Jesus is the Focus of the Whole Bible

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. We're continuing today with our study of the book of Colossians. We're going to be in Colossians chapter two. Now I was having a little bit of trouble trying to decide which verse I wanted to focus on.

As you know, if you've been paying attention and watching with us every day, you know that we go through one chapter at a time each day, but that because the chapters are so long, I'm not able to focus on the whole chapter.

The Fullness of Deity in Christ

So usually I focus on one or two verses, but there's actually a couple of verses in Colossians chapter two that I want to make mention of. And the first one is Colossians chapter two, verse nine. If you remember what I talked about yesterday, I said, Colossians provides for us what we would call a high Christology, meaning that it gives us a very high view of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it tells us a lot about him as not only as Lord, but as creator and as God, he is the God man. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. And that involves understanding the Trinity, understanding God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit.

That involves understanding the distinctions that Christians have long made between the concept of essence or being. God is one in essence and the concept of person. God is three in person. So he's one in one category, the category of being, but he's three in another category, the category of person.

And when it comes to persons, it's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the Son is God, Jesus Christ is God, but he is also man. The Bible makes it very clear that Jesus is a true and genuine man. And as the God man, he is able to represent God to man, and he is able to represent man to God.

And he's able to be the mediator between God and man. When we come to Colossians chapter two, we come up across a very interesting passage in verse nine, because it says, for in him, that is in Jesus, all the fullness of deity dwells bodily.

The King James says it even a little more forcefully, it says all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily. And the word Godhead and the word deity are both translations of the same word, and the word is theates, and it's referring to the divine nature of Christ.

All that which is God was encapsulated in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not, Jesus was not missing any of the God parts. In fact, God doesn't have parts. And that's one of the things that's often misunderstood.

When people start thinking about God, they start thinking about God in regard to categories of parts, like a human being has different parts, but God doesn't have parts. And it isn't as if certain parts were in Jesus while other parts were not.

The Bible says the fullness of God, the fullness of deity was dwelling in Christ bodily. Now, does that mean that God was not also everywhere else? No, the Bible tells us that God is omnipresent, meaning that he is everywhere.

There is nowhere that he isn't. But there was a particular way in which he dwelt, there's a particular way in which the nature of God dwelt in the person of Jesus Christ, a specific way that it was unique.

And he, of course, being the God-man, had the fullness of God. And that passage, Colossians 2 .9, reminds us of that. And it is such an important truth that I wanted to point it out to you. But there's another passage that I think is also important, and I want to make mention of it today as well.

Shadows, Types, and the Substance Belonging to Christ

If you go down to verse 16, verse 16 and verse 17 says this, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival, or a new moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Now, the reason why I'm bringing that particular passage up is because I believe that this passage is very important in the life of believers regarding the question of how we are to understand the Old Testament in light of the New Testament.

This particular passage uses a word, skia, which we translate as shadow in verse 17. And it tells us that the ceremonies of the old covenant, the festivals, the new moons, these were times of feasting, these were times of celebration, and these things were shadows that were pointing to Jesus Christ.

The thing about a shadow is it's not real. A shadow only exists because there's something else that is causing the shadow. The shadow itself is not the real thing. The shadow is being cast by the real thing.

And so when we look at the Old Testament and we consider Jesus Christ, we see many shadows that point to him. One of the shadows that point to Jesus Christ would be the lamb. In the New Testament, John the Baptist said, behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

Well, he was referring to the Passover lamb. He was referring to the lamb of God, the lamb that would take away sin. He was referring to the lamb that was used on the day of atonement. He was referring to the sacrificial lamb.

And so we have this picture in the Passover lamb. We have this picture in the lamb that was given and it's blood used on the day of atonement. We have several sacrifices that were made and all of these pointed to Jesus.

They were a shadow of Christ. Tonight, I'm recording this on Thursday. I know this is gonna go out Friday morning. Tonight, I'm teaching in Sovereign Grace Academy. And in tonight's academy class, I'm going to be teaching on the subject of Christ in the Old Testament.

He's in the Old Testament in three ways. One, he's in the Old Testament as prophesied. Two, he is in the Old Testament as typified. And that is where the Old Testament uses language that points back to him, the shadows.

Again, John said, Jesus is the lamb of God. Jesus said, the manna that came down from heaven was a type of him, so he's typified. He's also illustrated in the Old Testament. An illustration would be something like the ark.

The ark was an illustration of Christ. Everyone in the ark was saved from the wrath of God. Everyone outside of the ark received the wrath of God. And therefore, we talk about the ark as being an illustration of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we see Christ in prophecy, we see Christ in typology, and we see Christ in pictures or illustrations. And when it talks about the shadows, that can refer to, of course, types, and it can refer to illustrations.

Christ Our Sabbath Rest

And one of the types that's mentioned here, one of the shadows is the Sabbath. Now, those of you who are members of our church know that I've done a debate on the Sabbath, that I'm very passionate about my belief in that the Sabbath was fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this is one of the passages that I use. And it's one of the reasons why I believe that of all the commandments that were given to Moses, the 10 commandments, the one that was not reiterated in the new covenant was the command of the Sabbath.

Why? Because the Sabbath is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. It had a purpose. It reminded the people of God of rest. And the rest, which God rested on the seventh day when he created, was then used by God as a once a week reminder of the covenant.

And the Bible says the Sabbath is the sign of the covenant given to Israel in the wilderness to Moses for the people of Israel, that this Sabbath was the sign of the covenant. And then when the new covenant comes, we have a new rest.

The rest is now not a day, but the rest is a person. Because the rest that we had typified in the Sabbath day is now found in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, come to me ye who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Jesus is ultimately our rest. Jesus is the substance of the Sabbath. We who are constantly working ourselves to death, we come to Jesus and he says, we don't work for our salvation, but we come and believe in him and what he has done.

And we trust in his works and we rest in him. And in him, we find true Sabbath. So again, there's so much in Colossians to talk about. I couldn't help but today want to mention these two verses. Take some time with verse nine and really consider what it means that the fullness of deity dwelt in Christ bodily.

And take some time with verses 16 and 17 and think about what it means to be a shadow and the substance belonging to Christ. Those are two things that I point you in the text too to think about today.

And I hope today has been an encouragement to you. Again, thank you for watching. If you enjoy these episodes that come out every day at 6 .30 a .m., please take an opportunity to like, comment, share and subscribe and tell a friend.

You know, when you're on Facebook, tag somebody and tell them, hey, here's a Bible study opportunity to go with your morning coffee. Again, my name is Keith Foskey. This has been Coffee with a Calvinist and I am your Calvinist.