Jesus Christ: Lord of Creation, Lord of Salvation (Colossians 1:15-20) | Worship Service

The Opening Welcome and Scripture Reading from John 1

Welcome each one of you here this morning. Would you stand and sing all hail the power of Jesus name with me, please?

One bad news, one good news, I guess. If you're showing up here for Sunday school and you're thinking, wow, there's a lot of people here for Sunday school today, you missed it. It was turn your clocks day, which I don't know why we still do that.

Write your congressman. Easter is April 9th. We're going to have an Easter breakfast. So, if you're planning on attending that, sign up in the back. If you're a man and you want to help with making the meal or serving it, I think contact Thomas.

I think it doesn't really matter what your gender is. If you want to donate money to that, you can also see Thomas. Jeff is going to be preaching on Colossians this morning, but for our scripture reading, we're going to read John chapter one.

We'll read the first 18 verses, the gospel of John, first 18 verses. While you're turning there, I forgot one more announcements. To the kids, yes, we are going to have adventure club again, all right?

It can't continue to snow for the rest of the spring. We will get back to it. Okay. The gospel of John chapter one. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which gives light to everyone who's coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, but the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him, and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.

For from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the father's side, he has made him known.

Prayer and Worship in Song

Let's pray together. Father, we are so grateful for a savior, for this mediator, for this, our great king, our God, our savior, Jesus Christ. And it is him we intend to glorify today. So as we hear your word preached, we pray that it would be preached well and accurately, and that we would hear it well, and we would apply it well, that you might be glorified in this.

And as we sing, may we sing from our hearts to you, Lord, in Jesus name, amen.

Please stand.

The church's one foundation Is Jesus Christ her Lord. She is his new creation by his own hand

Thank you, Josiah. Do you find it easy to worship here at Kootenai Church? I know I do. And we know at large measure, that's due to the folks that lead us every Sunday.

What a privilege.

And now it's our privilege to worship God through the proclamation of his word. So I invite you to open your Bibles to Colossians 1.

Colossians 1.

Who Do You Say That Jesus Is?

We're going to be looking at a passage this morning that will focus our attention, hopefully, on the person and work of Jesus Christ. Colossians 1, we'll be looking at verses 15 through 20 in this great and powerful letter that was given to these people who were struggling with heresy within their congregation.

When the Lord Jesus Christ was well into his earthly ministry, he came to a point when he asked his disciples a very critical question. Before he asked them that question, though, he set them up with another question.

He said to them, who do people say that I am? They answered and said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others say one of the prophets. In other words, the world has lots of different answers to this question, but none of them are right.

And then he gets right down to it and he asks them the question that confronts every single person on the planet. But who do you say that I am? And since that day that he first confronted his disciples, that same question has echoed down through the centuries and has radiated across geographic, cultural, social barriers, right down to our time here and now.

As we know, Peter gave the correct answer. Peter said in response to that question of who do you say that I am, Matthew's account says, Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

And Jesus answered and said to him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. In other words, most everyone out there in the world, most flesh and blood has an opinion about who Jesus Christ is.

But the answer must come from God himself. One well-known song way back in the 70s, part of a rock opera called Jesus Christ Superstar tried to answer this question. The probably what became the kind of the theme song of that rock opera said this, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, who are you?

What have you sacrificed? Jesus Christ Superstar, do you think you're what they say you are? And later on in the opera, the character of Mary Magdalene sings a song to Jesus while he's sleeping. And it strongly implies a romantic relationship between the two.

Song as you remember was made popular by pop singer Helen Reddy, right? It became wildly popular, hit the charts all over the world. And in that song, the lyrics say, I don't know how to love him, what to do, how to move him.

And then he's a man, he's just a man, he's a man, he's just a man. And once again, the world gets it wrong. We're in that season of the year that as we approach Passover season here in a few weeks, Easter season, and where we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, you're gonna be seeing, and I think some of them are already coming out now, the specials, the movies, the History Channel or the A &E productions that are gonna try to tell us who Jesus Christ really was.

Sometimes they have things in their title like the secret code of, or the lost story of the real resurrection of the real Jesus Christ, right? You're gonna hear them, they come out every year. Kind of strange that if it's the newly discovered truth that all of a sudden they come out every year, right?

After 2000 years of having God's word right here with us. But that's the way it is out there in the world. That's the way it is when you get your answers to that question from flesh and blood. If I need an answer to that question, Jesus asked his disciples that day, and we all need to answer that question.

We're going to answer it one way or another. We need to go to the place that actually has the answer. God revealed the answer to Peter that day, and God has revealed the answer in his word. And so that's what we're going to look at this morning in Colossians chapter one.

The answer to that question. Before we do, let's commit our time to our Lord and ask his blessing on our study. Father, we know that we are totally dependent on you for the answer to that question of who Jesus Christ is.

We cannot go to the world. We cannot go to even much of the religious world, and even in our big tent circles of evangelicalism, sometimes they even get it wrong. But we know, Father, that we can trust your word to reveal to us who your son truly is.

And so we ask your blessing on our study this morning, Father, ask that you would overcome every weakness of the one speaking, for there are many, and simply minister your word to every heart here, and accomplish it, Father, for our joy, your glory.

Christ the Image and Firstborn of Creation

In Jesus' name we ask it, amen. Again, this is a very interesting chapter in Colossians, this passage 15 through 20, and it's unique in several ways. One of the ways it's unique is it's been noticed for a long time by scholars that this is in the form of a hymn, a two-stanza hymn about the person of Jesus Christ.

And so it's just simply a hymn about Jesus by the Apostle Paul. It's in two stanzas, like many songs or hymns are in separate stanzas, but they are also connected by a transition statement in verses 17 and 18a.

Like songs often are, there's a stanza, and then there's a bridge that connects the two, and this is the very thing that this little transition statement does. It reaches back to the first stanza, and it reaches forward to the first stanza, and so it forms a very interesting transition between these two stanzas.

So what we're gonna look at this morning is this hymn about Jesus in this letter by the Apostle Paul. These six verses are very distinctive also by what is not here. In the first 14 verses of this letter, Paul uses the plural personal pronoun, you or we, 15 times, but not at all in these six verses.

He picks it up again, though, in verse 21, if you look in your text, where he then makes an application of this hymn to the Colossian Christians, where he says, and you who were once alienated. So in those six verses, he doesn't address anybody but Christ, and again, in the first 14 verses, he references various people eight times.

He identifies himself as the author of the letter. He mentions Timothy, the saints, Epaphras, who was with him there in Rome as he wrote this from prison. Epaphras was probably the one that planted the church at Colossae, and he mentions the brothers, but in these verses 15 through 20, his focus is on the person and work of Jesus Christ and his relationship to the church.

So in these six verses, the Apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wants to present the Lord Jesus Christ for who he truly is, in part, to counter the false teaching, the heresies that were common at that time with the Colossian Christians, but also for all time, for all eternity, to answer that question with the right answer, an answer that comes from God.

So let's look at this first stanza. The first stanza, he is Lord of creation. Absolutely critical doctrine to understand. The entire Bible is predicated on the fact of creation. All true doctrine, all true, sound, orthodox, biblical doctrine, no matter what doctrine you can think of, is built on the foundation of the creation story in the Old Testament.

And Paul says, first thing, in verse 15a, he is the image of the invisible God. The image of the invisible God. He is fully God. Part of the Colossian heresy that was that the deity of Jesus Christ was being denied.

All kinds of heresies popped up during the first two or three centuries of the church. Some of them denied the humanity of Christ. Some of them denied the deity of Christ. Some have denied the way that those two things were together in one person.

And the Colossians apparently had been traumatized by false teachers coming in, teaching that Jesus Christ was not fully God. But Paul says he is the image of the invisible God. He uses this Greek word, icon, icon.

He is the image of the invisible God. He had said previously to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 4, 3 and 4, and he uses the same word. And he's describing what unbelievers could not see because they had been blinded by Satan in their unbelief.

He says, even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image, icon, of God.

Notice how Paul in that verse, he links the glory of Christ with the image of God. Two verses later in that same passage, he references not only the glory of God revealed in Christ, but also creation as he does in this very passage.

He says, for God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God is the invisible God. He's the God who is self-revealing.

You can't know him unless he chooses to reveal himself to you. You cannot reason your way to God. Men have been trying that for centuries and they can't do it. Smart men, intelligent men, educated men, but they just can't reason their way to God because he's the self-revealing God.

In 1 Corinthians 2 .14, the apostle Paul says this, the natural man receives not the things of the spirit of God for their foolishness to him. And here's the real key to it. Neither can he know them for they are spiritually discerned.

That is a statement of ability or inability. The natural man, the unregenerate man, the unsaved man cannot know the spiritual things because they're revealed by God spiritually and he is spiritually dead.

Spiritually blind, spiritually deaf, spiritually dead as a post. Again, Acts 4 .11 and 12, this is Luke's record of Peter preaching to Jews who had rejected their Messiah. Peter says, he is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief cornerstone.

And there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. That little verb there, must, very important. That's a word that speaks of logical necessity, logical necessity.

So Peter, like Paul, he's just using not just theology in his arguments, he's using logic as well. Paul does that just marvelously as we're going to see. One commentator says it this way, to say that Christ is the image of God is to say that in him, the nature and being of God have been perfectly revealed.

That in him, the invisible has become visible. The Apostle John says in the first chapter of his gospel account, which we read, no one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.

And he uses a word there that we get the word exegesis from, speaking of how we handle the text, to draw out of the text, to reveal what the text says. Christ is the exegesis, the explanation of God, who he truly is.

Later on in John's gospel again in 14 .9, Jesus said, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. So Jesus Christ is the full and complete image or icon or representation or reality of God because he is fully God.

He also says in this same verse, he is preeminent over creation, preeminent over creation. He says he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. The idea of the firstborn is the one who has preeminence and it can have kind of a dual meaning.

It's usually as it sounds, the first person, the first son born in a family. But in Psalm 89, which is an exposition of the Davidic covenant, the psalmist says this in verse 27, and this is God speaking through him.

He says, and I will make him the firstborn, and he uses the very same word here in the Greek Septuagint that is used here in the Greek text, prototokos. I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

This is a reference to David, king of Israel, and ultimately to the one who would sit on the Davidic throne. We know that David was king, but then he died and a succession of kings all died, but there is coming a king who will sit on the Davidic throne who will never die, and he will sit on that throne and rule eternally.

And remember, David was not the firstborn of his siblings. Remember the story, how they had to sort their way down through to David, and all of a sudden there he is? Well, the key to understanding it is the key to what God says, I will make him the firstborn, the preeminent one, the highest of the kings of the earth.

One commentator says this, in the Greco-Roman context, in other words, the Greco-Roman culture and world of the first century, firstborn is also used as a legal term to refer to one who is the legal heir of his father's inheritance.

So Jesus is the firstborn, the preeminent one, the one who will be and is the highest of all the kings of the earth. And verse 16 tells us why. Verse 16 says, for by him all things were created. Don't miss these little words in scripture, little preposition like for, these words that speak about means or cause or result and so on, very important.

That's a causal word there. Why he is the image of God, the invisible one, firstborn of all creation, because by him all things were created. Very simple reason that Jesus is preeminent over all of creation, easy peasy, right?

He created it all. This statement just absolutely, by the way, obliterates any false teaching concerning the idea that Jesus was a created being, like with the Watchtower Society, you know, the Jehovah's Witnesses, they say that Jesus was one of the part of creation.

Well, logically and theologically, Paul just decimates that concept by this simple statement. He created it all in heaven and on earth. Part of the Colossian heresy probably was that, well, okay, if God is a sovereign God over all of creation, the material world, what about the immaterial world?

What about the unseen realm of angelic beings and demons and that type of thing? Well, Paul just gathers all of that up and puts it under the hegemony of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. When he says, 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.

One of the great Bible expositors and theologians a couple of generations ago, Brother Dave mentioned him this morning, Dr. Alvin McLean in his classic book, The Greatness of the Kingdom. I also recommend that book.

He points out that you need three things to have a kingdom. It's gonna be a real kingdom, you have to have three things. And he calls it the ruler, okay? You have to have a ruler of the kingdom and you also have to have a ruler that has the right to rule.

You can have all kinds of phonies and fakes come along, but unless they have the right to rule, they're not a legitimate ruler. And that ruler who has a legitimate right to rule has to rule over a realm, okay?

That's an easy way to remember it. Gotta have a ruler, he has to have the right to rule and he has to have a realm to rule over. Dr. McLean takes you right back to the beginning, Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning, God, there's a ruler.

Created, there's a right to rule. You make it, you own it, right? Pretty easy, you make it, you own it. What's the realm? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's a little figure of speech in scripture.

It's in the Old and New Testament called Amerism, where the writer looks at the extremities of something and he doesn't mean to just talk about those two bookends, but he wants to include everything. Jesus identified himself as the Alpha and the Omega and he uses the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.

He's that, but he's everything in between. It's simply a way of saying he created all that was created. Don't miss what Paul is saying here. Jesus Christ is the absolute sovereign Lord over all that is because he made all that is.

And Paul's not the only New Testament writer to teach this. Dave read through it. I wanna repeat the first verse of John's gospel. In the beginning was the word. Now, John's a Jewish believer. He's writing to Jewish people, so the minute he says in the beginning, they would have immediately thought of the first verse in their Bible, the Pentateuch, right?

First verse of the Bible, it's back to creation. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

That is a statement of the eternality of the one who created all things. He had to preexist everything because he made everything. And to counter the false teachers, again, who were denying his power over the spirit world, he just gathers everything up.

Visible and invisible. This covers all the false gods or all the false spirits, anything out there that you can't see. Thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities. Jesus Christ created all things. And then at the end of 16, 16b, all things were created through him.

And this is the part I really like. This is fascinating. And for him, created it all for himself. He's the heir of all creation, okay? He created it all. He's fully God. He's preeminent over creation.

He created it all, and he created it all for himself. For him. One day, he's going to come back, and he's going to come back physically, and he's coming back to this earth, and he's going to set right what was lost.

You ladies, please forgive my football analogy, okay? Adam, the first Adam, he fumbled the football, okay? Jesus is gonna take it to the house, and he's gonna do it over creation. This planet is just not gonna sort of spin off into eternity and disappear someplace with all of the evil going on, and all of the corruption, and perversion, and sin.

No, he's coming back. He's coming back here, and he's gonna set things right. New Testament scholar and commentator, F .F. Bruce, one of the premier New Testament scholars in the late 20th century, he says this.

For those who have been redeemed by Christ, the universe has no ultimate terrors. They know that their Redeemer is also creator, ruler, and goal of all. Probably with special reference to the Colossian heresy, it is now emphasized that if all things were created by Christ, then those spiritual powers which received such prominence in that heresy must have been created by him.

The denizens of the upper realms, as well as the inhabitants of the earth, owe their being to his creative power. Invisible forces of the spirit world, as well as the visible and material order, whether invisible or visible, all had as their original creator, Christ, and all have him as their final disposer.

He created all things. He created it all for himself. He's fully God, and he's preeminent, sovereign over all of his creation. I should be using the word sovereignty because that's the word the kids are supposed to memorize.

Sovereignty, sovereignty, sovereignty. There's three for you right there.

Freebie.

Okay.

Christ the Head of the Church and the Beginning of Salvation

That brings us to the little transition statement, verses 17 and the first part of 18. Paul's gathered everything up in the entire universe under the creation lordship of Christ. He wants to address the church and salvation, and so verse 17 and the second half, the first half of 18, reach back to the creation statement, and then they're gonna reach ahead to the stanza concerning the fact that he's the lord of salvation.

And the first thing he says in 17a, and he is before all things. Again, a statement of his preexistence. He preexisted all of the creation. Again, one of the heresies that grew up in the early church that Jesus was a created being.

The chief proponent of that was a man named Arius and considered to be a heretic by the church. The contemporary people that propagate that same lie, again, are the Jehovah's Witnesses. But Jesus himself claimed to be preexistent.

At least 30 times in John's gospel alone, the Lord speaks of being sent by his father, being sent. Now, sometimes when we're reading the scripture, we can kinda go over those little statements, and not stop and think of what they say.

That is a statement of preexistence. You and I can't say that. I can't say I was sent by the father, and neither can you. Because we had a point in time where we came into existence. We have a birth date, we know, and somewhere around nine months prior to that, we came into existence.

But he was sent by the father, he says, over and over and over again. And also, part of this statement, this transition statement, he not only preexisted all of creation, he sustains all of creation. I find this absolutely fascinating.

And it's fun to watch, too, the scientist. All things hold together, he says. He is before all things, and in him, all things hold together. Since physicists, nuclear chemists, and so on, started studying the atom and the structure of the atom, they haven't been able to figure out what holds it together, what bonds it together.

They can recognize the bonding. They can talk about all the little parts and pieces, you know, the protons, neutrons, electrons, and all that. And when they first learn to bombard it and fracture it, the release of tremendous energy, as we know, but they can't figure out what holds it together.

And the bigger question, which is really kind of fun to watch, they can't figure out how it got together. They just can't do it. One secular physicist says this, and he's trying to comprehend and explain how the atoms came together and how they stay together by natural means.

You grasp what this implies. It implies that all the massive nuclei have no right to be alive at all. Indeed, they should never have been created, and if created, they should have blown up instantly. Yet, here they all are.

Some inflexible inhibition is holding them relentless together. The nature of the inhibition is also a secret, one thus far reserved by nature for herself. It's a secret that nature's not telling us. Problem is, he's looking in the wrong spot.

He's looking for a natural, scientific explanation, but the explanation is right here. They can't figure out what sustains or holds together the universe. This word, hold together, is very interesting.

It also has the implication of coherence, coherence or making sense. He holds it all together, and he makes it make sense, and they can't figure it out. They don't have an answer at all. Best they can do is say, well, it happened way back, billions and billions and billions of years ago.

Time is kind of their secret ingredient, you know? You sprinkle enough time on it, yeah, it had happened with enough time, right? Maybe a big bang, but they can't tell you what banged. You know, they just chase their tail around the whole thing because Christ is not a part of their explanation.

Listen to Christian New Testament commentator, Douglas Moo. He gets it. What holds the universe together is not an idea or a virtue, but a person, the resurrected Christ. Without him, electrons would not continue to circle nuclei.

Gravity would cease to work. The planets would not stay in their orbits. As is true of every line of this hymn, there is particular application to the Colossian Christians who were perhaps being tempted to find coherence by pursuing other religious options in their context.

In response, Paul wants them to understand that things make sense only when Christ is kept at the center. All things, right? All of creation, of course. But how about all of life, your life and my life?

You leave Christ out of your life, your life's not gonna make sense. But with Christ, then you can make sense out of all things. So he preexisted all creation, he sustains all of creation. And see there in your outline, he is the head of the church.

Now he's reaching forward into this next stanza. He is the head of the body, the church. The first part of verse 18. Head of the body, the church. This is also part of that transition. And now he's going to focus our attention on Jesus Christ as sovereign sovereignty or sovereign Lord of creation and the fact that he is also Lord of the church.

Paul has established beyond any doubt that Jesus Christ is Lord over all things because he made it all. He now moves from the general to the particular. And it only makes sense, right? If he's the creator of all things and if he is sovereign Lord over all things, the church is in that category.

So he's the head of the church. Here again, you can take all categories of systematic theology and plant them firmly on the creation story. If you deny creation in scripture, as scripture teaches it, none of the rest of the Bible is going to make any sense to you.

You're going to be chasing around all over the place trying to come up with explanations. None of them will be biblical. Even soteriology, we call it, or the doctrines of salvation. 2 Corinthians 5 .17, you know this verse.

If any man is in Christ, he is a new what? Creation, there you go. And that's just one category of theology. Paul uses the same imagery, the imagery, the metaphor, the body to talk about believers being in Christ and how we are part of the body of Christ if we have come to him through faith in Christ alone.

And so he is not only the one who preexisted all of creation and he made everything, he is the head of the church, the body of Christ. He says that, look at verse 24 in your Bibles. He says, now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body that is the church.

He sustains all of creation and he is the Lord over the church. Very fascinating to see how Paul then argues and applies this to the church. Stanza two, he is Lord of salvation. We move into the discussion of the salvation that Christ has provided for the church that he is the head of.

Christ the Fullness of Deity and Reconciler Through the Cross

And so he says first, he is the beginning of the church. This means that Jesus Christ is the founder, the originator of the church. All those baptized into the body of Christ, both Jew and Gentile, are members of the church, the body of Christ.

And without him, there would be no church. And we also know, and Paul says it here in verse 18c, he is not only the head of the body of the church, he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. He is the one who entered into the realm of the dead and he was the first one to be raised out of the dead.

So he's the firstborn of those who are dead, which makes him the preeminent one of the church. Firstborn, it's the exact same word that Paul uses up in the first stanza, prototokos, the preeminent one, the first one.

And the purpose of the statement is that he might be preeminent, that he might be preeminent, that he might be the first one. So he's Lord of salvation because he is the beginning of the church. He's also the preeminent one, as he has said before.

And again, he's gonna make reference to the deity of Christ. He is the fullness of God in verse 19. And again, it's a statement of cause because in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Paul, again, he may be referencing the false teachers and the false system that was plaguing the Colossian church because some of them were trying to say, well, you, and remember, they were Gentile Christians, that little area there in the Lycus Valley of what is now Western Turkey.

There were those three churches, Hierapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae. They were Gentile churches. The Judaizers would often come in and say, well, sure, you Gentiles can be saved, you can be justified as long as you add the Mosaic law and the right of circumcision.

And Paul, you know, I mean, he just would go nuts with that because Paul thought, no, justification, salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone, right? And so this may be Paul co-opting some of their language.

You're not quite full. You're not quite complete. And Paul argues it this way. He says, in him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. If you're in Christ and he's the fullness of God, then in your faith is in him alone, you have everything necessary for salvation.

There is nothing to add. And he is the fullness. So he's probably using their language. Down in verse, look at verse eight of chapter two. And again, he's applying this truth to the Colossian Christians.

We can take it to heart as well. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit. If you're chasing after philosophy and you're a Christian, you're being taken captive, okay? Simple as that.

According to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. Why, Paul? Verse nine, for in him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. There's a statement of the deity of Christ and also his humanity.