Colossians 1:15-23 He's All That

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan.

Opening Welcome and Church Announcements

Good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm glad that you're here. I'm Don Felsick. I'm the lead pastor. And I hope you've gathered together this morning to worship Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

He is the reason that we gather together, and I hope that he has come to mind this morning for you as you've been getting around and getting ready to come in here, and I hope that you grow closer to him as a result of gathering together with his people and coming to this place this morning.

I'd encourage you to check out the worship folder that you received when you walked in. It's got different announcements and different activities that are going on in there. Haley's picture is up there, but she is not running the welcome table this morning.

It's actually Leah Klein is out there. Haley is on vacation this week. We even let her take a break once in a while, so she's not out there. But if you would do us a favor and fill out the connection card that you received when you walked in, and particularly if this is your first time with us, and you fill one of these out and turn that in in the black box that's out there on the welcome table.

Leah has a gift for you, and she'll make it worth your while, so it's worth filling it out and turning it in. And then also remember that those of you who have filled this out before, there is a place for you to put down prayer requests and different things that are going on.

If you have any suggestions or comments, criticisms, concerns, anything like that, you can put that on there too, and we make sure to address those. And then you can keep your own information updated just by sharing that with us.

Your email address changes, you move, you get a new cell phone, whatever. We appreciate it when we get updated information on that. And then an offering envelope has been provided. We don't pass an offering plate, and so just make mention that there's a black box out there where you turn those connection cards in.

You can also use that envelope to give if you choose to. We don't want anybody to feel pressured, and obviously the main focus is if you're calling this your church and you acknowledge that as a spiritual act of worship to God.

We are not trying to pressure anybody into giving, and at the same time, we're extremely grateful for the way that God continues to provide for us. And just thinking about the expansion fund, we do have an expansion fund that any gifts that are marked, expansion fund, whether on the envelope or on the check MO line, goes towards our eventual goal of building a building, a goal that's becoming more and more reasonable as we go along.

And I'd encourage you to come to the family meeting tonight. It's going to be held at the office meeting room just down the street here, right on Murray Street at the end before you get to the park on the left-hand side, and you can see where that is on the website too.

But just a highlight, we love to see people out to this family meeting. If you're calling this your church, or even if it's your first time here and you're kind of curious and want to know what's going on, you can come to that meeting, but it's a place for you to get questions answered.

We're going to spend some time praying for the church and for each other. And so the focus is, exactly when I say family time, that's the focus, is a chance for us as a church family to get together. Now I want to point out that it could be a misnomer in the title because we don't have child care provided for you, and part of that is just an issue of space.

We don't have a facility yet where there is a place where we can all meet and then have our children meeting at the same time someplace else other than here, which we don't have this in the evening. So just know, I mean, you could bring your kids and they could sit there and take it in too if you choose to do that, but please come out 7 p .m. this evening down the street.

The Supremacy of Jesus Christ in Colossians 1:15-23

So with all of those things out of the way, we're going to be talking about the book of Colossians again this morning, and I just want to start off by saying something that might just be really obvious to you, and that is that Jesus is a polarizing figure.

Have you noticed that? You say his name in public and you're going to get a response from people around you. You say it in your workplace, you generally get a response from people. Maybe you've noticed that.

People have pretty strong thoughts and opinions about Jesus Christ. There are bumper stickers saying that he was a liberal. There are bumper stickers saying he was conservative. There are bumper stickers saying he supports just about every idea that is out there, right?

Just about almost anything that people can come up with, they've used Jesus to try to defend their position to some degree or another. The picture that Paul paints of Jesus in our text this morning is breathtaking in its scope.

It is extremely significant in what it has to say about this figure, this man, Jesus Christ. Jesus is not whatever we make him out to be. The character and nature of Jesus is clearly spelled out for us in the pages of scripture.

We don't get to define Jesus any way we want to, but instead, if we are wise, we will come to the pages of scripture and let God bear testimony of who his son truly is. And that's what we're going to be doing today.

We come to the word intentionally. That's one of the reasons here at Recast I walk through books of the Bible is I want us to be informed by the word of God. Not my opinions, not Don's thoughts, not Don's soapbox, but by the very word of God where he is telling us how it really is in reality.

We believe this word is truth, and so we dig in to know who he is better. And here in our text, he's going to be talking specifically about his son, Jesus Christ. We should listen to the testimony of God about his son.

And I think we live in an age where many well-intentioned people, well-meaning people have made Jesus out to be things like their own personal trainer. To Jesus, to some, he's just a life coach or a personal guru who helps get me through.

Like your own personal Jesus. Think of him like a good luck charm who, you know, I invoke his name when I want good to happen in my day or something to that effect. Many who even would be found attending church on Sunday morning would have kind of a Jesus who serves them model, right?

A Jesus who is going to make me rich, a Jesus who's going to make me wealthy, a Jesus who's going to take care of all of my needs. Colossians 1 is here in the text to help fix that error. Because Jesus isn't just a good teacher, he's not just an example to us, he's not just a life coach, but he is so much more than that as we dig into this text.

Some, on the other hand, err on the other side and see Jesus as out there somewhere. Even some in the church might think of Jesus as far removed from your day in and day out life. And our text this morning is going to correct that error as well.

Because we will find in this text this morning that Jesus is Lord of all things. The restorer of all things. And he is our only hope, personally, for restoration. So let's open our Bibles to Colossians 1, 15 to 23.

We're going to read this text together. Again it's Colossians 1, 15 to 23. If you don't have a Bible with you or an app to navigate over to the Bible, then I just ask you to please raise your hand. We've got some guys with Bibles back here, but I just want everybody to have a copy of God's word on their lap so that you can follow along.

And if you don't have a Bible at home, again there's some on the table on your way out. You can just grab a Bible and we want everybody to have a copy of God's word. But recast, this is what God desires for you and I to hear this morning.

And I say that often on Sunday mornings, but I just want us to be reminded and remember that this is God's speech. This is God's writing to us. This is what he has for us this week. And for some reason, he's orchestrated the events such that I'm speaking on it and you're here listening to it.

And so it would be sensible for us to pay extra special attention to the reading of.

His word.

Colossians 1, 15 to 23, he, just to clarify, we're talking about Jesus Christ, he 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 you, and you who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Christ as the Image of the Invisible God and Firstborn of Creation

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, I rejoice in the opportunity that we have to just reflect this morning on Jesus Christ, your son. He is the purpose. He is the center.

He is the king. He is our lord. He is our savior. And father, I pray that you would impress on our minds to correct any errors that we might have, even in our own hearts, in our own thinking about Jesus.

Father, there are many in the room who have used him to win an argument or towards their own end or just even maybe we've thought of him in incorrect understanding. We've either had him too buddy-buddy or too distant.

Father, I pray that you would correct both opposite ends of the spectrum and recognize that he is indeed the cosmic sovereign lord over all and equally close to us, redeeming us by the blood of his cross.

And so father, as we have an opportunity to lift our praise to you, I pray that this wouldn't be a formal exercise like we're supposed to do music in the middle of a service, but father that we would lift up our voices, but not just our voices, but our hearts and not just our hearts, but our very lives before you in worship this morning.

Father, that we would be moved in our emotions and we would be moved in our thoughts equally. Father, that this would not be some frenzied enthusiasm without content and neither would it be content without enthusiasm.

Move our entire beings in worship this morning, in Jesus name, amen. Thanks a lot to Dave and the band for leading us in worship. I'm just grateful for their gifts and abilities. You would not want to hear the sound that there would be if it was me attempting to do what they do.

So hopefully you're just as thankful as I am about that. Be sure to keep your Bibles open to Colossians chapter 1 verses 15 to 23 is where we're at in case you weren't here and you've arrived since we read it or you just lost your place.

Colossians 1, 15 through 23 and that's going to be our outline for the text is just walking through the pages of scripture here, walking verse by verse and so as we think about that, have that open. And then remember if you need more coffee or juice or donuts, I don't know if there's any juice left, but coffee and donuts there while supplies last.

You can get up at any time during the message if you need to or you can get up and stretch out in the back if that seat gets uncomfortable. Our main purpose over the next half an hour or so is going to be to keep our focus on God's word and just kind of dive in and walk through this and so attention to God's word is what we're trying to accomplish here.

So, Jesus, Jesus, what comes to your mind when you hear that name, Jesus, Jesus? Jesus, what you think about this man has the power to define, will define your destiny for eternity. To some, he's a fiction, he's a legend of history.

To some, he was a man who taught good life lessons, who was a good example. To about a billion people on the face of this planet, he was a prophet who just brought a partial message that later needed to be added to and corrected.

I had a long conversation with a friend not too long ago and she adamantly disagreed with me when I told her that Jesus Christ is my king, is a king. She was and is convinced that he was just a good teacher and multiple times in that conversation she used the word example.

He's a good example who came to just share an example of hope to us. He was a herald in her words, a messenger, and nothing more. I'm going to suggest to you that the most important thing about your life today is the definition of your connection with this man.

Paul the Apostle is going to say some things about this guy who walked around Palestine in the first century AD that are incredible, if true. I believe they're true. Paul believed that they were true.

They're recorded for us by the revelation of the Holy Spirit in Scripture and I would suggest to you it's extremely important that you wrestle with these things and come to decide for yourself, do you believe these things are true?

Paul has three distinct movements in the text that we're looking at this morning. If you're the kind of person who likes to take notes and you're kind of a little bit more organized, once in a while I like to throw you a bone and so I'll put some outline to it.

The first outline, first point of the outline is verses 15 through 17, Paul establishes Jesus is the Lord of all things, so that's my first point. He's Lord of all things and then in verses 18 to 20, Paul establishes that Jesus is the restorer of all things and then in verses 21 through 23, he brings it down more personal and he establishes that Jesus Christ can restore you.

He can restore you. So let's launch out into the first point that Jesus is the Lord of all things. Paul begins with the pronoun here in our verse, in verse 15, he is the beginning of the verse. He is the image of the invisible God and so you need to go back and read verses 13 to 14 to define who the pronoun he is referring to and when you get back into 13 and 14 and study and dissect it, you come to find out that the he is Jesus Christ in verse 15 and he is declared in our text right from the beginning, an awesome statement, the invisible image of the invisible God and so think about an image, the word image and probably many of you woke up this morning and looked at an image of yourself, right?

You looked in a mirror and you got around and got ready and kind of tried to cover up some blemishes and do this or that to your hair or whatever you do but you probably looked at an image of yourself, a reflection of yourself.

Now how many of you have ever looked in a mirror, you've looked in a mirror and you've seen the image of something that was invisible? No, right? You don't see an image of something invisible, right? You don't see it at all and so obviously there's a bit of a conundrum going on here in the way that Paul is speaking.

You don't see the image of something that's invisible yet Paul here says that Jesus is the reflection of or the image of God who is invisible. If you want to see the Father, in other words, look at the Son.

You want to see what God is like? Look at Jesus. It's an amazing statement right off the bat here in our text, God who cannot be seen by human eyes has been revealed through his Son Jesus Christ who can be seen by human eyes and was seen by human eyes and whom eyewitnesses have recorded for us the events of his life in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And Jesus is also the firstborn, he goes on to say, of all creation and at first glance people can get bothered by this phrase and then as Paul goes on the trouble starts to get cleared up a bit. At first it sounds to our ears like Paul is saying that Jesus was the first created thing but as the text goes on, it becomes clear that Jesus is not merely something created but he himself is the creator of all things.

The text goes on to go over the top to express his role in the creation of everything. So if all things were created by him and through him and for him as the text is going to go on to explain, then he is certainly not merely a part of creation but he is the one through whom creation actually came.

But what we miss then in this statement, firstborn of all creation, we miss because of our cultural differences with first century culture, the time that this was written. Because in first century culture this idea of firstborn meant the heir, the rightful owner of the estate, the rightful owner of the inheritance.

We don't think in terms of firstborn being in the position of inheritance like it was in that time. So when we move on to verse 16 and see Paul explain why Jesus gets to be the firstborn, he doesn't say because he was the first created thing, that's not what he goes on to say, but it becomes more clear.

Why does he get to be the firstborn? Because by him all things, all things were created. When we understand the word firstborn to be heir, Paul is saying why does Jesus get to inherit the entire created order?

Because in verse 16 he is the one who made it. He is the rightful owner of it and therefore it is his inheritance that he indeed possesses all things. He made it all. The phrase all things occurs four times in just our first three verses.

Jesus created all things in the heavens above and on earth below. Think about all the things that, I mean I'm going to make a little list here, but I mean all the things in between this list, stars, nebula, black holes, quasars, moons, planets, amoeba, sunsets, plants, canyons, islands, snow, snow, clouds.

But just to be clear, Paul goes on to say, well I mean, okay, everything you can see, everything you can take in with your senses was created by Jesus. But that's not sufficient for Paul. He goes on to say not just the things that can be touched, not just the physical things, but even the invisible things have been created by God.

And so then you begin to think of maybe invisible things that are physical, like you've never seen molecules, right? You don't see the air and that's an invisible thing, but it's still an actual thing.

I mean, I don't think we think of it that way, but air is actually a substance, right? But there's other things that he created. Not just air, but love, authority, emotions, angels, gravity, physical laws that govern our universe.

All that is compatible with any experience within the cosmos has come about by Jesus,.

Says Paul.

All by him. And all dominions, all reigns, all rules, all authority is made by him. Interesting concepts when you think about where we're at politically, but nobody will occupy the office of president without the vote of Jesus Christ.

About as political as I'm going to get this morning, so that's it. Not only were all things made by him, but all things were created through him and for.

Him.

And Paul just keeps heaping on prepositional phrases. And he is before all things. And in him, all things hold together. Paul is not allowing any wiggle room here for us to get out from underneath the supreme and amazing and complete authority of Jesus Christ.

He covered the bases of any doubt regarding our view of Jesus. So what you're saying, Paul, is Jesus is a pretty big deal, right? Like, do you get that? Are you guys looking at this? Do you get that? Is Jesus a pretty big deal?

He's saying he's a pretty big deal. And to the question, Paul, is that what you mean? Paul says all things by him, through him, all things are after him, all things are sustained.

By him.

And later he's going to add, in a couple verses, all things are reconciled by him. All things are brought to completion by him. From these prepositions we discern that he is the originator. He is the agent of creation.

He is the purpose of all creation. He existed before anything was even made. And he is the sustainer of all things, holding us together right now. And there are two ways we need to deal with this first point.

From an academic perspective, I hope you understand that the testimony of Scripture is that Jesus Christ is indeed King, Lord, Master, Ruler over all things. I hope you get that in here. I hope that in your mind that you are believing that and seeing it to be true.

But we should also align our thoughts with the truth revealed in the Bible and add to that what it does in our hearts. We should also consider our hearts when we come to the end of these first three verses.

Jesus is awesome.

In the biblical cosmic sense, he is all that. And obedient worship is the only reasonable response to this truth. Obedient worship. But Jesus is not only the Lord of all things, according to this passage, but second of all, in verses 18 through 20, Jesus is shown to be the restorer of all things.

The one who can make all things right. Now, in his original creation, was there any error? Was there any sin?

No, there wasn't.

But humanity was created, and it's like Paul leaves a little bit of a gap in his explanation of history here, and at the same time, we already take it for granted that we understand that things are broken and fallen.

So he doesn't expound on Adam and Eve in the garden here in order to explain the brokenness, but instead he just jumps right into the notion that things need to be restored. And after setting up this exhaustive explanation of the rule and reign of Jesus Christ over all things, it can feel like Paul lets the air out of the balloon by what he says next in verse 18.

It's like Jesus, cosmic power, all things under his control, all things created by him, for him, through him, and by the way, he's the head of the church. He's the head of the church, too. And any of you kind of like think, why funnel down so narrow all of a sudden, Paul?

You've made this glorious, grand explanation of who Jesus Christ is, and now the church?

Really?

That's where you're going to go with all of this content, with all of this glory, with all of this majesty? You're going to go to the church? And until we come to a correct understanding of what the church really is, we will always be underwhelmed by it.

And I would dare say that many of us in this room have been underwhelmed at times by the church, right? Anybody want to confess to that? There have been times where you've been underwhelmed by church, and I mean, this church, I'm not offended if you've been underwhelmed here at times, that's understandable, but it's a reality in our hearts where there are times when maybe we haven't really understood what we're talking about when we say church, and so we have all different kinds of notions.

When we start talking about church, we could spend a lot of time talking about a whole bunch of things that the church really is not, that don't really define it. We could talk about hypocrites, we could talk about stuffy, musty church basements where I went to Sunday school class when I was a kid, we could talk about vacation Bible school, Awana programs, small groups, cathedrals, Catholic mass, Pentecostalism, you name it, all different kinds of things about church government, about all different host of issues that the church faces, or ways that you've been offended, or ways that you've been put off by people who call themselves Christians, or by organized structures, or denominations, or a whole host of things, right?

Is there a lot to talk about when we talk about church? Is there a lot of emotion when we talk about church? Is there a lot of connectedness in our past, in our history, in our brokenness, with doing community with other broken sinners who are striving towards grace?

Hopefully, we hurt each other from time to time, and so when we talk about the church, to say, he's the head of the church, we go, oh, Jesus, are you sure you want that job?

Are you sure?

Really? I mean, is that where you're going to go with this, Paul, is he's the head of the church? But look at where Paul goes to define the church for us in one quick brush stroke here. He doesn't spend a lot of time defining it, but what he does to define it is beautiful.

We are the body as Jesus is the head. That's what it means to be the church. We are the body as Jesus Christ is the head. So the church is simply those who are vitally connected to the head. Those who are vitally connected to the head, and who is the head?

Jesus Christ.

Those who are receiving their nourishment, and their sustenance, and their direction, and their guidance from the head, Jesus Christ.

That is the church.

The Jesus that we talked about, that is all that, is the very same Jesus who willfully, willingly, and gloriously, and in his love, identifies himself with this ragtag crew of.

Worshipers.

In this statement, Paul identifies he is moving on from general creation to saying that he is over the new creation. What is, ask yourself, what is it that God is using in the world to accomplish his purposes?

Broken, fallen people who he is redeeming for his glory and his honor. People just like you and me. He's using his church. What is his church? The gathering of broken and fallen individuals in need of a savior who are connected to the.

Head.

That's what the church is.

He is the director of the redeemed people of God. He is heading up the restoration process. He is the beginning of the church, the text says in context, and he has priority, is to have priority in all things.

He is the first one raised from the dead, and he has the right to direct us. He is preeminent in all things. Therefore, if he is to be preeminent in the church, if he is to be preeminent in our lives, you've got to take this in stride and run with what Paul says here.

He's passing on a baton of sorts to you, saying, Christ is to be preeminent in your lives and where are you going to run with that? In our sexuality, in our financial decisions, in the way we communicate with others, in our career decisions, in our emotions, in our actions and behaviors towards others around us, in the way we schedule our activities for our families, in all things, Christ is to be preeminent.

What is preeminent? Considered first, thought of first, and he needs to have a hand in all things, all things pertaining to the church, and all things pertaining to those who are in his church. And the reason we should hold him as preeminent in all things is found in verse 19.

Why?

Why talk in terms of this guy in Palestine who lived 2 ,000 years ago? Why speak in terms of giving your life to him, asking him to be your Lord and Savior, coming in and renovating and changing your heart?

I mean, isn't this just a, this is a guy who walked the dusty roads around Judea this.

Time.

Look at what verse 19 says about him. Why should he be preeminent? In him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. This is one of the most unqualified comments about the deity of Jesus Christ in all of.

Scripture.

He is worthy of our worship, worthy of our obedience, worthy of honor, because he himself is God. All the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell in the man, Christ Jesus. And God in Christ was reconciling all things to himself through the blood of Jesus shed on the cross.

Reconciling by the way, think in terms of reconciling, we use it a couple different ways, right? Some people, you reconcile a bank account, right? And we're a really nice technical culture and society who likes to kind of line things out so we might gravitate towards that definition more than we gravitate towards the relational component.

Depends on how you're made up and where you find yourselves on the Myers-Briggs temperament indicator or whatever. You know, are you a people person, are you not a people person, that type of thing. But do you think of reconciling primarily as a relational word?

It's a relational word that conveys a level of brokenness, right? When two people need to be reconciled, something is wrong. And Paul doesn't outright state in this context right here, right now, he's going to, he's going to save the brokenness for the personal here in just a moment.

My last point is where he's going to bring down a relationship with Jesus Christ to the personal level and how he can reconcile you. Here he's talking more in general terms of reconciliation, so he doesn't state outright that sin is the cause of the rift in our relationship with God.

But he does declare that the work of reconciliation was done by Jesus Christ, the work of restoration and bringing two warring parties together. And he's going to describe how bad that war was between you and God here in just a moment.

But we need to be careful to understand the limits of the word reconciled as it pertains to all things. Some things will be reconciled and brought into wholeness or completeness or brought into fruition with willing delight.

I for one am grateful to be reconciled and brought to my knees before my Lord and Savior on that great day. Anybody else grateful for that? You're looking forward to that? You say, I am willingly joyful at the notion of standing before God on that day.

I'm looking forward to it. But others will be reconciled by judgment. All accounts, hear me carefully, all accounts will be settled on that final day. All accounts will be settled on that final day unless, unless it was settled on a cross just outside of Jerusalem.

All accounts will be brought to fruition and the relationship one way or another is going to be set right. Some to eternal condemnation and some to eternal glory. But all of that comes through Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the restorer of all things. Salvation is not strictly limited to the souls of mankind, but the world will be restored through him. Peace comes to earth through his sacrifice. His blood brought peace.

His blood that spilled when they whipped his back, his blood that poured down his face from the crown of thorns. His blood that dripped off the cross from the nails driven in his hands and feet. His blood that poured from his side, from the hole made in his side by the Roman spear.

There at that cross, by the blood of his cross, that awful, amazing, glorious, uncomfortable, horrendous sacrifice is what it took to bring peace and restoration to the created order. Right now, personally, I'm reading through the Bible in a year, I don't know if any of you are doing that, you don't need to raise your hand or whatever because then you lose the credit in heaven for it, I don't know, I don't want you to get credit in front of.

Everybody else.

But I'm doing that, I'm choosing to do that, and I'm actually in the middle of Leviticus right now. Any of you ever read Leviticus? You suffered through Leviticus, you made it, I mean, it's glory, it's the word of God, and it's beautiful and it's awful and it's same, right, because there's a lot of blood in there, okay?

Have you ever noticed that? There's a lot of blood, there's carrying of entrails outside of the city, gross, and burning them outside of the city and there's all kinds of stuff that goes on in the book of Leviticus and I'm reading that and I'm thinking about that and I'm meditating on that in the morning and I'm just thinking, man, first of all, I'm glad I'm a pastor and not an Old Testament.

Priest, okay?

Anybody know what I'm talking about there? I mean, there's a lot of, and I'm wondering, is that a butcher shop, are they even a barbecue in the holy place or is this a, you know what I mean, because there's a lot of sacrifice that's going on there and stuff, but the blood, the blood, and it's interesting, I had somebody tell me recently, well, within the last couple of years, an interaction with somebody who was like, now, you're not one of those churches that's about blood, are you?

Like, you're not one of those that talks about blood and sings about blood and all that stuff because it makes me kind of queasy, but the fact of the matter is, Christ suffered and died and shed his blood, so yes, we have to keep talking about blood.

Why do we talk about blood?

Because it's the life that was shed for us that was spilled out on our behalf and it is our hope that a sacrifice was made on our behalf. So yes, reading in Leviticus, it's like just reflections and reminders of the necessity of the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins.

Christ as the Restorer of All Things Through His Cross

But Jesus is not just a restorer of the created order through his blood and through his cross, but lastly, in verses 21 through 23, Jesus gives restoration to his people. Paul starts by explaining our condition without Jesus.