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

Opening Announcements, Baptism Class, and Adventure Club

Welcome to Kootenai Church. We're glad you're here. I got a little scared this morning when I saw everybody wearing the same shirts. I had flashbacks to Father's Day. I thought I missed the memo, but...

Would you please stand as we sing in Christ alone.

Goodness slain

Oh, it's my turn to get up. I did turn 50. It won't be long before I'll be done with the sermon, turn around, shake hands with the air, and one of my kids is gonna dress up in an Easter bunny costume, start giving me directions as to where to go next.

We have a baptism class today after the service at 1215. If you are planning to attend that, then we'll be in this classroom at the back here, and if you are there as close to 1215 as you can, then we'll be able to get started right away while we enjoy a lunch together.

And that is for those who are intending to be baptized two weeks from today during baptismal service. And also in your bulletin, you'll find a note of a mention there, fellowship dinners. You can sign up for those if you want to be involved at the next round of fellowship dinners on the signup sheet in the foyer.

And then my last announcement is that we have, starting up a week from tomorrow, our Adventure Club on August 22nd. Is that a week from tomorrow? Yes. Week from tomorrow, August 22nd, and so we want to recognize our workers and our kids.

So first of all, the kids, if you are planning to attend Adventure Club, will you stand up if you're here in your Adventure Club uniform? Yep, you might not be able to see all of them. Some of them are taller sitting down than standing up,.

But there they are.

There we are in the back.

Very good.

And then we want to have, stay standing, we want to have all of our Adventure Club workers who are wearing your Adventure Club t-shirts stand up. So if you're serving in Adventure Club, will you please stand up?

Yeah, that is our children's ministry, which is a ministry of catechizing children in systematic theology. This fall, we're starting into theology proper, the study of God, our week of adventure, August 22nd, that whole week, Monday, every night that week, Monday through Friday, we're gonna be teaching the kids about God being the only God.

God is a triune God. He exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So it is a catechism system for young children. And we would encourage you to pray for all of our Adventure Club leaders, and the kids will be attending that.

God has equipped us with a lot of leaders, as you can see, and we are hoping and expecting that God is going to bring us a commensurate number of children to teach during that week. And we had a good turnout last year, and it's continuing to grow, and we're trusting that God is gonna bring us some more kids this coming year.

Christ Exalted in Philippians 2

Will you please turn to Philippians chapter two for the scripture reading. Philippians chapter two. We're gonna read together from verse five through the end of verse 11. Philippians chapter two. Philippians two, verse five.

Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

For this reason also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Will you stand with me as we pray? Let's bow our heads. Our Father, it is a great mercy to us that you have called us to yourself and then brought us here, gathered us together to worship today. It is your grace and mercy that we are able to gather around your word and to focus our hearts and our attention upon it, and to reflect upon the greatness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who came into this world and died on a cross that he may redeem those who place their faith in him.

So we thank you for his sacrifice, and we thank you that we have been called to you by your grace and the power of the Holy Spirit to see Christ and to behold his beauty and to desire to be with him. You have done that work in our hearts.

We thank you for your grace, which has brought us salvation and then unite us together in this one body, which is the church. We are united with believers from every tribe and tongue and nation from around the planet, and from across time since the death of Christ, we are one with them, and we thank you for that unity that we enjoy, and we thank you for the common worship, the common salvation, the common baptism in the Lord that is ours because of what he has done.

And we long for and look forward to that day when we shall be gathered together with you to rejoice and praise you in the courts of heaven for all of eternity, and to enjoy the blessings and benefits of glorified and resurrected bodies and a new heavens and a new earth and a kingdom, which only you will establish and only you can build.

And so we look forward to that, and we pray that today as we gather and fix our hearts upon Christ, that you would be honored through the meditation and through our understanding and in our worship. May you be central in all that we think and do here today for the glory of Christ our Lord.

In his name we pray, amen.

Church is one foundation Is Jesus Christ her Lord. She is his new creation by water and his own blood

Colossians chapter three. It says, therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.

For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is manifested, then you also will be manifested with him in glory. Let's end our music service this morning by singing before the throne of God above.

The throne of God above

You may be seated.

Introduction of Andrew Rapoport

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's 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, 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 Rappaport, will you come share the God's word?

Thank you, 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, 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, it was followed up by another person that works 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 was, yeah, we'll put him in for surgery and give him anesthesia,.

He's, 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 folks that 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, if there's anything you don't understand, just, you can blame Thomas, Leo, 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.

Delivered from the Domain of Darkness

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 at 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 have 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, 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, often as I do evangelism, I'll ask people, I'll ask them, 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've 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.

The Image of the Invisible God

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, you maybe 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, that 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 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?

Are you 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 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 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 you 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. 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, 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 is 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.