Christ is Supreme

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Today, I want to help you have a greater love for Christ. This was a message that I preached while in Redwood City, California at Grace Bible Church. Pastor Steve Converse. Excellent church. If you're in the Redwood City area, I do want to encourage you to check it out.

This is a message I preached out of Colossians 1, looking at the preeminence and the superiority of Jesus Christ. I hope that this is something that would encourage your heart and get you to love Christ more.

Welcome to Andrew Rapoport's Rap Report, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

It is a privilege to be here again. I do encourage you guys to consider ways that you can show appreciation this month to your pastors. It is something that for those who don't know and haven't been in full-time ministry or been a pastor, most people think of pastor's jobs, you know, it's like Saturday night.

They kind of open the Bible, kind of flip through, figure out what they're going to talk about. Okay, there are some that do that. They buy their sermons online. Your pastor doesn't do that. Someone asked real briefly just to introduce myself because I guess there's some who are new.

My name is Andrew Rapoport. I'm with the ministry Striving for Eternity. And we basically do discipleship. We try to teach people the Word of God. It's kind of becoming, unfortunately, a foreign thing these days, even in churches.

And we do it many different ways, try to teach people how to interpret the Bible, understand the Bible from Genesis chapter 1 all the way to Revelation. You know, it's all God's Word. And so that's what we do in a lot of different ways through conferences, seminars, preaching.

We have an online school. I'll mention that later on. And we do podcasts I'll mention later on. But now is the highlight of our week, at least I hope this is for you. And it's not because I'm behind this pulpit because next week your pastor will be behind this pulpit.

It still should be the most exciting moment of the week. Why? Because we as a congregation are going to gather around the very Word of God. And we're going to hear it read and hopefully proclaim brightly.

If not, come talk to me. Let me know if I said anything wrong. But this should be the highlight of a week of worship. Most people think that we come and gather to worship. No, this should be the culmination of a week of private worship where we've been alone with God.

We've been sitting in His Word. We've been praying. And now as a congregation, we gather together to be able to celebrate our risen Lord. So in light of that, if you wouldn't mind opening to the book of Colossians chapter 1.

I want to start reading in verse 15. And when you get there, out of reverence for the Word of God, if you wouldn't mind rising, I will read out of the ESV, follow along whichever translation you may have.

And I'm going to read from Colossians chapter 1 verse 15 down to verse 23. That's the text that we will look at today. This is what Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote. He is the image of the invisible God.

The firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him.

And He is before all things. And in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent.

For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. And you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death.

In order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him, if indeed you continue in faith, stable and steadfast, it's not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Let's pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, we come before You with this brilliant text, the text that just lifts You up on high. Lord, may You work through us in this time, that You would just enrich our hearts with a love and an awe for You and what You have done on our behalf, because it blows our mind away.

Lord, unpack this text for us, that we would better understand it, that the Holy Spirit would illuminate as His ministry this text to our minds, so that we understand its interpretation, and that You would apply it to each of our hearts, so that we would know what things we need to work on, to be more like You this day.

May none of us leave this building the same way we came in. May we leave more enriched in Your Word, more in awe of You, that we'd be amazed with You, that You would receive all the glory and the honor and the praise.

In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. This is a very important text. Maybe you've had that occasion where someone came knocking on your door and you realize who it is, so you hide. Jehovah Witnesses!

This is a favorite text of theirs, which is really problematic for them when they come to my door. Well, actually they don't come to my door. That's so sad. The Mormons recently made a mistake and came to my door.

I loved it. I don't know how I got off their naughty boy list, but I did, and now I'm back on it. My wife said I shouldn't have just told them that only one of us could be right. They asked, why do you want us to come over here?

I said, well, basically you want me to become a Mormon. You think that I need a restored gospel, and I know you have a gospel of demons, and I want you to come to Christ. My wife said that wasn't the right thing to say.

I don't quite know how to beat around the bush.

I'm working at it. Someone this week had said that I'm a little bit... I forget the exact word, but essentially it meant crazy. But I said my wife actually tamed me. You should have seen me before. But the thing is, this text is one that we see cults use very often, because they think that this is going to support the view that Jesus Christ was not and is not God.

I sit here, and it boggles my mind, because as we go through this, this is like one of the clearest texts that talk about the deity of Jesus Christ. Like, how did you miss this? Because they've made a slight mistake.

See, we have a big problem in our Bibles. There's a lot of Bibles over there, which I love. Every year I come out here, and I love to just browse through them. One day David's going to know some are missing.

Until that time, I'm happy. But if you go back to older Bibles, you'll see that there's something that are not in our modern Bibles. They're called chapters and verses. The Bible wasn't written with chapter and verse breaks.

That actually hinders, I think, our reading of God's Word sometimes. So what you have with people, they read just a verse as if it doesn't have context around it. Any of you like being taken out of context?

Yeah, okay. Well, God doesn't like it either. So we want to make sure we read in context. Let's take a look at this and see what God says about himself here. You end up seeing verse 15, if you follow along.

He says, He is the image of the invisible God. Now, what some people will try to do, if you speak to a Jehovah Witness or someone like that, they're going to say, He's just the image. It's like we're all made in the image of God.

And so he is, in that same way, made in the image of God. Now, when we speak of us in Genesis, you see that God made man in his image. What does that mean? It means that we have certain attributes that God also has.

Not all of them. Theologians will sometimes speak of these as communicable and incommunicable. Those are big words. Let me break those down. Communicated or not communicated. Easy to understand, right?

See, theologians get paid to come up with really big words to sound really intelligent. When you understand what they mean, you're going, You could have just said communicated, right? So there are certain attributes that we share because God has given them to us.

Some things that animals don't have, like a conscience, like an intelligence. Now, you say, Well, animals have intelligence. We could debate that. But things like emotions, things like a God consciousness.

Animals don't have that. But every single human being knows God exists. These are attributes that are bestowed upon us as well. And so some will try to argue that what you have here is that Jesus is the image of the invisible God the same way we are.

Now, if you just read that verse and ignore all the context, maybe, maybe you can make the argument. I doubt it. Because if you look at the context, we're going to see that there's no way that this image of God in any way could be referring to the way we are made in the image of man.

So they love this just verse 15 because they say he's made. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Now, first off, what we're going to see here is that when it says he is the image of the invisible God, there's going to be a distinction between that and the way we are in the image.

And the distinction is that he is God. He's not just made like God having some attributes. He actually is the picture of what we cannot see. He's invisible. He's visible. What is invisible? He is displaying for us what we cannot see the invisible God.

If we saw God, we would die just reading yesterday in my devotions of, of the time when Moses is, it just has the glory of God passed by him, just the glory and his face was shining so much. All the Israelites were like, get away.

Just the reflection of the glory of God was enough to make his face bright, shine so brightly that the Israelites didn't want even that reflection in their presence. It's amazing what light does to darkness, isn't it?

And so what you have here is you have that he is the picture of the invisible God. You want to know what God looks like? Look at Jesus. That's it. We don't need to look for anything more. That's why it's so frustrating to me when people are looking for things other than the word of God, as if it's not enough.

I need, I need some voice. I need some experience. Read the scriptures. Christ is enough. We don't need anything more. He is all that we can see of God. He is the picture of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Oh, there we go. There's a problem, isn't it? As we look at this, so many people say, well, he's the firstborn of creation, meaning that he was the first thing created and then everything else is created after him.

That's exactly how a Jehovah Witness would argue this because firstborn must mean firstborn, right? You have a firstborn child. They're the first one of your children that are born, right? Well, that's brilliant.

That's brilliant. Just explain to me why Isaac is called the firstborn. He wasn't Abraham's firstborn, was he? No, Ishmael was. Why is David called the firstborn? Was he the first of his brothers? No, actually he was the last of his brothers.

So what we end up seeing is clearly firstborn doesn't always mean the first child born. You see, there's a context we always have to understand. Whenever we read the Bible, we have to realize we are about 2000 years removed from its latest writing.

We're also removed from the culture. I know this may be hard for some to understand, but there was a time before a thing called the internet. Some of us remember that. Some of us remember when you actually had to get up and change a dial on a TV.

Some of us, you remember before there was TV, maybe, but the reality is, is we have to put ourselves back in the mindset of the time of the writing of these things. What did firstborn mean to a Jewish person in this time period?

Well, firstborn has a very specific idea. It is the idea of an inheritance. See, in that culture, the firstborn was the one who inherited everything. This is, you know, why Ishmael was being a little foolish when he's like, what's, what good is my birthright?

Just give me the porridge. I need something to eat. What good is my birthright when I'm dead? Right? He was the firstborn, but he gave it up and then he complained when he didn't get the blessing. But what do you end up seeing?

You end up seeing here that firstborn has the idea of an inheritance, which as we look through this text, you end up seeing that is the context here is the idea of inheriting. So he's speaking of the inheritance, that Christ is the firstborn of all creation, meaning he is the one that's going to inherit everything.

So God, the father creates everything and he's going to give it to the firstborn of creation. God, the son. That's the idea that we have here. It does not mean as, as some cultists would like to argue that he is the firstborn.

Let me give you, so you understand the way that in case you don't know anything, if you can get my book, what do they believe and learn about Jehovah witnesses? But they, what they argue is that Jesus Christ was actually Michael, the archangel and Michael was the first created.

And then God used Michael to create everything else that was created. And so the reason I love this passage is because I take out their new world translation, which is a horrible translation. It really is.

You know, you know how, you know, a bad translation when you have the guys that did the translating and they're in court and this happened over in Holland. And they say they're fluent in Hebrew. And so the, the lawyer comes up and gives them something written in Hebrew and ask them to translate it.

And the guy couldn't do it. And this is their translator. Oops. So what you, you have is that they're going to add a word four times in this text. It says that Christ, it has the phrase, all things that he created, all things.

And they add a word other. Now they used to be a little dishonest and they, they didn't have the word other in brackets showing that it wasn't in the original Greek. And recent years they ended up because they kind of, it was exposed.

The word other isn't in the Greek. So they put it in brackets. If you have a newer new world translation, they put it, they took the brackets away again. So I have an older copy of the new world translation.

You can get it on eBay really cheap. And, and so I have that to show them even from their own translation, the word other's not there. Why? Because the word other, when you add that in changes the exact meaning.

Either he created all things or he created all other things. Big difference. Cause the latter says he was created. And so it says in verse 16, for by him, all things were created. Now what, what things, what kind of things?

Well, Paul kind of emphasized it, lets us know all things that are in heaven or on earth. Can you think of anything that's not in one of those two places? Yeah, neither can I. Visible and invisible. Well, that pretty much captures everything.

I mean, this is a Jewish way of emphasizing. You do two extremes to say that this, it's these two extremes and everything else within it. So whether in heaven or on earth, whether visible or invisible, that captures everything, doesn't it?

It means he created everything that was created. He did it all. And so you have this way of doing this. Now, here's an interesting thing. When you see in the Greek, when it says for by him, all things were created, that all is a definite article in the Greek.

It means that this is not just, he creates some things that he's trying to emphasize. He created it all, everything. In fact, visible and invisible are also definite articles. So whether it's definite, whether it is the visible or the invisible, he created all of this.

It is all created by him, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. Now, there you get into some interesting thing. Now, if you look at Pastor John MacArthur, he'll say that these thrones and dominions and rulers and all authorities, he's going to say that these are different angels and that this is the angelic realm.

There's some people who start to try to explain these a little differently, looking at these words and saying basically that, you know, some are human thrones and dominions are an angelic realm and rulers are, you know, human kings and the authorities are angelic kings or angelic, you know, beings that have different levels of rulership, whichever it is.

I'm not, you know, there's some discussion on it, but it really doesn't matter to the text. It basically is saying that whatever it is, he created it all. By the way, for any of you Marvel fans, the word, and I actually did watch, for those who know me, I'm pop culture illiterate.

I went to see a Marvel movie because my kids wanted to take me. I saw Endgame. I didn't quite understand it. And everyone was like, you're not supposed to see Endgame first. It's the end of like 20 movies.

And I'm like, oh, no, my son-in-law is like explaining the whole movie to me. This is, but if you're curious, the word thrones is Thanos. For those of you who know Marvel, he was some bad guy in there.

I didn't quite get it. But what you end up seeing here is that whether this is angelic realms or human realms, what is very clear from here is that Christ created all of it. Now, if you happy, I'll say, well, he was Michael the Archangel and God used Michael to create.

Or if you talk to a latter day, I got to get away from saying Mormon there. Their prophet came out with a new revelation. You're not allowed to call Mormon anymore. So it's called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but that's a mouthful.

But they will say that, okay, Mormonism is really neat science fiction for anyone who likes science fiction. But they believe in multiple gods and God, the father, somehow in this text, use Jesus to create everything, which is kind of strange because Jesus had a beginning.

So how did he create the universe before he was created? Like, I'm confused with this. He created, you know, because he had parents and grandparents. So you sit there and go, wait a minute. And this is the thing I like to ask Mormons.

I'm like, can you just, I'm just confused. Help me out. How did Jesus Christ, he created everything like according to Colossians? Oh yeah. How did he create the planet he was born on and his grandparents before he was born?

Just, I mean, logically, I'm just having a hard time with it, but let's see what scripture says. If there was anyone else that did the creation, if you happen to be, if you happen to flip over to Isaiah 44, Isaiah is in that left part of the book that we never usually go to.

You know, Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, you know, maybe you hit Psalms in the middle. Isaiah 44 24 is a great passage to have marked in your Bible when you look at Colossians 1 because there's some that would like to teach that Jesus was used to create.

Well, let's see if that's what God thinks. In Isaiah 44 24, thus says the Lord, so who's speaking here? God. He's kind of omniscient, isn't he? He knows all things. So he kind of knows what he's saying.

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb. I am the Lord who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself. Now, for the Jehovah Witnesses, that word, I am the Lord is Jehovah, what they would say, Jehovah.

So, God alone created everything that was created. Now, if he's omniscient, you just scroll down a little bit to Isaiah 45 verse 5, and you see he says here, if he's all knowing, he knows everything. There's a question you could always ask someone is, does God know everything?

They say, yes. So he says he created it alone. Did he create it alone, or did he create it through someone else? Because he's saying he did it alone. He didn't have help. And now you have the Mormons will say, there were other gods out there.

Well, let's see if God believes that one, because he says, I am the Lord, and there is no other besides me. There is no God. Well, if he knows everything, he should know if there's another God that he used to create things, right?

And he says he doesn't know of any other. I am the Lord. There is no other, verse 6. I am the Lord who does all things, verse 7. So he's really trying to make it kind of clear. He created all things, and he knows of no other God.

And so what he says here is, clearly when we go back to Colossians, for by him, Jesus Christ, all things were created. And now you go back to Isaiah, and you realize that there was no one else that was used for creation.

What is this clearly saying about Jesus? He's God. Not he was used by God. He actually is God. So now in the context, you go back to that image of the invisible God, and he clearly isn't saying that he's just had some of the attributes of God, because he's saying that he created everything, all things.

And if you even look in the verse 16, at the end of that, all things were created through him, and for him. So here you see the inheritance. Not only did he create everything, but who's the one that receives it all?

As an inheritance would be, the son. So Christ is going to receive this. It is for him. This is not some angel. This definitely can't be some man. And then as you look into verse 17, and he is before all things.

In other words, there was nothing before him. He's eternal. An attribute of deity, something that isn't communicated to us. There are certain attributes that aren't communicated to us, like being omniscient.

Boy, would I love that one. I would know it to get my wife for her birthday. Oh, wait. Right? Wouldn't it be nice? Then again, some of us would go, no, actually it wouldn't be so nice, because we would know the thoughts of everyone around us, and that might not be so good.

We wouldn't want anyone to know our thoughts either, right? And so what you see is, he is eternal. Something that only God can be. That we end up seeing, that not only is everything created by him and for him, but he is before all things, and in him.

This is beautiful. In him, all things are held together. Now, I know there are some here who enjoy science. Maybe some of us are old enough to remember before Einstein. But before Einstein, there was this idea that there was this ethnos, this idea that there was something between us.

We can't really see it, but something that holds us in place. And Einstein discovered there wasn't any such thing. I disagree. There is such a thing. Right there in scripture. God holds everything in place.

You know, when you get really smart, when you do a lot of study, and you become a PhD, you come with really, really intelligent things, like Stephen Hawking says. You know, because how do you have this whole universe that's held together, and how did it start?

And you say really brilliant things like this. Well, in the beginning, there was nothing. And that nothing was actually something. Now, just stop right there and think about that. Because to me, nothing is nothing.

Right? Something is something. Nothing is not something, and something is not nothing. But when you get really smart and get a PhD, you can say things like that, and people are like, what holds it all?

They'll say, oh, gravity. Gravity is what holds everything in place. Where did gravity come from? How does gravity actually work? We don't know. Yes, we do. We know exactly how gravity works. It's called Jesus Christ, who holds everything in place.

I don't care if you go out to the furthest reaches of the universe. We can't understand it. We don't understand how everything's held together. But go down to a single cell, and we can't understand that either.

You get this little cell, and you have these little atoms that are flying around. Do you realize you're made up mostly of nothing? Literally, we don't know what's in these atoms, and there's a whole lot of nothing in there.

But somehow, we're like this material thing. We get into atoms, and we used to think the cell was the smallest thing, and then we discovered an atom. Atom is supposed to mean as small as you can get, like nothing further.

Then we found subatomic particles. Then we have all these little quarks and things. You ever hear of quantum physics? It's the idea that they get down to the quantum level, and they start realizing that things seem like they're here, and then they vanish and end up over here.

You go, oh, see? It's a contradiction. You can actually have it in two places at once. No, you don't. We just don't have the understanding yet. But you know what makes these subatomic particles go out of existence here and pop into existence there?

Jesus Christ. Scientists can't figure it out, but it's been in the Word of God for thousands of years. God holds everything together, whether it is at the smallest subatomic level or the size of the universe.

He holds it all together. It's amazing. They just came out with some new pictures as we have these flying telescopes in space, and they come out with these new pictures. You look at it, and it's like, I was thinking this two weeks ago.

They came across some new pictures, and I'm looking at this like, it is so cool to look at these solar systems. You see them out there. It looks so beautiful. I started thinking about this. Why did God create this?

Was it so that thousands of years later we could send a telescope into space to go, ooh? No, I think He did it just to go, look what I did. I can do that for His own glory. No one really gets to see the beauty of the universe except God.

He is the one that sits there, and He can see the brilliance and the beauty of what He created, and we only get a little glimpse of it. We sometimes look for just a little star that just flashes, and the scientists jump up and down because they found the furthest thing in the Hubble telescope.

It's like, oh, look. What did you see? A little flash of light. God sees what that flash of light actually is because He created it and holds it together, and so we end up saying He's the one that holds us all together, and you know what else?

If you look in verse 18, it's not just out here that He's holding everything together, but Jesus Christ is the head of the body, the church, and you go, wait a minute. You were talking about all this stuff over here, Jesus being God, and all this over here, and all of a sudden you're bringing in the church like, Paul, what are you doing?

How did you get from there to here? Because He's bringing an application to this. What's half the problem in most churches? Jesus isn't the head of the church. The pastor and I were talking about this last night at dinner is the fact that so many of the problems we see in churches is people get known, and they get a platform, and they want to build a big platform, especially if they start writing books.

They write books, and then the publishers are like, oh, no, you've got to work with this person because this person has a big platform. You've got to get this person in and make sure that you're working with them so that they help promote your book, and it's about sales.

Then you wonder why there's churches that just don't last. My bride and I were down in L .A. at Grace Community Church, and they're celebrating John MacArthur's 50th. He's been there 50 years continuing to preach the word of God the same way, and people are amazed at that.

That shouldn't be amazing. You know why it's amazing? There's plenty of pastors who've preached for 50 years at one church, but most of them don't have a big platform. So once they get into a big platform, all of a sudden, everyone starts trying to get them to water down the message, and MacArthur's never watered down the message.

That's what's amazing. He just keeps preaching the word. He doesn't care about the platform, right? And people just sit there, and it's like, well, you've got to do this, you've got to do it, and he's just preaching.

Everyone's 50 years. Well, what do you see there? What it is is that he's concerned with Christ, who is the head of the church. He's not concerned with trying to build a church. It's Christ's church. That's what you see here.

So you have lots of influences that come in. Oh, we should be doing this, we should be doing that, and I see this over and over again in churches, and it's like, you know what we should be doing in church?

Following our head. We should be sitting under the feet of Christ. That's why I say that this time is, and should be, the most exciting moment of our week, because it is the moment, it doesn't matter who's at the pulpit, as long as they're preaching accurately, when they're proclaiming God's word and explaining it to us, that is a time that the Holy Spirit, who indwells us, can illuminate his word to our understanding and apply it to us, so that as we sit under the preaching of God's word, we should make this the highlight of our week.

I have a hard time, given my preferences, I have a hard time with people that's like, well, I've got to go take my kids to soccer, you know, baseball. My kids knew right from the beginning, if there's a sporting event on the weekend, you either miss it or you don't do that sporting event.

We don't miss Sunday. I blew my pastor away. We got married, where was I the next day? I asked my wife, I said, so what do you want to do for our honeymoon? She said, you mean after church? You figure out why I married her, right?

First thing we did was show up to church and my pastor was like, what in the world are you doing here? You should be on your honeymoon. And I said, excuse me, you think me being able to just sit in a pew and sit under God's word is not the start of a great honeymoon?

I didn't have to serve at all. I walked in, just picked up a bulletin, took a seat. It was probably the first time I ever did that. I got to just sit and relax and enjoy. But this should be the highlight because this is where we as a congregation gather to hear God's word proclaimed because he is the head of the church.

You see, it's not just that he's the head. What you end up seeing is all this that he said, who he is, is what's going to inform us why he is the head of the church and why we follow his way, not man's way.

We don't let culture interpret God's word for us. Okay? We let God interpret God's word for us. And I know this is not something that is very common, unfortunately. I just saw a post this morning in one of the Facebook groups that I manage.

It's a group where we allow people to... It's an apologetics group, so we allow people to practice their apologetics so we don't remove everything. And so someone made a mistake because he's gotten about 100 responses, but he put a post out celebrating how God is so welcoming to genders.

And he wanted to thank, past our appreciation month, to thank all the female pastors. He got an earful. So, he's saying that, when I'm saying that, sorry, someone had taken a meme of a son I said in the Philippines.

I had said it before in different ways, but they made a meme out of it where I just said, well, if you have a female pastor in your church, she's not a pastor and it's not a church. So I posted that and he was saying it was just my opinion and then I just quoted 1 Timothy 2, 12 to 14.