Colossians 1:15 - The Sovereignty of the Father

Good to have all of you with us today. We're not have a lot of time. So let's get started. Let's go into Colossians chapter one. We're going verse by verse through this book. And we had just gotten to verse 15, which is where this book begins to really discuss the main theme of the book, which is the deity of Jesus Christ.

And we mentioned the last time or two that before we can really understand that, we need to understand. In other words, if we want to fully understand the person of Jesus, who he is, and we know his works, but who is he?

Before we can understand that, we have to understand his father. And so it's interesting because in the context of Colossians chapter one, long before it gets to verse 15, it says a lot about God the father.

And it's because it's showing us in that context that we need to understand God the father before we could ever understand the son. And what's interesting is you have to know the son before you can ever know the father.

And what's interesting, more interesting than that, is that the father has to draw you to the son or you'll never know the son. And more interesting than that, perhaps, he uses the Holy Spirit to do that drawing.

It's called the calling. And so no man could have invented biblical Christianity. No human could have thought it up. All of the thought up religions are very simple. They have God. They just have one God, just God.

And they will tell you, we do not have a son of God. Everybody who's been here a while knows who I'm quoting. They're the young Islamic man that I had many talks with through business discussions, but also biblical discussions.

And so that's their problem. The truth is we could know God exists through the creation, but we can never know God without the word. That's why Jesus is called the word, because a word is something that transfers a thought from one person to another.

You would never know the thoughts and minds of God. He is invisible. No man hath seen him at any time. And you wouldn't know him at all without Jesus. And you wouldn't know Jesus without the Holy Spirit calling you to know him.

And so this is God's plan. But what we started talking about is the father first. There are some things we knew about him before we got into Colossians 1. And like if you just look at the names of God in the Bible, they all tell about certain characteristics of God.

Elohim is the strong one who is faithful. That's the first name of God that we see in the early verses of Genesis. Jehovah, we find a little later at the point where God's creating man is where we begin to see that name of God.

And Jehovah means the self-existent one who reveals himself. Self-existence is something we could talk about for three or four Sundays. Jehovah Jireh is a name that means God will provide. And he provided the lamb of God, did he not?

And that's what we talked about there. And then Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that healeth. And then Jehovah Nisi, which is the Lord, our banner. And that's a picture of a banner that goes before an army into battle.

So God is the one that goes in front of us into any battle that we face. And Jehovah Shalom, God, our peace. Dave talked about that in Sunday school this morning, how God brings us peace. And then Jehovah Ra 'ah, which is the Lord, my shepherd.

Dave talked about that too. That's why we have peace, because we have a shepherd. And then Jehovah Sidkenu, which is the Lord, our righteousness. We know that the great doctrine of imputation, where God took all of our sins, all the sins of his people, and placed them on Jesus while he was on the cross.

And he paid the sin debt in full, and then he took his righteousness and transmits that to us. That's called positional righteousness, and that is the only reason we're saved. And so, yes, God has called the God, our righteousness, because our own righteousness could never save us.

And then the last one we looked at was Jehovah Shammah, which means the Lord is present, and funny enough, so Dave covered three out of those in his Sunday school lesson this morning. All right, so, you know, the Father is the sovereign God of the universe, and the one who willed that Rabbi Saul of Tarsus would become the apostle Paul, and the apostle to the Gentiles, and write most of the New Testament.

Without God the Father who ordained that and predestined it, it never would have happened. And so this is kind of where we start to get into the context in Colossians. So let's go back a little, and we're all in verse 15, but let's go back to the context a little bit to see what the Bible says about God the Father before it starts to talk about that Jesus is God.

So Colossians 1, 2, let's look at that. To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ, which are at Colossae. And let me stop just there a moment. This is why it takes me so long to get through a whole book, even a small book like this one, is because every word's important.

But notice that it starts out telling us who this book is written to. And we have to understand that most of the New Testament is written as letters, not verses. They don't have chapters and verses in the original.

It's just a letter. It's a love letter from God to us. God's the author, and he used human penman, right? It's a love letter from God to us, but it's a letter. It's not a verse. It's not a thought. It's a letter with thoughts in it.

And they all have to be taken in context or you get it wrong. You won't know what God's thought was. You'll put your own thought in there. And this is what people love to do with the Bible, is put their own thoughts into it and make it prove whatever they want it to prove.

And to do that, you have to pluck a verse out of context. For example, we just pull Colossians 1, 15 out, put it up on the screen today and have 45 minutes of rock music. And then I would give a little devotionette on verse 15 without telling you anything about what's around it.

And I can make it say anything I want it to say. I mean, I've done this a long time now. I can make it say anything I want it to say. I could prove anything I wanna prove with the Bible easily. But if you're trained to look at the context, you would go home, even if you didn't look at it while I was preaching, you'd go home and you'd read that and you'd be calling me on the phone saying, hey, Brother David, you said it means this, but what do you mean about these first 10 verses here that say it means this other thing?

How come you did that? And then pretty quickly you'd have a new pastor. That's how we do it here. So like you can't pluck stuff out of context. So what I'm gonna say about this, it says who it's written to.

One of the 10 rules of Bible interpretation, you should always ask who is it written to and what's it written about? That's two of the rules. Who is it written to? What's it written about? And does it have any primary application to me at all?

If so, great. If not, does it have a secondary application where I can see a type or a picture in it that applies to me? And if not, maybe it doesn't apply to me at all. Like what about the verse that says, gentlemen, I may lose my voice quickly because of what we did yesterday.

We went to a wedding and the music was like, I like it really loud, but we were trying to talk over it. So my voice is already gone. So where was I? So for example, where Jesus said, gentlemen, if a man looks at a woman and lusts after her, it would be better if he plucked his eye out and to go to heaven with one eye than to go to hell with two eyes.

Remember that verse? Okay, so like what if you don't ask who is that written to and what's it talking about on that one? Then would we practice that in this church now? If we did, we'd have even a smaller congregation and a half blind congregation.

Well, maybe at least half of the people would be half blind because I don't know how women work, but I know how men work. So half of the men would be half blind. So we have very small congregation. So that's a silly example maybe, but what if you didn't ask who's that written to, what's about, and what if you didn't know what dispensation it was written in?

Like there's dispensations. The two most famous are Old Testament, New Testament stuff doesn't work exactly the same. Some things do, but a lot of things don't. And there are far more than just two dispensations.

And so if you, the scripture tells us we have to rightly divide the word of truth. That's talking about dispensations. I don't care if you, you know, I'm not talking about theological dispensationalism.

I'm not into that. I'm talking about biblical dispensationalism where there are divisions where God changes how he deals with men at that point, from their point, from that point forward, and then may change again.

And there are several of them, but if you don't ask those questions, you'll get things totally wrong. And people don't ask those questions anymore because preachers don't do it anymore. Preachers are now taught to have a three-point topical sermon, which means you're pulling three verses out of context and using them to prove whatever you want to preach about.

So the sheep are just like as dumb as they've ever been. Dave talked about sheep in Sunday school, how dumb they are and they need a leader. They need a shepherd, but they're the dumbest sheep. Listen, this church, I don't mean this church.

We may be an exception and there's other exceptions. I know they're out there, but at large, the American church is the dumbest sheep that have ever lived in the history of Christianity. And they will even, Ben, my son Ben likes to track some of the new theological concepts.

They're so stupid that even when they get intellectual, they get it wrong. In fact, they get it worse. And it's really frightening because all you really have to do is know 10 rules of Bible interpretation, which almost every denomination sees them as the same and don't cheat on them and read the word and ask the Holy Spirit to teach you.

So remember this, anybody that shows you a verse and says, well, it can't mean what you think it means because it says this and all you need to do is say, would you mind going up and reading the first verse in the chapter with me and read down to this verse?

Would you do that with me? And then read it out loud with them and you can show them why they have it wrong. It works every time. So just remember that. This is very important here where it says, to the saints and faithful brethren.

That's who it's written to. It's not written to lost people, not this chapter. It's written to believers only. Now it can give you things to use to deal with the lost world as we witnessed, but it's not written to them.

This isn't, there's some passages that are, but this one's not. So you gotta ask that question. So here it's written, we know who it's written to now. Grace be unto you and peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we're still see what it says about God, the father first, so that we can understand the son better when we get to that in verse 15. So what's the first thing it says about God, the father? Well, it says he is the one who gives his children two really important things.

Talked about, one of them talked about Sunday school this morning, grace and peace. Okay, so grace be unto you and peace from God, our father. Now there's another important phrase that we'll bring back in when we get to verse 15.

It says, and the Lord Jesus Christ. So I want you to think about something. If the Bible says that grace and peace, and if you're talking about the ultimate level of that, like a glass can't be more full than another glass, it's either full or it's not full, right?

It's just full. You can say it's more nearly full, but you can't say this one's more full than that one, right? So it's an absolute. So if you look at true grace and true peace, it can only come from God.

Humans who are lost, try to fill that hole in their heart with a thousand things, and most of them are sinful because they're miserable. I remember that, I didn't get saved until I was 24, so I can remember what that's like.

You just fill it with the next thing and the next thing, and some of those things will kill you, right? If you deal with them, they'll just kill you. And some people you've tried to put in that hole in your heart will kill you or make you miserable or make you go away.

So, that's the thing, you have to fill that void with true grace and peace that can only come from God. Well, don't you find it interesting that the verse says, grace and peace, grace be unto you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So here you already start to see the relationship of who Jesus is by the relationship he has with the Father, and it's an equal relationship as far as dispensing grace and peace. So it says, God the Father dispenses grace and peace to humans, and it says, Jesus Christ does that as well, and only God can do that.

So it proves Jesus is God right there in the very first part, but it's not even really talking about that yet. What it's talking about here is grace and peace. We know that it originates with the Father, but it also is given by Jesus Christ.

Now, verse three says, we give thanks unto God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you. So the second thing we learn about the Father is that he is the one who is to be thanked for the salvation of our souls.

Because let's think about this a minute, as we begin to talk about the Trinitarian concept that God is one God subsisting in three distinct, I wish Dave Huber Sr. was here, he'd tell me a better word to use.

Personas, that came, there you go, that came from your husband, who comes up and schools me after every sermon. He shows me stuff that he thinks up during the sermon that I can add to the notes for the next time I ever use the sermon, which I never do, I just chunk them, because I don't like used sermons.

But anyway, I like that. One God who exists or subsists in three distinct personas. Your dad came up with that. I didn't tell you, he has a pretty good coffee topic. But anyway, the point is, if we're going to start to try to ferret into that for the rest of our lives, and get a little closer to understanding it until we die, and then we'll get a little closer, and for all eternity, you'll just get a little closer, you'll never totally understand God, because we're finite.

But he is the one to be thanked for the salvation of our souls. We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, because he's given us grace and peace. Now, the next thing that we see is God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It says that right there in verse three, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that's something to think about. All right, now, there is, you know, when theologians, whether they be Roman Catholic or Protestant, and remember, the Protestants came out of that, so they brought a lot of that baggage with them, brought a lot of great new truths about God, too, though.

But when you look at how they want to talk about the Trinity, they'll say that God, the Father, and the Son, the Holy Spirit are co-equal. Have you heard that? It's in the creeds. Have you heard that phrase?

If you read theology, you'll hear they're co-equal. Well, that's true and not true, depends on what you're talking about. It's true with regard to the essence of God. It is not true with regard to the personas, necessarily, because they have different ministries, different things that they do, the different personas of the Godhead.

The Father, together with the Son and the Holy Spirit, planned everything that is. There's only one plan because He's perfect. You don't need two or three or a million possibilities if you're perfect.

He's got one perfect plan, and we're living in it. You're stepping into it. When you get out of that pew and you take a step, you just stepped into His perfect will. In the next step, you will also. In that sense, you can't get out of God's will.

He's sovereign. There's one plan, you're in it, okay? But you see where it talks about here that the Father, we give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It does not mean that Jesus came into existence later or that the Father created Him.

It does not mean that. But it does mean that there is a hierarchy with regard to the things that God does in our lives. And so the Father is here, and then the Son, and then the Holy Spirit, and the New Testament demonstrates that through and through if you look at it.

So as far as position and ministries, there are hierarchies. The Holy Spirit answers to Jesus. In fact, Jesus sent Him here. He said, it's expedient for me to go because when I go, I will send another comforter like myself and He sent Him.

So they're not co-equal in office. Is office a good word? Stop me. I wish Ben was in here too. Like, stop me if I get that wrong. What do you think? Office a good word? They're not equal in office. So, and then the Father sent Jesus.

The Bible says that Jesus was with the Father. No man had seen Him at any time save the Son. So the Son had been with Him. And then there was a time, but that was before time and space. There was nothing but God.

But then there was a time that God created time and space and Jesus spiraled into time. Now He's in the heaven, what we call the third heaven. And the Father sent Him. Jesus Himself said, as the Father sent me, so send I you.

So now we've been sent. So there is a hierarchy. So if you just say they're co-equal, you sort of, you miss some of that. And that's been emphasized by a lot of groups. So you really have to study to see the different pieces, but here we see that He is God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we thank Him for the very salvation and the grace and the peace that we have. Now, the next thing that we see is look at verse nine. Skip down to verse nine in Colossians chapter one. For this cause, we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and understanding.

Now, if you track back up into the context, you'll see that the last mention of a noun. So if you want to know who His is, that could be Jesus or the Father. You don't know which, right? But the way to figure it out is go up.

You go all the way up to verse three. We give thanks to God. Talking about the Father who does some things. And then verse six, it says, since you knew the grace of God in truth. So it's talking about God, and it never changes that all the way down to verse nine.

So we're still talking about God the Father here. So it says that you might be filled with the knowledge of God's will, God the Father's will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. So we learned a couple of things more about the Father.

He is the one who has a plan for our life. One perfect plan. That is one perfect plan. And when we have knowledge of His will, which is what verse nine is talking about, the great apostle was praying for his converts, and even people that they led to Christ.

He considered all of them His spiritual children. He's praying that they would have knowledge of His will. Now, Brother Otis used to teach this thing called the secret will. He said, there's two wills.

There's the revealed will, which is this, right? And the secret will, which you don't know yet. I call that one the one you step into. His secret will, you know it when you get there, right? Well, Paul is praying that you'd have knowledge of His will before you get there.

What do you think about that? Now, we know we can gain insight into that with the revealed will. If we're in the word more, we will have more wisdom than people who aren't. We'll have more wisdom to know what to do next than people who aren't.

And so, but he's praying that they might have knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. So God is the one who created the plan for us, but He's also the giver of all kinds of wisdom and spiritual understanding, and the one who has a one perfect plan for every life in this room and every life in the world and every life in the history of the world.

One perfect plan and you're in it. Now, I don't have time to talk about the difference between predestination and free will and all of that, but I'll tell you this, anytime you find one in the Bible, the other is in it, usually in the same verse or the next verse.

So the sovereignty of God is true and the responsibility of man is true. And the only people that get it wrong in churches and denominations are when they try to eliminate either one of those two and only focus on the other.

Now you can have, you can favor one or the other, we do, we favor what, we care more about what God's doing than man. So we like the sovereignty of God side of it, but anytime we get to scriptures that talk about responsibility, we teach them because they're true and they're going on all the time at the same time.

You mentioned that too. You almost preached my sermon this morning. So God is the one who, God the father had a plan for you before he made anything. He knew you by name before the foundation of the world.

That's how, you know, that's how we know election, predestination, the calling and all of those things that Romans nine and Ephesians one, every place in the old Testament talks about as well. We know that's true because he's always known you before you were born.

Now you came into the world, a lost sheep, but you were not a goat, you were never a goat. And goats don't morph into sheep and sheep don't turn into goats. The scripture talks all about it. You just have to really study a lot of the parables talk about these things.

So even Jesus, he said, I didn't put the tares here. So then you got to ask the question, how'd they get here? Tares and goats are the same thing. They're people who will never be saved. He said, I did not put them here.

Satan put them here. Figure that out. We could help you with that if we had more time, but we're not gonna talk about that right now. So now we see God has the one perfect plan for our life and he is the giver of all kinds of wisdom and spiritual understanding so that we can not only live that life, but know why we're living it.

We can not only live that one perfect plan, but we can know the plan maker. We can know the one who made the plan, why he put us here, the richness of the relationship we have with him while we're living that plan.

All of that is who God the father is. Now look at verse 10, Colossians 1 10, that you may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

So now we see that the father is the one that we work for. It's a family business. That's why I think human family businesses are the best way to train your children rather than sending them to college, learn something no one else in the family ever did, but that's another subject too.

But it is a family business that you may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work. That doesn't mean just spiritual fruit. It means a fruitful life that brings fruit into the world that helps other people see God and know God and have things that they need and all these different things.

Fruitfulness is a huge subject. Being fruitful in every good thing, work and increasing in the knowledge of God. So God the father is the one that we work for. He is the one that we walk for. Pardon my voice.

Sorry, I wore it out last night. He's the one we walk for. He is the one that we bear fruit for and that we wish to please with our lives. That's all found in verse 10. What next? Look at verse 11. Strengthened with all might according to his, this is still God the father, his glorious power unto all patience and long suffering and joyfulness.

That gives me two more points. First one is this, that God the father is the one who gives us strength and might according to his glorious power. So we do not fight the battle with our own power. We do not go to war in our own war.

It's his war and he fights through us with his strength. And when you know that, you are fearless. I don't say anyone will be afraid sometimes, but like overall, you might be momentarily afraid, but you will be not afraid when you understand that you're in God's will.

Every moment, anything that faces you or a person that faces you, if they have a weapon in their hand. How many, we've seen two or three cases just in the last month where guys walked down the aisle with a pistol pointed at a pastor and it misfired and they tackled him and the pastor was sitting there going like this.

I'd probably be sitting here going like this because I usually keep one under here, but I mean, but it would be the power of God. I can't hit the target unless God makes me have the strength to pull the arrow, right?

So he would hit me instead. But I mean, the point is, whether you use human means or not, it is the power of God that makes you work the work. And it's working in God's family business, doing what he wants you to do anyway.

And when you understand that, you become fearless. So I wish we could teach our soldiers these things, don't you, in the military? We used to, that's why we won World War II. The Bible was with them. And most of them had a little New Testament with them when they went into battle.

Now what do they got? Humanism. Let's see where that takes America. So we are strengthened by the Father's glorious power. And we are strengthened with all kinds of might, it says. This world system you were born into has taught you to think of yourself as small, to think of yourself as I'll never be a millionaire.

Millionaires are born with money. That's a lie. The Bible says they all come from the dust of poverty. Every family that's wealthy was poor at one point. And so it wants us to think small, fearful, can't do anything.

Even the self-talk we do in our brain, you're stupid, you're stupid, why'd you do that? Anybody do that besides me? But I rebuke myself when I do it, do you? Oh, that's bad too, though. Okay, well, somebody's gotta be in control.

So your new man might as well be in control to rebuke that old man. Because that's your flesh that talks like that. But listen, the world taught you to think that way about yourself. You can never achieve more than you think you can, right?

Because everything happens by faith. You have to believe. Well, just read this. Strengthened with all might by the glorious power of God the Father that's in you. What is there that you can't do? Nothing.

You can do everything that the Lord leads you to do. But not only there, the second point I have from this verse is that the Father is the one who gives us patience and longsuffering and joy. And you covered one of those three, Dave, in Sunday school.

Patience, longsuffering are similar. I like longsuffering as an older word and it's maybe got a little more colors of meaning than the English word patience. But you can't have that in the flesh, right?

So God the Father gives us that as well. Now, look at verse 12 and 13, verse 12 and 13. Giving thanks unto the Father which has made us fit. The old English word meet is fit. Giving thanks unto the Father which has made us fit to be partakers of the inheritance and verse 13, who has delivered us from the power of darkness or lostness and translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

He saved us. And this is still talking about the Father. It's still the Father, right? Now, so what are the last couple of points we see is that first, he is the one who makes us fit to be partakers of the inheritance with the other saints in light.

And I'm gonna tell you what, that defies the modern gospel, okay? Figure out what I'm talking about. The modern gospel is Jesus died for everybody, which the Bible doesn't teach by the way. And he presented a gift and he's holding it out.

It's up to you to decide your eternal destiny or whether you take the gift or not. That is not the gospel, but it's taught in almost every church today. And it's pretty sad because the Bible says very clearly, even here, and this is not so much a salvation passage, you'd go to try to figure all that stuff out, how salvation works, what the gospel actually is.

But it tells us who it is that makes you fit to become a Christian. It's not you and it's not the church. It's the Father. Why do you think Jesus said, no man comes to me unless the Father draws him? Do you hear that in church anymore?

Well, you do if you're here, but I mean, do you hear that much anymore? No, it's not anything to do with the calling that's talked about in Romans chapter eight. The calling is something that happens in space and time on your spiritual birthday.

And it's something God does to you, not something you did for God. So it didn't happen at church. It usually, it can, it can happen in the pew, but it doesn't happen down here. It usually happens before you get here.

It's all messed up because the church wants you to think they caused it and God says the Father caused it. So, boy, you could, you know, any sermon you preach, if you want to talk about every little detail, you go for a long time, couldn't you?

So God, the Father is the one who makes us fit to be, listen to this, partakers of the inheritance. That means you get saved. And that's a big word. Salvation includes many, many things. You get, first thing that you get is regenerated.

While we were yet in our sins, hath he quickened us? So that's an act of God. You didn't have a thing to do with it. Just like a baby doesn't have a thing to do with his own birth. He just wakes up and he's there and he enjoys the, every, the benefit of it, right?

And the family that he's born in. It's a picture of spiritual birth. So we were born into this family because the Father made us fit to be born into this family. And he made us fit to be partakers with the other saints that are already saved.

And they are the saints in light. Now that light's gonna refer to Jesus Christ later, but you wouldn't have seen the light of Jesus without the Holy Spirit waking you up because you were dead in your sins.

I was dead in my sins. I was deaf, blind, and dead. And at my regeneration, the Holy Spirit, while I was yet in my sins, quickened me, which means brought me to life from death. Everything that happened after that is in effect, not the cause of our salvation.

Think about that. It'll change your whole view because we were taught differently growing up. All of us were. So God is the one who makes us fit. And then verse 13 says, God is the one who delivered us from the power of darkness.

Wasn't you that did it? Wasn't the church that did it? Wasn't a preacher that did it? It was God, the Father, who delivered you from the power of darkness. And this word translated, we spent two, three Sundays talking about this earlier.

That word translated is like changing you from one thing to another. And God does that. It's God that does it. He is the one who delivers us from the power of darkness and translates us into the kingdom of his dear son, takes us from darkness and brings us into his marvelous light.

That is an act of God. That's why it's called the operation of God. It is the work of God. And that's why we preach about the finished work of Christ a lot because that's what saved us. It was his blood plus nothing.

And anything the church of any denomination wants to add to that is heresy. Anything they add to it for the cause of regeneration is heresy. And there's a lot of it today because Jesus said there'd be many false prophets in the end times.

And we look at these guys, that's why I didn't wear a tie today. We look at these guys with a tie and a suit and they look so good. They preach from the Bible out of context. And we don't realize how many false teachers we ourselves have heard in our lifetime who were called, if you grew up Baptist, they were called a Baptist.

If you grew up Bible church, they were a Bible church pre whatever. You've heard things taught wrongly. And the more you study this, you go, hmm, that wasn't right. And it's just amazing, but Jesus prophesied it.

So now that brings us all the way through what we already knew about the father, what the context here teaches is about the father. And then in verse 15, it starts talking about the Lord Jesus Christ.