The Preeminence of Christ (Colossians 1:15-20)

It's my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker today. It's Andrew Rapoport. Andrew was the very first conference speaker that we had when we started our equipping conferences back in June of 2018. Andrew excels at open air preaching, and apologetics, and evangelism training.

And in fact, when we had our equipping conference in 2018, that's what we had Andrew come out to do, was to train us over a weekend in evangelism, way of the master style. So if you're familiar with Ray Comfort and his ministry, Andrew has worked with Ray and Living Waters, and that is his approach to evangelism.

Andrew is the director of Striving for Eternity Ministries, and he runs the Christian Podcast Community. And he is the host of The Rap Report, and Apologetics Live, and a few other podcasts that I don't even know, because he mentioned in Sunday School that he's actually does five podcasts, and I only know of those two, because those are the only two that I've been on, I guess.

So those are the only ones I'm aware of. But apparently, there are three others that Andrew does. And if you were following the drama on social media this week, then you know that Andrew went ATV riding with Thomas one day in the middle of the week, and that landed him on the ground, and then in the ER, and then in observation overnight in the hospital, as Andrew broke a rib, and then had a bit of a punctured lung.

And it made me realize that, it made me realize two things. Number one, the person who was in charge of our security almost killed our guest speaker. And second, about a month from now, my mother-in-law's gonna be in town, and if I buy the fuel for the trip, now come on, don't boo that.

My mother-in-law jokes used to be the best part of what I do. With that, Andrew Rapaport, will you come share the God's Word?

Opening Apology and Lighthearted Banter

I was gonna say to start off, just to let everyone know,.

I'll start with an apology,.

That I'll be, if I'm short of breath, or if I'm, you know, I won't be as dynamic as I usually am, it's because, well, Thomas was trying to kill me. I don't know how security is run here. I was, it was followed up by another person that worked security, I won't name the name, but offered for me to go ride his horses to make up for it.

But, unless you think that Thomas wasn't trying to kill me, we were in the hospital, and he actually asked the doctor when they were explaining that he might have to put a tube in my lung and, you know, to get the air out, and he asked the doc, will you put him out for that?

And the doc goes, yeah, we'll put him in for surgery and give him anesthesia. He goes, no, no, will you put him out?

Like you do, you know, one of your goats.

When it's ready to go.

So, I feel very welcomed.

It is a pleasure to be back here, back when I last spoke here, there were tables in the back and plenty of room, so it has really filled in. And so, I'm appreciative of the preaching ministry of Kootenai Community Church.

I listen to it every week, don't let Jim know that. I don't want him to get a big head or anything. But, I, can you cover his ears for a second? I was in the hospital and telling one of the, one of the folks that I was trying to, I was trying to evangelize many people.

Unfortunately, many people in your hospital know Christ. It's really, you know, I guess that's a good thing, but it makes evangelism really not as much fun. But, I explained to one gentleman that, you know, I think your pastor is one of the world's best preachers.

I hope you appreciate that. If I could, this would be the church I would move to. This is your weather, and then there's this thing called a grandchild on its way that's, I think my wife would kill me if I said, let's move, you know, to here instead of Ohio.

But, I figured before we get started with the text, I need to just correct some things real quick. You know, Jim preached the other week on baptism, and he left some verses out. Let's just turn real quick to every passage that deals with infant baptism.

Okay, now that we're done with that, let's get to turn to Colossians. Sorry, I couldn't resist. All right, Colossians chapter two.

Sorry, chapter one.

Yeah, I should also say that if, you know, when Thomas' wife brought me to the hospital, she made sure to let them know he's repeating himself a lot. So, if I'm not as clear, you know, if there's anything you don't understand, just, you can blame Thomas, Leo.

Reading Colossians 1:15-20

So, all right, Colossians chapter one. I'm gonna start reading. I'd like to start in verse 13, sorry, 15. And if you wouldn't mind, this is more of my tradition being raised Jewish, we usually stand for the reading of God's word.

So, if you wouldn't mind rising as I read God's word,.

Make you all suffer the way I did in synagogue.

This is what Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has written in Colossians one, starting in verse 15. 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 the cross.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we come before you and we thank you for the fact that we have your word. We have something we can hold in our hands and know you have declared that reveals yourself to us. And we ask that now as we look to your word in this act of worship throughout this worship service that we would be in awe of you.

We would leave this building loving you more, knowing you more, being more in awe of your greatness. Lord, in this time, we ask that you in the person of the Holy Spirit would illuminate our minds and understandings from your word and give us the application thereof.

We ask this in Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. It's interesting as we look back in verse 13 to pick up some context here. Paul says he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

Now, I don't know how many times you could just read that and read it over and over and just sit and read that and be amazed because that is our starting point. When we think about who Christ is in his preeminence, we start with recognizing who we are and where we were.

Paul says here in verse 13 that he delivered us from the domain of darkness. Now, we don't have to have some wicked background. I used to believe that after listening to Christians talk about their testimony that somehow I was saved in this really boring way because I'd hear all these people give these dramatic stories about their life, how they were strung out on drugs or they lost their jobs and everything and for me it was just kind of a logical decision.

I often say mathematics brought me to Christ. I grew up Jewish, so I grew up believing that Jesus Christ is Hitler's God. If that offends you, I'm sorry,.

But the Catholic Church had supported Hitler.

And that was the way we were raised. We were raised to hate Christ and so I had no desire for him. Seeing myself as a bad person was not hard. I mean, I almost burned my house down twice. Once we took a fire extinguisher, a second time the fire department.

I got better in a bad way, but we are all, whether we have some horrible thinking background or not, we all start in a domain of darkness. That is our starting point as we come into this world and I know that we live in a culture that wants to think that we're all good and I wonder if they're really watching the news, but the reality is Paul is saying here that Christ delivered us from this domain of darkness and transferred us, not that we all deserve hell, but he transferred us from that.

It says he transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. One of the most amazing passages in the Bible that blows my mind, I quote it often, is 2 Corinthians 5 .21. He who knew no sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of Christ.

Martin Luther refers to that as the great transaction. I mean, does that blow your mind? The psalmist says what is man that you're mindful of him? I've always been puzzled. I look in my life and I ask the Lord like why?

I mean, so many people in the world are saying like, well, I deserve heaven, like why would I deserve hell? No, the right answer when you rightly understand the darkness that we're in, the question is why would you have anything to do with me, Lord?

It's amazing that he is mindful of us, that he transfers us from the domain of darkness into his righteous kingdom. He took the punishment of sin that I owe upon himself on that cross and then offers me his righteousness?

Talk about mind-boggling. So many people desire to go to heaven. You ever think what was going through Christ's mind? He was already in heaven. We all want to get to heaven. I mean, heaven's a nice place, isn't it?

There's no sin, no suffering, no starvation. It sounds like a great place to be. He left that, but it's even more because in heaven, all the angels are singing his praises. He left heaven to come to earth.

Just ruminate on that thought because he didn't just come to earth, he came to earth to die on a cross that we could be transferred from the domain of darkness into his kingdom. Now, if it was me, personally, I would've waited until lethal injection was mastered.

I would not come into the earth at a time where they find the most brutal way to torture someone to death, but that's what Christ did. And he sits here and says, Paul says, not only did he transfer us, but in whom we have the redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

What did our sin cost? Oh, there's people that say, why, you know, my sin's just little. It's just, I'm not really a big sinner. Really? It cost the eternal God a death on the cross. You think sin isn't that serious?

In fact, I often, as I do evangelism, I'll ask people, I'll ask them, you know, if they, I'll go through the 10 commandments and ask them if they think that they're innocent or guilty. They usually say guilty.

I'll say, do you think you deserve heaven or hell? And they usually say, heaven. And I realize you don't really understand your sin. So I'll ask people, what is the greatest commandment of God? The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul, and strength.

So I'll explain to someone and say, well, let's think about this. The average person makes about 20 ,000 decisions a day. I mean, think about all the decisions you made already, whether to brush your teeth or not, whether to comb your hair if you could,.

What clothes to put on.

Think about all the decisions. How many of those decisions can you honestly say, I made this decision solely because I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, and strength? Let's be conservative and say that you only make 10 ,000 decisions a day and 1 ,000 of those you make because you love God.

I mean, that'd be really good.

Well, that means that 9 ,000 times a day times 365 days a year, or 64 depending on the year, times. However old you are, that's just the first and greatest commandment. Yet we live in a domain of darkness.

People ask, what's going on in the world?

They watch the news.

Well, what's going on is we live amongst a bunch of people that live in the domain of darkness. But those of us who have redemption, we have the forgiveness of sin. That's an amazing thought. And I think what Paul is doing is he's writing this.

This is in a part he's writing to the Corinthians, to those Colossians, and he's saying to them, like, here's what Jesus did for you. And I think that he gets into this thing as he's just meditating upon God and who Christ is.

And we have this passage that starts in verse 15. And just look at this, as he says, he is the image of the invisible God. How do you see something that's invisible? You don't. But Jesus is the image.

Now, some will say, well, what that means is he's the likeness. You may find people who are,.

Maybe you have those knocks on your door.

From Jehovah Witnesses. Well, actually, no, and ever since COVID, they don't knock, they write letters now. And so maybe if you get those letters, you get people that are brave enough to put their return address.

The Jehovah Witnesses that write me don't give me a return address. I really hate it. I have a letter waiting for them to write back. But no, they will say that Jesus is not God. They will actually say that Jesus was the angel Michael who became Jesus and then returns to being an angel.

Maybe you have in this area, very prevalent is Mormonism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And you've heard that in there, Jesus, what you have is Heavenly Father who was born on another planet as a sinner, by the way, and he lived a perfect Mormon life and he got to be the God of this planet.

Does this sound like science fiction yet? Well, but it was science fiction before there was science fiction writing. And what ends up happening though is that Jesus was born as a man that will become God.

You see, that's very different than what Paul is saying here. He's saying he is the image of God. Now, we think of image meaning likeness. You know, when someone looks at my children, they will be thankful that my kids do not look like me.

They don't have my image. I always say to people that when they look at my kids, they get their good looks from their mother and their sin nature from me. I'm both theologically correct and if you look at my kids and my bride, you'll realize that's true too, the other part.

But the reality is, is as we look at this, the word image, it says that God made man in his own image. Does it mean that we're the offspring of God the way that Mormonism would teach?

No.

It means that we have certain attributes of God. There's attributes the way that I categorize them is there's divine attributes, those attributes that are only of divinity. There's attributes of personality which we would share with not only God would have those but angels would have some as well.

But then there's attributes of morality which only God would have that are communicated to us as well. So some theologians refer to them as communicable and incommunicable. Big words, let me define them.

Communicable means communicated. So we share them with God. What it means to be made in the image of God is that we have those attributes that God communicated to us. And then there's those attributes that are not communicated, that's incommunicable.

That means that we don't share them. Things like omniscience. That'd be a nice one to have, wouldn't it? Like to understand our wives, guys, wouldn't we? We just wouldn't want our wives to have that attribute, right?

So being omnipresent, he's everywhere present. Being all powerful. These are things true only of divinity. So when we say that God made us in his image, it means that he shared certain attributes with us that we have in common with him.

Like an intellect, like emotions. Yes, God is an emotional being. But there's attributes we have like a self-consciousness. But Paul is saying that Jesus is in the image of the invisible God. What he's saying is that Jesus has those attributes that are only true of God.

That puts Jesus in a different category. He's saying he's preeminent among any human being. The preeminence of Christ is first seen by Paul in his attributes. That he is God is basically what this is saying.

Because if you have the attributes of deity, you are deity. It is only God that can have these. So Paul's first argument of the preeminence of Jesus Christ is that he is God because he has the attributes of God.

This is something that so many people have wrestled with. Now, if you end up talking to Jehovah Witnesses or some, they'll turn to passages of the Bible that talk about Jesus coming in the flesh. And there are a lot of passages that deal with that for a very simple reason.

In the first century, there was a teaching called Gnosticism. If any of you are familiar with it, Gnosticism basically was a teaching, it was people who thought they had a higher light. They were more spiritual.

Like you can understand base things, but they had a real intelligence. Actually, it kind of sounds like many of our scientists today. But the idea, though, in Gnosticism is anything physical is evil, and anything spiritual is good.

Well, the real example of how perverted their thinking is is that Gnostics would actually teach you can go and be with a prostitute, and it's okay as long as you don't give your spirit over to her, just your body.

And we would look at this and say, no, that's wrong. You see, why do I bring this up? Because in the first century, at the time of the writing of Scripture, nobody questioned the deity of Christ. They questioned his humanity, because the Gnostics said that anything physical is evil, and anything spiritual is good, and Jesus was good.

Therefore, they argued he was only spiritual, and not physical. And so, so many of the writers of the New Testament have to say, no, he's human also. But here you see Paul very clearly saying he's the image of God, saying he's the attributes of God, and now he's gonna start defining some of those.

Not only is he the image of the invisible God, but the first thing we see is he says he is the firstborn of all creation. Now, some of the groups I've already mentioned, they will say firstborn means offspring.

And does firstborn mean you're firstborn? Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. Who is the firstborn of Abraham? Well, you're gonna say Ishmael, except that's not who got the inheritance of the firstborn.

The firstborn referred to is not Ishmael. It's Isaac. He's called the firstborn.

Why?

Because he is the preeminence. The whole idea of it is the firstborn had the preeminence. So Jesus is being referred to as the firstborn of creation, not saying he is born, that he became a man as being the firstborn human being, or as the Jehovah Witnesses would try to argue, that he was the first of creation.

In fact, in this passage, we'll get to, they actually have to change this passage. They have to change God's word to fit their theology, because they believe that Jesus, being Michael the archangel, was the first creation, and then through Michael the archangel, aka Jesus, everything else was created.

Well, what we see here is Paul is trying to say that Jesus is preeminence. By being the firstborn of creation, this is the idea of an inheritance, but not the way we do inheritance today. If you've ever seen where families will split an inheritance evenly sometimes.

Sometimes you have the brothers or sisters that you really don't wanna have as a brother and sister, where they kind of connive and make sure that they get most, if not all, of the inheritance,.

And you're left with nothing.

If you're the one doing the conniving, repent. But the reality is that there are positions where you have a firstborn, in the first century, the firstborn got the full inheritance, or they would get a double portion of the inheritance, because there is the idea of the firstborn isn't having to do with the birth order as much as it has to do with preeminence.

The idea of being first, being the exalted one in this sense. And after what Paul has just said of where we were and where we're going, and what Christ did, he's thinking about Christ and saying how great he is, how preeminence he is, that he is above anything we can ever fathom.

He starts by saying that he's God, and saying, well, he's the firstborn of all creation. But then Paul decides, let me explain what this is a little bit, this firstborn of creation. What does it mean that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation?

And as you look at context, which by the way, anytime you read Scripture, read it in context, one of the good things and yet worst things we have is a thing called chapters and verses. You ever think about that?

Chapter and verse breaks make it very easy to find things in Scripture, but it's a horrible thing because people read a verse thinking you can take that out of its context and read it by itself. And that's what many people do.

They read firstborn of all creation and say that Jesus was born, he was the first one born. He was the first of creation. But as we look at the context here in verse 16, this is not possible to be saying that he was the first one created.

It says, for by him all things were created. Now, I said Jehovah Witnesses edit this. Four times in this passage where it says that he created all things, they add the word other. He created all other things.

They have to add that in because if he created all things and they say he's a created being, he'd have to create himself and that creates a logical fallacy. He'd have to first exist to create himself.

So they add the word other. But that's not what the Greek says. This says that he created all things. That's one of the attributes of God that's true only of God is that he is the creator. He created us.

You know what happens? As the creator, it means he actually has the right to tell us what to do. I know we don't always like that. But you understand this inherently, right? Any of us that are parents, you've probably already said this to your children.

When they disobey or they ask you, why should I do this? Because I'm your, help me out, parent.

Right.

Your parent, that gives you the right to tell your children what to do. And as children, we've all been children and we've probably heard our parents say this. And we don't like that idea that they're the parent.

We always think when we get older, we're gonna be different and then we act exactly like our parents. But being a parent, we have the right to instruct our children. How much more so being the creator?

The one that puts breath in your lungs. That has new meaning to me now, thanks to Thomas. I kind of realized I kind of like breath in my lungs. And so what we end up seeing is, as the creator of the universe, he has not only the right, but the authority to tell us what to do.

Now some will say, well see, but he's just a, he's a God created through him. That's what Jehovah Witnesses and others would say. That God created all the universe through Jesus Christ. He's not really God, he's like a lesser God.

So you have almighty God and you have like a little God. And Jesus is like a little God. He's still God, but not really at the same level as the Father, so they try to make this distinction. Well, if you turn, we won't turn there, but if you look at Isaiah 44 or 45, what he ends up saying is that Jesus, or God says that he uses the word Yahweh, that Yahweh alone created.

Huh, well if he alone created, then who created with him? The answer's very simple, nobody. So when Paul is saying that for by him, all things were created, that means that Jesus Christ is the creator, meaning he is God, meaning he has the authority in our lives whether we like it or not.

Now you say, well, maybe, Andrew, maybe when you're saying he created all things, it may not mean all things. I mean, there's times where all doesn't mean all. You know, I mean, there's times where the words, like world doesn't mean the entire world.

You can use the word world and it doesn't mean every single human being in the world. It just means all the nations of the world or the world system. So maybe all doesn't mean all. Wouldn't it be nice if Paul qualified what he meant by all things?

He did, look at this. He just kept going, look.

He says, for by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth. Well, let's stop there. Does that leave anything out? Well, we think of heaven as the place of where God abodes, where the angels are, where we are looking forward to getting to, but that's not always the thinking in the first century.

Heaven is kind of just the out there, everything that's not earth. They would look to space and they didn't actually have any, you know, satellites or things like that to know what's out there in space, so that's just the heavens.

So you have heaven is outside of earth.

And then you have earth.

Well, those two extremes are not leaving much room. It's basically earth and everything not earth. But he goes on, visible and invisible. Everything you can see and everything you can't see. There's not much room for error there, is there?

Okay, well, maybe I'm missing something. Let's keep going. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. I could be wrong, but it sure sounds like Paul is saying that all things actually means all things.

Everything. Heaven and earth, visible, invisible. I mean, there's nothing outside. In fact, he ends up talking about the thrones, the dominions, the rulers and authorities. Many will see this as the realms of, the angelic realms and things like that.

In other words, there's nothing that was created that was not created by Christ. And if Christ created all things, that makes him God. That makes him preeminence. To have the preeminence above. That's gonna become important because Paul, who is addressing some of the issues of Gnosticism in this book, is going to be saying things that, well, they're probably not gonna always like so much.

He's gonna say things that are, though they're true, are hard to live by. I mean, he's gonna say things like put off the old self. How many of you find that easy to do? I mean, isn't that just easy? Just put off the old self, put on the new.

I mean, it's so easy to say. How hard is that to do? Well, when we understand who's telling us, oh, it's Jesus Christ, the one who created the entire universe, and we can't even fathom this, the universe.

I mean, we're just touching the surface of it. There's new images of the universe that just came out about a month ago, where they just got a telescope far enough out, and they got these new pictures, and everyone's going, ooh, and ah.

You know, for thousands of years, God created all these stars and galaxies and solar systems, and they were just a dot in the night sky to us, right? For thousands of years, no one really saw that beauty.

And then someone had a telescope, and they were like amazed with that. And now we send aircraft or spaceships into space to be able to see even more. And we're amazed with the beauty. You know who saw that beauty for all those thousands of years before we had a telescope?

God.

Why do you do that? My kids always used to ask me this when I'd catechize them and I'd be working with them. My son asked me one time, why did God create all the stars and the planets and the solar systems when people on Earth couldn't see them?

My answer, because he wanted to. I mean, there's still stars and things out there we can't even see. There's stars that, because of where our sun is, it blocks it, and we still can't see all the brilliance of his creation.

But you don't have to go to the universe. Go get a microscope. Take the smallest cell in your body. Back in the day, people thought a cell was the smallest thing. Then they found an atom. And an atom actually mean is the idea of the smallest particle.

Now we call things subatomic because we found things smaller than the atom. Kind of funny that humans think like, oh, we found an atom, we found the smallest thing ever, until we find something smaller.

You know that in every cell of your body, you have an engine that can do like zero to 300 in milliseconds? I'd love that in a car. You have a system within your body that communicates throughout your body to tell you to actually be self-healing.

I mean, one of the things the other night when Thomas tried to kill me,.

I'm sorry, did I say that?

I'm sorry. I was amazed with the fact that the doctor told me that my rib punctured the lung and that I have a hole in the lung, which Thomas thought was kind of interesting. He's like, he's complaining you have air in your lung, like that's a problem.

But the reality is that the doctor tells me, well, we're gonna put you on oxygen and hope that it heals by morning. The whole night I'm thinking about that comment. You realize we have a body that just given lots of pure oxygen, that hole sealed up and it was gone by morning.

That's not some miracle. That's not God doing a special healing. That's the way God created our human body. That's an amazing design. Wouldn't we love that in our cars, a self-healing quality of it? You buy one car for life.

It would be wonderful. This is what God did in his creation. We could go to the smallest cell and be amazed because we will never come to an end of understanding of God's creation in our smallest cell to the greatest part of the universe.

That's the creator. And who saw that detail in the cell before the microscope?

God did.

Why'd he do it?

Because he could.

Maybe just so in our day and age, we'd be amazed. This is the creator. This is who Christ is. It says that not only were all things created through him, but it says everything was created for him. Are you created?

I'll give you the answer.

Yes.

Guess what you are created for? Jesus Christ, because he's preeminent. You are created for Christ. All things that were created were created for him. And it says, verse 17, and he is before all things.

Means this is another attribute we end up seeing that he is eternal. He did not have a beginning. Any of you that take geometry or enjoy math, let me use a math illustration. Sorry, you get to figure out my background.

I'm an engineer by trade. So in geometry, you talk about two different things. One's called a line and one's an array. I'm not gonna ask how many of you remember the difference, so I'll explain it. A line, you have a line with arrows on either side saying it's an infinite in both directions.

That's God.

That's what I refer to as eternal. Infinite in both directions, and I think that's what Paul's trying to say here. What we are is what I would say is immortal. That's an array. That's where you have a dot, has a starting point, and then goes on for infinity.

That's us.

What he's saying here is that he is before all things. Well, what are the all things? Well, he's already established. The all things are everything. Everything that was created. What was before everything?

God.

It's amazing that people will try to use this passage, overwitnesses use this passage to try to deny the deity of Christ. I hope that you're looking at this and going, gee, that's really gotta be kind of hard for them.

Yeah, if you look at it in context, it is. He created everything and he existed before everything. There's only one being that existed before everything, and that's God. But here, this next passage is really amazing.

I don't know if you think about this much, but it says in verse 17, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. You ever think about that? I mean, did you know that you're made up mostly of air?

You are. The cells in your body are mostly air. There's like a proton, neutron, they're spinning around air. And yet, like this pulpit, we can feel it. It's physical. And yet it's mostly made up of air.

Now, I'm not talking about the air between people's heads, okay? I'm talking about, there was a time before Einstein where people thought that between Pastor Jim and I right now is this thing called ethos.

It's something we just can't see, but it's there. Then Einstein realized, no, it's just there's air. There's not some material thing there.

There's nothing.

What holds the planets in space? What holds the moon? And people would say gravity. Yeah, what is gravity? People really don't know. Stephen Hawking's a brilliant man.

It's just there.

He argues gravity is what created the whole universe. There's gravity, and it creates this single solarity, boom, brain explodes into everything. Now, you think about that and go, well, okay, but what was there?

And he says gravity was. Now, this is, when you get a PhD and you're really, really brilliant, you can say things like this and people don't question you. And people said, well, what is gravity? Like, what exactly is that?