found in the

Bible. The quote is often attributed to Benjamin Franklin written in poor Richard's almanac, but an earlier appearance shows up in 1698 in an article entitled

Discourses Concerning Government written by Algernon Sidney. That's just a bonus fact for you there. God helps those who help themselves is not anywhere in scripture.

The Bible actually instructs us to rely fully on the Lord and not on ourselves. Proverbs 3 .5 says,

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 28 .26 even says,

Whoever trusts in his own mind trusts in a fool. And as we read in Jeremiah 17 .5, Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the

Lord. Our works do not earn God's favor. As the prophet Isaiah said, even our best deeds are like filthy rags.

Romans 3 .10 says that there is none righteous, not even one. The only work that God accepts as righteous is the work that Christ completed on the cross.

The wages of sin is death, scripture says, and Christ took that penalty upon himself. All who are in Christ Jesus, God looks upon as righteous, not because of what we did, but because of what

Christ did and is still doing in us. As it says in Titus 3 .5, He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.

So God does not help those who help themselves. He comes to those who humble themselves.

That's the attitude we should have when we understand the text. Casey wrote in a little message for us and said,

Dear Pastor Gabe, have you seen this video of President Obama saying God helps those who help themselves?

I think that he needs to watch a what video? Yeah, Casey, I know the video that you're talking about, in fact, and Jay Carney, who at the time was the

White House press secretary, doubled down on the comment when he repeated it himself. Listen in here as the press corps is asking him about that particular statement.

President's speech today, he referenced the House action yesterday on the

In God We Trust motto and said, I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work.

I mean, isn't it a bit much to bring God into the jobs debate? Well, I believe the phrase from the

Bible is the Lord helps those who help themselves. And I think the point the president is making is that, you know, we have it within our capacity to do the things to help the

American people. And that's why he's working so hard to get

Congress to take action on the American Jobs Act and the provisions therein. For what it's worth,

I do not consider the White House to be any kind of source of any kind of truth. Oh, God, help them and open their eyes so that they might see and know the truth of your word.

Nowhere in the Bible do we read the statement God helps those who help themselves. Now, Matthew Henry, you know who

Matthew Henry is, right? Wrote the Matthew Henry commentary. Most of it anyway, he actually died before he could finish his commentary.

And some students of his finished it for him. But in a section of Isaiah 40, the late

Matthew Henry said the following. Well, before I read to you what Matthew Henry said, Isaiah 40 is where we find that famous verse, verse 31.

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary.

They shall walk and not faint. And in his commentary on that section, Matthew Henry writes, he gives strength and power to his people and helps them by enabling them to help themselves.

Now, that's not the same as saying God helps those who help themselves, because then otherwise we have to be the starting place.

We would be saying, OK, I'm going to get started here. And then where I have my imperfections, God's going to fill in the gaps.

But then we can take credit for the work. I did it. I did this. God just filled in where I had my imperfections.

So God is merely the complement to the work that we did, not the source of the work that we did. Whereas what

Matthew Henry is saying is that he gives a person God gives a person the ability to even do anything at all.

I quoted from you, John 15 earlier, where Jesus said, apart from me, you can do nothing.

We can accomplish nothing except through Christ Jesus. In Isaiah 40, verse 28, the prophet wrote,

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is unsearchable. Now we get tired and exhausted and our knowledge is always limited.

I mean, we're reading about that as we're going through Colossians here, that God is giving us spiritual wisdom and understanding filled with the knowledge of his will.

So if we're going to be filled with any kind of knowledge, let it be of the will of God. But our knowledge is always limited.

God's strength and his wisdom are not. We need to seek the Lord for both. He gives power to the faint and to him who has no might.

He increases strength. That is, that's there in Isaiah 40, verse 29.

In verse 30, we read, Even youths shall faint and be weary and young men shall fall exhausted.

And to this, Matthew Henry said, Those who trust to their own sufficiency and are so confident of it that they neither exert themselves to the utmost nor seek unto

God for his grace are the youth and the young men who are strong physically, but are apt to think of themselves as stronger than they really are.

Yet they'll prove to come up short. Even the most abled bodied among us, those considered to be in prime physical shape, are not able to sustain themselves against the conflicts and burdens that life throws at us.

Stress itself and spiritual duress take a physical toll on the strongest of men. We simply cannot do it by our abilities, by no physical or mental or spiritual exertion of our own.

Can we accomplish anything? It is only by what God does through us.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we're thankful that you have chosen us to be among the predestined for salvation.

Please continue to grow us in the knowledge of your truth. And we pray and ask these things in the name of Jesus and all

God's people said, Amen. Thank you for listening. You've been listening to when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

We hope you are a part of a church family committed to gospel teaching. And we thank you for including us in your

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